How did Byrd’s airplane end up near Marie Byrd Land?
The wreckage of one of three airplanes Richard Byrd took to Antarctica lies in a lonely snowfield of the Rockefeller Mountains at the western edge of Marie Byrd Land. Byrd took airplanes on his first Antarctic expedition in 1928-1930. Using aircraft for exploration was an original approach in Antarctica.
His main goal was to fly over the South Pole, which he did. In November 1929, Byrd and his pilots flew in a Ford Trimotor from their base in Little America at the edge of the Ross Ice shelf, nine hours to the Pole and nine hours back. It was the first date explorers had seen the South Pole since its discovery by Amundsen in 1911 and the later visits of Scott in 1912.
Byrd’s other goal was the geologic exploration of the mountains south and east of Little America. Lawrence Gould was the expedition geologist. Before the pole flight Gould argued for a flight to the east, where expedition pilots had discovered mountains earlier that year. The plan was to use the expedition Fokker Super Universal, named Virginia by Byrd, a one-engine monoplane, to travel there, land and explore, then fly back to Little America. The geologic team included Gould and two pilots.
What happened to the geologists and the plane?
In early March 1929, 94 years ago this month, Gould’s party flew to the Rockefellers, landed in a snow field, made camp, and began exploring the nearby mountains. This flight was the first use of planes in Antarctica for science. The Antarctic fall equinox approached, and the sun was setting, causing intense cold and a high risk of failure and death. The routine was for the geology team to check in with Little America by radio daily. After about a week, the radio operators at Little America reported the team had not checked in. Byrd suspected the worst. He was correct.
A storm beset the geology team several days after setting up in the mountains. They staked down their plane during a lull, fearing it could be blown away. A storm returned at hurricane force; it trapped the men in their tent as the wind ripped the Fokker off the ground and blew it about a half-mile away. When the storm abated, the team discovered it had destroyed the plane and their radio. They could receive transmissions from Little America but not send them.
Eventually, Byrd mounted a rescue flight to search for the scientists. They found the team safe. Due to payload limits, it took two flights to get the geologists and the rescue team back to Little America. The Fokker was a loss and changed Byrd’s approach to reaching the Pole later that year—he had no backup as the remaining plane, a single-engine Fairchild was not powerful enough to reach the Pole should the Byrd flight in the Ford Tri-Motor get in trouble.
What has happened since the first Byrd Expedition?
The Fokker wreckage has lain ice-bound in the Rockefeller Mountains for years. Subsequent storms had flipped the plane onto its back. It was visited several times by Byrd’s team during his second expedition during 1933-1934. Long a subject of Antarctic lore and fascination, research teams reached the wreckage at least twice, in 1987 and 1992, during a helicopter sortie by an international German-led geological expedition. Christine Smith Siddoway took the photo on this post during the latter.
A move began after that to retrieve the wreckage and house it in a suitable museum in the US. This effort appeared as the Byrd Aircraft Recovery Expedition in the 2000s. That group planned a complete retrieval of the plane’s remains; members of the group visited the site via a Twin Otter in 2010 to survey the necessary work and estimate the costs.
The recovery project raised private funds for this effort, led by Byrd’s grandson Bob Byrd Breyer. Personal medical issues prevented this group from pursuing recovery.
Byrd’s airplane lies there now, locked into the ice.
The Fokker remains at its last site, enduring countless storms and frozen into the ice, a bare skeleton of what it was. It stands as a monument to the efforts of Byrd and the bravery of Gould and his team.
Read more about the Fokker incident in this book. Rodgers, Eugene. Beyond the Barrier (Bluejacket Books), Naval Institute Press. 1997.