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On Nov. 29, 1929 a sound never heard there before echoed over the ice sheet that covers the Earth’s South Pole.
The engines of a Ford tri-motor aircraft carrying Richard E. Byrd heralded the arrival of the first human beings to visit the Pole since Robert Falcon Scott in 1912. (Scott had perished on the way back from the southernmost spot, having been bested in his goal a month earlier by Norwegian Roald Amundsen.)
Byrd's aircraft, the Floyd Bennett, cruised at 90 mph with a maximum ceiling of 8,000 feet. It carried no cargo other than food and survival gear, such as sleeping bags, cans of fuel and a sledge. There was scarcely room for the four men to move as they flew into uncharted territory – over the ice shelf and glaciers, the Transantarctic Mountains and the Antarctic Plateau, and finally, over the South Pole itself.
Admiral Byrd’s landmark flight proved that aircraft could successfully grapple with conditions on Earth’s coldest, highest, and driest continent. In doing so, he ushered in a new age of exploration and aviation that led directly to the remarkable research that the National Science Foundation conducts at the South Pole and elsewhere in Antarctica.
