00:00:17
Speaker 1: Pushkin. Hey everyone, it is Jared Martinez. Before we get into this episode, I wanted to let you know that you can listen to the entire season of Medal of Honor right now ad free with Pushkin Plus. Get all our incredible stories of courage with a Pushkin Plus subscription. Sign up and save on the Medal of Honor show page on Apple Podcasts or at pushkin dot fm slash Plus. Use the code twenty five for twenty five percent off an annual subscription. Okay, now to the episode. Two men were jammed into the tiny cockpit of an airplane. They wore leather flying helmets and goggles and parkas made of reindeer hides. Their faces peeked out from giant fur hoods. It was below freezing outside, and they were about to get much much colder. It was half past midnight on May ninth, nineteen twenty six, and neither of them had slept for thirty six hours. A pale moon was visible on one side of the horizon, but the sun was shining too, and never set, not this time of the year, not this far north. Because these two aviators and their small three engine propeller plane were in Norway, roughly six hundred miles from the top of the world, the North Pole, and they were determined to fly over it. They would make their way across the frozen Polar Sea to what exactly. They weren't sure because nobody had flown over the North Pole before. The two men hunched over the dials in the cockpit. The plane had been roped down because the runway was icy and short. They were going to let the engines rev up to full power and then the plane would be cut loose. One of the pilots opened the throttles. The airplane strained forward. As the engines wore, everything shook. The noise was deafening. The pilots couldn't hear each other over it, but they didn't need to talk. They were both thinking the same thing. They had to get off the ground. They had to go. It was do or die. The engine propeller spun so fast that they were just a blurt and at the side of the runway, one of their friends raised an axe and cut the rope that was keeping the plane on the ground and they were off. I'm Jr. Martinez, and this is Medal of Honor, Stories of Courage, The Medal of Honor is the highest military decoration in the United States. It's a warded for gallantry and bravery and combat at the risk of life, above and beyond the call of duty. Each candidate must be approved all the way up the chain of command, from the supervisory officer in the field to the White House. This show is about those heroes, what they did, what it meant, and what their stories tell us about the nature of courage and sacrifice. This episode is about Richard evel and Byrd, and it's pretty different from what we usually talk about in this series because he didn't receive his Medal of Honor for something he did on the battlefield or even during a war. It's a story without a single bullet. Instead, this episode is about exploration. It takes place during a time when America was obsessed with discovering and claiming the farthest reaches of our planet, and exploration takes bravery, facing the unknown, knowing you're risking death, but still stepping forward, which is exactly what Richard Byrd did. Dick Bird started exploring the world when he was just a kid. You might be like, oh, sure, all kids explore, but I'm not talking about that kind of exploration. In nineteen oh two, when he was just thirteen, Dick left his home in Virginia and made his way across the United States by himself. Danny got on a boat to Japan and then another went to the Philippines, traveling alone for weeks. Would I let my thirteen year old travel around the world by herself. She can't even make it down the block and she has a phone, So yeah, the answer is no. But Dick's parents were different. I guess they came from a long line of explorers. His dad's ancestors had left England and arrived in Virginia in sixteen seventy. His moms arrived in sixteen oh nine. Plus Dick was determined. He wore them down. That's the kind of person he was, even back then. He didn't come home for a year. By the age of fourteen, he made a solo trip around the world. You might want to rewind about thirty seconds and hear this whole section over again because it's ridiculous. Keep in mind this was a time when exploration was booming. There were still parts of the world that were totally undiscovered, well at least by white people. So in Europe and America. There was a race to get there first, and Dick couldn't wait to join those teams of explorers. He graduated from the Naval Academy. He had grown into a handsome guy with wavy, dark hair and blue eyes. He was modest, kind. People loved him, but his career in the Navy wasn't going well. Back in his school days, he'd been captain of the gymnastics team. One classmate described him as a carefree elf with the grace of a cat. But he fractured his ankle doing a trick on the rings and it never fully healed well. In the Navy, this was a major liability. He would never be on the front lines of combat, so Dick changed things up, because having a bad foot didn't really matter if you were sitting in a plane. He became an expert in night flying and navigation. During World War One, he helped with the first fleet of military aircraft, and after the war he developed tools for transatlantic flight. In the Navy, Dick was famous for his navigational skills, and he was excited to put them to use. At the time, people weren't just flying planes. There were also flying dirigibles aka blimps. In nineteen twenty one, Dick was supposed to be on one of the first dirigible flights across the Atlantic, but he missed his train and lost his spot. That blimp apart in mid air, killing almost everyone on board. Dick helped to find the bodies. There was a near miss that haunted him, but it didn't slow him down because soon he was headed for the North Pole. People have been trying to reach the top of the world for decades by then, by dogs, sled and even hot air balloon. They weren't sure if there was land up there, but if there was, every country wanted to claim it. Here's Dick talking about why he wanted to go years later.

00:07:45
Speaker 2: As long as it remains anything unknown on the face of this earth we live on, man is going to go after it, to try to find out what it is, to attempt to conquer it, and to learn how to live in it.

00:08:01
Speaker 1: And the way to get to the North Pole was by air. But flying was insanely dangerous. No one had ever flown in high latitudes without serious problems. Let's not forget planes were only invented back in nineteen o three. That's a little over twenty years, but that didn't stop Dick, of course not. In nineteen twenty five, he joined an expedition with some other explorers to fly over the North Pole. That attempt failed, but it had one giant upside. It introduced Dick to a guy named Floyd Bennett. Bennett was two years younger than Dick and looked like an old fashioned movie star with blonde hair parted on the side. He had grown up in terrible poverty, but he was a mechanical genius and one of the best pilots in the air. On that nineteen twenty five trip, Dick and Bennett had been flying partners when one of their oil tanks broke. Bennett actually climbed onto a wing mid flight and fixed it, saving them from falling to an icy death. So as soon as Dick got home, he started planning to go back to the Pole, and he knew he would bring Bennett with him. He had to act fast because there were other groups on their way there too. Expeditions were being planned from Paris to Detroit. It was a crazy race to the top of the world, and Dick wanted to cross the finish line first, but he had one big rival in Norwegian by the name of Roald Amundsen. In nineteen eleven, he had been the first man to reach the South Pole by dog sled, and now he was gunning for the North Alminsen had already tried to get there once by plane. He made it within one hundred and thirty six miles, and then he had to land and got stuck. He spent a month on the ice and he barely survived. So this time he wasn't going to go by plane. Instead, he bought a dirigible from the Italian dictator Benito Mussolini. So maybe not a great partner, but Mussolini was excited about the North Pole too, so he sold him the blimp at a disc count and guess what he got it blessed by the Pope. Dick didn't want to go by blip. Instead, he found a fixed wing three engine plane for a good price. He figured that three engines were safer than one. If one went out, the plane could get pretty far on just two. As he put it, quote, the multi motored plane is the answer, the stages said. Confidence is all that is needed. Well, confidence and money. Explorers had to raise cash for everything. A boat to get up north supplies to feed the crew, and on and on. So Dick went to Edsel Ford, son of the famous Henry Ford. Ford gave him twenty thousand dollars, which is worth around three hundred and seventy thousand dollars today. Dick named his plane the Josephine after Ford's three year old daughter. Smart move. So now that Dick and Almonson both had their airships, the sprint to the Pole was on and the press covered every minute of it.

00:11:18
Speaker 3: And Navy Commander Richard Eveln Byrd is about to join pilot Voyd Bennett on an historic journey. They had the first flight over top of the world. Might have take off icy wastes of Arctic destination North Pole and return.

00:11:34
Speaker 1: On April fifth, Dick's boat left New York Harbor. It carried his plane supplies the last six months and fifty North Pole obsessed volunteers, including Bennett. Oh and can't forget a little white terrier named Igloo their destination with Spitzbergen, Norway. It was close enough to the Pole that they could fly to Josephine there without having to refuel, and it had a harbor where Dick's boat could dock. Thousands of people were screaming and waving as Dick st sell, cheering for him and Bennett and Igloo too. They were major celebrities, and hey, America wanted to win this race. Dick wrote in his diary, quote, I think of the expedition not as mine, but as ours, the boys with me and America's. This day has proved that there is a lot of romance in spirit of adventure in this great country. But he also noted that quote, the hardest part of an expedition is the worry one causes those nearest and dearest, and Dick had people at home that were worried. His three little kids and his wife, Marie, Maria Dick had met when there were children. Dick absolutely adored her. He wrote a letter to his six year old son to be read if he didn't make it back. It said, quote, my last words to you, my boy, are to beg you to understand, cherish, and protect your mother, and to model yourself as much as you can after her, for she is the finest person in the world. Dick was risking his life, but that didn't stop him exploring. Was in his bones.

00:13:16
Speaker 4: You find the mountain range, say twenty thousand feet high thousand miles long. Well that's quite a kick, you know, and you do find such things every time you explore.

00:13:31
Speaker 1: On April twenty ninth, Dick's team arrived in Spitzberg and Norway. His boat slowly made its way through the frozen bay, pass ice floes bobbing in the water towards the dock that they had been counting on. But then they got the news their ship would not be allowed to land. Rold Aminsen was already there. Richard Bird had spent years dreaming of reaching the North Pole, raising money and supplies, weeks sailing north, and then he was told by the local officials, Yeah, you're just gonna have to wait. But here's the thing. He was starting his trip in Norway, and who was his rival? Rolled Almondson and Norwegian. As one guy on Alminson's team wrote quote, we resent this foreign ship coming here to our own country to snatch the prize, which we feel belongs to Captain Amundson alone. The man who wrote that was named Burnt Balkan. We're gonna hear a lot more from him. Okay, so fine. Maybe Dick shouldn't have been surprised by the icy welcome Almondson was super anxious, still waiting for his dirigible to arrive from Italy. It was called the norj and it was delayed, so the Norwegians wanted to slow Dick down to now just so you know the rules for this race, all the explorers were supposed to be gentlemen, no tricky stuff. Almonson and Dick had elegant lunches together on their ships, but that didn't mean the Norwegians weren't trying to give their guy the edge. It made Dick crazy, as he wrote, quote great sportsmanship. In spite of anything the Norwegians do. I intend to be a good sport and be dignified and calm. They have made it very difficult for us, So Dick and his team decided to work around them. Dick's men hoisted two lifeboats over the side of the boat. They lowered them into the water and tied them together side by side. They did the same thing with two warm boats. Then long planks of wood were put on top of them. The crew worked deep into the night hammering everything together. Almondson and his team were watching from across the bay and they were like the hell And then they saw Dick's crew had built a giant raft. The men lowered the Josephine onto the raft and paddled it to shore, and it looked like Dick had a head start on the race, but then he hit a snack. They needed to do some test flights, but the ground was totally frozen, so the plane had to land on skis, and the ski that they brought were too small. On their first test flight, they broke, sending the plane straight into a snowbank. Dick's crew was working overtime in sub zero conditions, getting frostbite, but trying to figure it out fast. Meantime, the Norge was getting closer to Spitzbergen, slowly but surely heading for the starting block. But remember Burnt Balkan from Allminson's team. He decided to help the Americans. He made new skis for the Josephine and gave the crew tips about how to build a runway on the ice. As you can imagine, Allminsen was pissed. Dick wrote in his diary quote Almondson gave Balkan, who is a peach, orders to not come near us again. Finally, the Josephine had a successful test flight and then on May seventh, the Norridge arrived. It just needed some small repairs. It felt like the starting gun had been fired. The race was really on. The very next day, Dick's team loaded up the Josephine. No more test flights, they would head to the pole. Packing the plane was tricky. Dick and Bennett needed enough supplies to be able to survive on the ice if they crashed, but every pound that they packed would also slow them down. They had dug a runway out of the snow, then sprayed it with water so it would turn into a slick of ice and guarantee a fast start. Dick and Bennett were totally geared up, parkas and pants made of animal skin and sheep skin, boots and leather gloves. It was frigid cold on the ground, but it was going to be even colder in the air. The Josephine wasn't pressurized or climate controlled. The engines went on, the propellers were spinning, and the Josephine shot forward, but it didn't get off the runway. The plane was too heavy. You gotta imagine the Norwegians were psyched about that. Dick and Bennett got out and the crew raced to reposition the plane. They unloaded everything they didn't really need. By the time they were done, it was late at night. Dick and Bennett were exhausted. And here's another thing. The flight was going to take at least fifteen hours and they wouldn't be able to sleep in the air. So they headed back to the boat for some rest. But then the two men looked at each other. The conditions were perfect for takeoff. They couldn't risk waiting. Had to try now, exhausted or not, so in the first minutes after midnight on May night, the two aviators walked back to the Josephine, their boots crunching in the snow. They checked their instruments. Bennett opened the throttles. The cockpit shook like crazy, the engines roared, and then the rope that bound them to Earth was cut and the plane bolted down the icy runway the Josephine. Ford lifted off. As soon as they felt the airplane rise, Bennett smiled at Dick. They couldn't actually talk because they couldn't hear each other over the engines, so they communicated through hand signals and notes. Bennett was flying so that Dick could focus on what he was famous for navigating because this was decades before GPS, and they were at the North Pole, so their compasses didn't work. There was nothing but endless water and ice for miles, no landmarks, which meant they couldn't guide by sight, so the navigator had to operate several instruments in order to verify their position. One was a sextont, which was used to measure the angle between the horizon and the sun or the moon. Then there was an instrument to measure wind drift. To use it, Dick had to poke his head out of the plane and get frostbitten. I know this all sounds insanely low tech, but at the time it was all cutting edge and it had been proven to work as long as the navigator was good enough, and Dick was one of the best. Dick kept notes in his journal, writing in pencil, fixing his calculations, and writing instructions to Bennett. When they were about seven and a half hours into the trip and about an hour away from the pole, Dick saw something that made his stomach drop. Oil was spraying from the tank of wine one of the motors. He sent Bennett back to look in his notebook, he wrote, is it a bad leak? Bennett replied, it is a bad leak, and we may lose the motor at any time. So they had to make a decision continue on to the poll and risk losing an engine, or head back to safety. For the two men, it wasn't a choice. They were Navy flyers. This was their mission. They had faced death together once before and survived, so they kept going. Dick Bird and Floyd Bennett were flying towards the North Pole, praying that their third engine would hold. Below them, the frozen sea seemed to stretch into infinity. As Dick later said, quote, we felt no larger than a pinpoint, and as lonely as the tune, as remote and detached as a star. Dick checked and rechecked his instruments, and, as he later wrote, quote at nine o two am granted civil time. Our calculation showed us to be at the pole. The dream of a lifetime had had last been realized. The two men filmed what they saw, and what did they see, well kind of nothing, just water and snow and chunks of frozen ice. Nothing to even plant a flagon. So instead they circled the pole once and then again, covering their bases in case they were slightly off. They quickly headed back. I mean, who knew how long that busted engine would hold. During the return flight, the ex fell and broke. This meant Dick had to navigate purely by what they call dead reckoning, calculating distance and speed and time. Dick got them all the way to Spitzbergen using only that. After a total flight time of nearly sixteen hours, the Josephine Ford returned. The rest of the crew had been waiting half thrilled, half terrified, but as soon as they saw the plane on the horizon, they were throwing their hats in the air. Racing to the Josephine, they hoisted Dick and Bennett on their shoulders.

00:23:47
Speaker 3: Second half of flight as successful as Bird and Bennett get warm welcome back to base.

00:23:54
Speaker 1: Even Almondsen was excited. I mean, you got to give him credit in the end. He was a good sport, even though his dirigible was still not in the air. He came running to congratulate Dick, and of course Balkan did too. Dick's expedition had conquered the North Pole. They were first. Almondson eventually got there He left Spitzbergen on May eleventh and reached the pole on the twelfth. There were sixteen men in the norg. Burnt Balkin was not included. When Dick's team got back to the States, they had a hero's welcome with a ticker tape parade through Manhattan.

00:24:35
Speaker 4: Millions of New Yorkers turned out in a thrilling tribute to the daring explorer whose achievements had won the admiration and a claim of the entire world.

00:24:45
Speaker 1: Dick submitted the records of his flight to the US Navy, and they were scrutinized by a panel of experts at the National Geographic Society. This group confirmed his calculations. The fact that he was able to return without a sextant proved quote that he was equally successful in his flight northward. The feet of flying a plane six hundred miles from land and returning directly to the point aimed for shows beyond a re reasonable doubt that he knew where he was at all times during the flight. Both Dick and Bennett received promotions from the Navy, and at a White House ceremony on February twenty fifth, both men received the Medal of honor Igloo the Dog. He became a celebrity too, and he even had a book written about him. But almost immediately there were doubts. The Italian press was stunned, how could their blimp not have made it there first it had been blessed by the Pope, and more skepticism followed, but Dick seemed convinced he had made it. He had given Almundson a chart of his North Pole readings so that he could use it on the Norge. It would have been a crazy thing to do if he didn't believe they were correct. Anyway, Dick didn't pay much attention to the controversy. He was too busy planning his next adventure. He flew across the Atlantic after Charles Limberg, but still early days, and then he was the first man to fly across the South Pole in nineteen twenty nine, proving his navigational skills again. Who was by his side for both of those flights not Floyd Bennett. Sadly, he had been injured in a crash and later caught pneumonia. He died in nineteen twenty eight at the age of thirty seven. Alminsen was gone that year too. He disappeared while flying in the Arctic. His body was never found. The person who came with Dick, was you ready for this? Burnt Balkan. He'd been shunned by his fellow Norwegians for helping Dick at the North Pole, but Dick still thought Balkan was a peach. Dick went back to the South Pole five times during his life, in freezing and deadly conditions. It took so long to get down there. Their early expeditions each lasted over a year. Special guest on the first one Igloo, Dick yearned for Marie and the kids, but his explorations were in a way for them. He believed there were untapped riches down there.

00:27:22
Speaker 4: It's an untouched reservoir of natural resources, which this country in the world will need desperately, because we are recklessly expending a natural resources and there won't be many years before we will be ironpede in desperate need of that those minerals that are there. And I'm looking into the future, thinking of those of children and children.

00:27:45
Speaker 1: As the years went by, the North Pole stopped feeling quite so far away.

00:27:51
Speaker 3: The North Pole used to be a no man's land, But these are the days when by buying a ticket on a commercial airline you can fly across the North Pole and drink a cocktail at the same time.

00:28:03
Speaker 1: The Pole became a key to transatlantic flight, and as World War Two inch closer, Dick watched as it became even more significant.

00:28:12
Speaker 2: Little did I think when we flew to the North Pole in nineteen twenty six, This area, the Contiguoussylums Waters, Do I have a flight to the Pole would become one of the most important strategic areas on the face of the earth. But if we, god forbid, do have a war, much of it will be fought across the top of the world, across the Pole.

00:28:41
Speaker 1: His prediction was right. During World War Two, the North Pole was super important for weather forecasting and armed shipments and a bunch of other things. Dick was a special advisor to the Chief of Naval Operations during the war. He was present when the Japanese surrendered in nineteen forty five, and he was way ahead of his time. He raised the alarm about what was happening at the top of the world.

00:29:05
Speaker 2: It's becoming warmer up there. I believe myself, the whole world is becoming one.

00:29:13
Speaker 1: Dick died in nineteen fifty seven of a heart ailment. He was sixty eight years old. But shortly after his death, his Norwegian friend, the peach Burnt Balkan started telling a different story about that North Pole flight. He claimed that before his death, Floyd Bennett said they never made it to the pole once the oil league began, they just circled around out of view until enough time had passed that they could claim they'd gone. Now, Bennett wasn't alive to corroborate this. Of course, it was Balkan's word against a ghost, but the damage was done then. In the nineteen eighties, Ohio State University received Dick's personal diary from the North Pole flight. It was disorganized and out of sequence, with personal thoughts and notes that Bennett and Dick had written to each other. There were also Dick's navigational calculations. They were done in pencil and some had been erased and rewritten. Had Dick fixed his numbers to make them seem like he had gotten too the Pole? Did the pressure to be the first get the better of him? Some critics said yes, that there was no way the plan could have gone fast enough to get him there, and the eraser marks were proof. Others said no, they were just evidence that Bird was updating his numbers, fixing them in transit. Sure they were sloppy, but he was exhausted. There is no way for us to know for certain if Dick and Bennett made it over the North Pole that day in nineteen twenty six. Here's the thing as I see it. At the end of the day, what matters is their bravery and their willingness to risk everything. Like all of the guys we profile, Dick looked out into the unknown, and he still moved forward. He was an incredible explorer. Either he got to the North Pole or not. He risked his life the moment he set off in the Josephine, and then he did it again and again for decades. Sure there was a pursuit of glory of finding a spot in the history books. I think that probably motivates every explorer. But there was also the pursuit of knowledge to benefit the greater good. And that's what Dick really cared about more than anything. He wanted us all to be explorers, not in the frozen tundra necessarily, but explores of what's going on in our world. When he was asked later in life. What his advice for people was.

00:31:52
Speaker 4: He said this, they should keep themselves in palm, keep willing, calm. Then you will have a chance to know what's going on behind the scenes, and they ask questions and realize that you cannot have liberty without paying a price.

00:32:10
Speaker 3: Food.

00:32:12
Speaker 4: Each person is important.

00:32:13
Speaker 2: If all of them get together and study and.

00:32:16
Speaker 4: Ask questions and know what's going on, they can vote intelligently. Because in the elpheimate analysis, we are completely responsible for what happened where the government's consent. If they make mistakes, it's our fault. They're not taking enough interest and taking the wonderful freedom we have.

00:32:35
Speaker 1: Seriously, you know, Richard byrd knew that information is power and democracy can't survive without it. He went to the ends of the earth looking for knowledge. The least we can do is read the news. Thank you all for listening and supporting our show. Over the past year, we've gotten emails from some of you sharing great stories of courage, and we want to shout out Tom Shine for sharing Emil Capon's story. He was an army chaplain in World War Two and Korea and receive the Medal of Honor nearly fifty years after he died in a North Korean pow camp. Thank you so much for sharing Tom. If you have stories or people you would like to highlight, email us at Medal of Honor at Pushkin dot fm. Your participation helps us make great episodes, so please follow the show, share it with a friend, or leave a review. These are all zero cost ways to support us. Find us on social media at Pushkin pods or find me at IMJR. Martinez Medal of Stories of Courage is written by Meredith Rollins and produced by Meredith Rollins and Ryan Schwiker. Our editor is Lydia gene Kott. Sound designed by Jay Gorsky. Our executive producer is Constanza Gayadro. Fact checking by Arthur Gomperts and original music by Eric Phillips. Special thanks to Ohio State Universities, Bird, Polar and Climate Research Center for letting us use their interviews of Bird. If you want to learn more about this story, take a look at our show notes, where we have some of the resources we use to put this episode together. I'm your host, j R. Martinez