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| Ford Trimotor that Blachen flew over the South Pole - Photo: Wikipedia. |
On 28–29 November 1929, flying a modified Ford 4-AT Trimotor, Balchen became one of the first four men to fly over the South Pole.
Balchen was the chief pilot, and he was accompanied by Harold June, his co-pilot and radio operator, Ashley McKinley, the flight's photographer and Commander Byrd, the navigator and organizer of the Antarctic expedition.
Bernt Balchen, (23 October 1899 – 17 October 1973), a recipient of the Distinguished Flying Cross was a Norwegian native, and later U.S. citizen, known as a pioneer polar aviator, navigator, aircraft mechanical engineer and military leader.
In May 1949, while commanding the 10th Rescue Squadron, Balchen flew a Douglas C-54 Skymaster from Fairbanks, Alaska, via the North Pole to Thule Air Base, Greenland, and hence he became the first man to pilot an aircraft over both geographic poles of the Earth.
Bernt Balchen was also aboard the Boeing 707 that was the first aircraft to fly over both the North- and South- Pole in 1965.
In his native Norway, Balchen was a driving force in the establishment of Det Norske Luftfartselskap (D.N.L.) ("The Norwegian Airline Company"), with which he pioneered commercial Europe↔US airline flights across the North Pole. D.N.L. later merged with Danish and Swedish airlines (ABA Aktiebolaget Aerotransport) into the major carrier Scandinavian Airlines SAS.
Source: Wikipedia
John Larsen was the navigator on the first round-the-world-pole-to-pole flight. "Shipload" of news reporters. All on board signed a map - or perhaps multiple copies of maps of the poles.
ReplyDeleteThe story of the flight is the subject of a book, Northstar Over My Shoulder. Author is Bob Buck; published in 2002 by Simon & Schuster.
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