One Summer: America, 1927

to make the flight. In the early hours of 29 June, 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 Fonck’s crashed in flames, and it was even more perilously overloaded. The radio equipment alone weighed 800 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 as a gift to the people of France. At the last minute, in slight panic, Byrd decided to slim down the load. He removed two cans of petrol, 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 laboured 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, multi-person 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 wentaccording to plan. A crawl space had been inserted under the main fuel tank in the middle of the plane so that the crew could move between the front and 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, getting cramp in his confined space, stretched his leg to relieve it 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 mph, 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 torch. 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 endeavour. ‘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 flyers ever have that experience.’ All this rather overlooked the fact 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.
    In a separate account written for National Geographic in autumn 1927, Byrd made it sound as if he had intentionally soughtout bad weather. ‘I had determined not to wait for such conditions [i.e., good ones], because I felt that the transatlantic plane of the future could not wait for ideal conditions,’ he wrote. ‘Moreover, we probably could gain more scientific and practical knowledge if we met some adverse weather.’ The result, he said, was ‘the toughest air battle I believe that has ever taken place’. He went on: ‘I did not convey my apprehension to my shipmates. They had enough upon