One Summer: America, 1927 (26 page)

President Coolidge delighted in seeing himself in newsreels. Because he did not reach the game lodge until after dusk, the next morning he had the whole presidential party—now grown to some two hundred
people with the addition of local officials and support staff—reload every bag and suitcase into cars, drive two hundred yards down the road, and reenact the presidential arrival as the cameras recorded the fictitiously historic moment.

For the state of South Dakota, the president’s presence was a very big deal. The state desperately wanted to be perceived as an attractive destination for tourists. The thought occurred to someone that if the president was seen to be enjoying himself fishing in South Dakota’s sparkling waters, then other anglers might be tempted to travel there as well. To make sure the exercise was a success, two thousand full-grown trout were sent from the state trout hatchery at Spearfish. These trout—all large, sluggish, and hand-fed from birth—were secretly confined to a placid stretch of stream outside the Coolidge residence by submerged nets strung strategically between the banks. To his hosts’ dismay Coolidge declared that he had no interest in fishing. Eventually he was persuaded to give it a try. Dressed in a business suit, he dipped a baited rod in the water. Instantly the starving fish erupted in a silvery frenzy around the hook, and a moment later Coolidge lifted a wriggling prize from the water. He beamed from ear to ear and could barely be coaxed away from the stream after that. He and Mrs. Coolidge dined proudly on his caught trout daily even though they were, by all accounts, almost inedible. Coolidge didn’t like dealing with worms, however, and had his Secret Service men bait his fish hook for him. Apart from the worms, he was immensely happy.

While the Coolidges enjoyed themselves in the Black Hills, Charles Lindbergh continued, with ever decreasing enthusiasm, to receive the adulation of the American people. Alva Johnston, writing in the
New York Times
from St. Louis, was struck by how unmoved Lindbergh appeared to be by the parade and other festivities laid on for him there. “Colonel Lindbergh never indicated by expression or gesture that he understood that the demonstration was for him,” Johnston wrote. “He did not smile or wave. Nothing moved him to admit that the glittering spectacle and the deafening uproar was a personal tribute.” The following day Lindbergh
delighted a crowd of one hundred thousand in Forest Park with aerial acrobatics, but he underwent an abrupt mood change upon landing. “The holiday spirit deserted him when he touched earth again,” Johnston reported. “As soon as he left his own element, the stern and rather gloomy demeanor returned. He is not quite at his ease on land.”

Things got worse. From St. Louis, Lindbergh flew to Dayton, Ohio, to visit Orville Wright, co-inventor of the airplane with his late brother Wilbur. Thrilled city officials hastily organized a parade and reception, and were dismayed when Lindbergh refused to take part in either on the grounds that this was a private visit. When disappointed townspeople learned that Lindbergh had declined their tribute, many of them marched on Wright’s home and demanded to see their hero. When Lindbergh still refused to appear, the crowd grew restive and threatened to do actual damage to Wright’s house. Only then did Lindbergh, beseeched by Wright for the sake of his property, step onto a balcony and briefly wave to the crowd.

Reporters found Lindbergh close to sullen when he returned to New York via Mitchel Field on June 24. “Colonel Lindbergh appeared much more tired than when he left New York a week ago. He did not smile once,” wrote another
Times
reporter. As Lindbergh was about to climb into an automobile for the drive into Manhattan, a pretty girl rushed up and asked if she could shake his hand. Lindbergh’s reaction surprised everybody. “He looked at her severely and said: ‘No shaking hands,’ and drew his arm away swiftly,” wrote the
Times
reporter. The girl was clearly crushed, and Lindbergh embarrassed, but he seemed powerless to behave in a more relaxed and thoughtful way.

The world, however, refused to see him as anything other than a warm-hearted hero, and the press soon stopped noting his curiously flat aspect and lack of enthusiasm for those who adored him, and resumed depicting him as the obliging hero everyone wished him to be.

While Lindbergh was breaking hearts at Mitchel Field, Commander Richard Byrd was continuing to mystify the flying fraternity at Roosevelt.
A special earthen ramp about six feet high and fifty feet long had been erected at the starting point for takeoff to help the
America
get a good start. Three times the plane was hauled to the top of its takeoff ramp, and three times Byrd gravely scanned the sky and ordered a postponement. The delays “began to look something more than ridiculous,” fumed Tony Fokker.

With Floyd Bennett permanently lost to the team, Byrd appointed Bert Acosta as chief pilot. A tanned and rakish-looking fellow of exotic Mexican-Amerindian lineage, Acosta was a celebrated ladies’ man. “His Latin allure and his low ‘come-hither’ voice wrought havoc among the fair,” wrote one admiring biographer. “In the movies he might have been another Valentino.” Acosta was also one of the world’s most daring stunt pilots. His specialty was to pluck a handkerchief from the ground with a wingtip. Not surprisingly, these skills would prove somewhat irrelevant on an ocean crossing.

To assist Acosta, Byrd selected the Norwegian Bernt Balchen as copilot—though Balchen was listed only as mechanic and relief pilot because Rodman Wanamaker wanted to keep the enterprise all-American. Balchen was allowed to come only by agreeing to apply for U.S. citizenship. Byrd, in a press conference, said that Balchen was primarily a passenger, though he might also be allowed to do a little navigating when Byrd was busy with other duties. In fact, Balchen did nearly all the flying.

On an early test flight with Acosta, Balchen got a glimpse of the problems the team faced. As the
America
flew into cloud, Acosta grew tense and flustered. Within minutes he had put the plane into a dangerous spin. Balchen grabbed the controls, which Acosta yielded gratefully. “I’m strictly a fair-weather boy,” Acosta told him, blushing. “If there’s any thick stuff I stay on the ground.” Acosta, it turned out, had no idea how to fly on instruments. The only reason that Byrd’s flight made it to France was that Balchen was willing to fly most of the way without demanding any of the credit or glory.

The fourth member of the crew was the most anonymous. George Noville, the radio operator, was retiring, bespectacled, and all but invisible
to history. He was the son of a wealthy hat manufacturer from Cleveland (who was important enough to merit an obituary in the
New York Times
, something his son never got). If Noville made any impression on his fellow fliers, none bothered to record it. He barely appears in Byrd’s and Balchen’s autobiographies, is entirely missing from all others, and left no account of his own.

As for Byrd himself, he was a remarkable human being but not at all an easy one to figure. A born adventurer, he made his first trip around the world at the age of just twelve after persuading his parents—who were evidently seriously indulgent—to let him travel alone to the Philippines to visit a family friend and then to continue home the long way around. He was nearly fourteen by the time he completed his circumnavigation.

Byrd was smart, handsome, reasonably brave, and unquestionably generous, but he was also almost pathologically vain, pompous, and self-serving. Every word he ever wrote about himself made him seem valorous, calm, and wise. He was also, and above all, very possibly a great liar.

On May 9, 1926—one year to the day before Nungesser and Coli disappeared—Byrd and Floyd Bennett made a celebrated flight from Spitsbergen, in the Arctic Ocean, to the North Pole and back in fifteen and a half hours, just beating a rival flight in an airship by the Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen (and piloted by Umberto Nobile, another Italian Fascist airman). Byrd’s polar flight was considered a feat for the ages. Byrd was promoted to commander and lavishly treated to parades and medals upon his return home. People named children after him. Streets were named after him. One overexcited admirer penned a biography of his dog Igloo.

From the outset, however, doubts were privately voiced about Byrd’s achievement. Knowledgeable observers couldn’t see how Byrd and Bennett could have made the round trip in fifteen and a half hours. Balchen had flown the same plane extensively and had never gotten the cruising speed above 65 knots (74.8 miles per hour). Byrd’s flight to the pole required a cruising speed nearly a third faster. Moreover, for the polar flight Byrd’s plane had been fitted with enormous skis for snow
landings, which added substantial drag to the craft and knocked perhaps 5 miles per hour off its speed. When Balchen mentioned to Bennett that he couldn’t understand how they had made it to the North Pole and back in such a short time, Bennett replied, “We didn’t.” He confided to Balchen that the plane had developed an oil leak soon after taking off, and that they had flown back and forth for fourteen hours without ever losing sight of Spitsbergen.

Rumors that Byrd had at the very least exaggerated his achievement persisted for years, and suspicions were darkened by his family’s long refusal to let scholars examine his papers. It wasn’t until 1996, after Byrd’s archive was purchased by Ohio State University for its new Byrd Polar Research Center, that Byrd’s log of the flight became available for examination. The log showed heavy erasures where Byrd had done his calculations of distance traveled, suggesting to many that he had falsified the data. A more generous interpretation would be that he had made a mistake in his first calculation and started over. No one can absolutely say, but according to Alex Spencer of the National Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C., it is now generally believed among experts that Byrd and Bennett never reached the pole.

What is certain is that when Balchen’s autobiography was published in 1959, two years after Byrd’s death, it aired some of the doubts about Byrd’s claims. Byrd’s family volubly protested. Under pressure, Balchen’s publishers agreed to cut several passages and to withdraw from sale the first four thousand copies of the book. The Byrd family wasn’t fully placated, however. Balchen by this time was an American citizen and a respected member of the U.S. Air Force, but Senator Harry Byrd, the explorer’s brother, reportedly blocked Balchen’s promotion to brigadier general and had him quietly relieved of duties. Balchen passed the rest of his career sitting in the Pentagon library reading.

Just as people were wondering if Byrd would ever take off for Europe, he decided to make the flight. In the early hours of June 29, the
America
was rolled to the top of its takeoff ramp in readiness for a dawn departure.
This would be the first big plane to attempt a takeoff for an Atlantic flight since René Fonck’s crashed in flames, and it was even more perilously overloaded. The radio equipment alone weighed eight hundred pounds. Byrd packed for every possible contingency. He even brought along a kite, which he thought could act as both an antenna for the radio and as a sail to pull the plane through the water in the event of a forced landing. He also packed two lifeboats, three weeks’ worth of rations, a bag of airmail letters, and a “consecrated” American flag made by the great-great-grandniece of Betsy Ross as a gift to the people of France. At the last minute, in slight panic, Byrd decided to slim the load. He removed two cans of gasoline, a flask of hot tea, and four pairs of moccasins, and took the mudguards off the plane wheels, which clearly can’t have made much difference, but happily that didn’t matter. After an excruciatingly labored takeoff, the plane lumbered into the air, cleared the wires at the runway’s end, and was on its way to Europe.

Byrd’s stated aim was not to be the first to fly to Paris—loftily, he pointed out that he had not even entered for the Orteig Prize—but to demonstrate that the world was ready for safe, regular, multiperson flights over the Atlantic. What he proved was that such flights were indeed just about possible so long as those aboard didn’t mind crash-landing in water considerably short of their destination. Had it been his avowed purpose to show just how wonderful a pilot Charles Lindbergh was in comparison with nearly everyone else, Byrd could hardly have done better.

Despite all the preparations, almost nothing in the flight went according to plan. A crawl space had been inserted under the main gas tank in the middle of the plane so that the crew could move between the front and the back, but no one had thought to test it while fully kitted out in cold-weather gear. Byrd got stuck and spent ten minutes trapped with no one able to hear his calls above the engines’ roar. Noville, cramping up in his confined space, stretched his leg at one point and inadvertently put his foot through some wires, knocking out the radio and rendering himself pointless. Somewhere over the Atlantic, Balchen asked Acosta to take the wheel for a minute while he felt under his seat for a packet
of sandwiches. In that short interval, Acosta put the plane in a spiral so severe that its airspeed rose to 140 miles per hour, just short of the speed at which the wings would be torn off. Balchen had to wrestle the plane back to stability. “You’d better handle it from now on,” Acosta told him quietly, and Balchen flew virtually all the rest of the way. According to
Time
magazine, Byrd was so seized with anxiety at one point that he struck Acosta across the head with a flashlight. They were supposed to make landfall at Bray Head, Ireland, but in fact missed Ireland altogether and hit Europe at Brest, in France, more than two hundred miles from where they expected to be.

None of these things are mentioned in
Skyward
, Byrd’s account of the journey published the following year. This made it sound as if he and his crew had completed one of the most heroic undertakings in the history of human endeavor. “Hour after hour … it was utterly impossible to navigate,” Byrd wrote. “We could not tell which way the winds were blowing, which way we were drifting, or what sort of land or water was below us.” In grave conclusion he added: “I sincerely hope no other fliers ever have that experience.” All this rather overlooked that Charles Lindbergh had flown the same route five weeks earlier, completely alone, in similar conditions; had landed where and when he said he would; and had never once complained about any of it.