Richard Byrd's team made the first flight over the South Pole
On this day · 29 November 1929
On November 29, 1929, four men in a single trimotor became the first to fly over the bottom of the world and live to land.
Late on November 28, 1929, American explorer Richard E. Byrd and three companions lifted off from their Antarctic base camp, Little America, on the Ross Ice Shelf. Their aircraft, the Floyd Bennett, a Ford trimotor, droned south through the long polar day toward a place no aircraft had ever reached.
With magnetic compasses useless so near the pole, the crew navigated by sun compass and Byrd’s own dead reckoning. The hardest stretch came climbing the polar plateau: to gain altitude over an 11,000-foot mountain pass, the men heaved emergency food out the door.
They crossed the South Pole around 1 a.m. on November 29, 1929, where Byrd dropped a small American flag. The round trip to the pole and back ran roughly 18 hours and 41 minutes, ending with a safe landing at Little America.
It was the first flight over the southern axis of the planet, and it made Byrd a national hero.
Sources & references
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