Existing comment:
Richard E. Byrd (1888-1957):
Byrd graduated from the Naval Academy in 1912 and served in World War I. During the war, he learned the relatively new skill of flying an airplane.
He became renowned for his experiments with instruments that could navigate over water, leading to his work on the first US Navy flight across the Atlantic. Byrd would take part in three Antarctic expeditions, and consulted on many others. He won countless awards for his work, including the Navy Cross.
Byrd and the South Pole:
In 1926, Richard E. Byrd and Floyd Bennett made the first flight over the North Pole, confirming Robert Peary's observations. Two years later, Byrd initiated the first of three expeditions to the Antarctic, the first United States explorations of the region since those of Charles Wilkes ninety years earlier. |