Lisle Rose, Historian and author of "Explorer: The Life of Richard Byrd", was interviewed in 1998 for the documentary Alone on the Ice.

The Leading Visionaries in Aviation

Q: Once Byrd entered the new world in aviation didn't he kind of put his finger on the pulse of the future and saw transatlantic flights and polar exploration. Wasn't he kind of a visionary about seeing the potential of aviation?
LR: Well, there were a lot of visionaries in the '20s and Byrd was certainly one of the leading visionaries. A lot of people who went into aviation at this time were kind of narrow in the sense that they were pushing aviation for the army or pushing it for the navy in very specific ways. But there were a handful of people who went into aviation basically to see how far they could push the technology, how fast. And Byrd was one of those. He saw from the beginning that aviation could be used to, extend, not just polar exploration but polar geography. There were so many more things you could see. An airplane after all, is kind of like a moving balcony, you know. And you can, you can see the world in ways and from perspectives that you've never seen it from before. And Byrd was certainly one of the leading lights. And as a matter of fact, you can, I think you can argue in some ways he was the leading light. Lindbergh flew across the Atlantic alone, among other things to make some money and to prove that it could be done. Byrd flew across the Atlantic in a much larger plane with other people to prove basically that commercial aviation would in the near future have a future and there would be a future, a commercial future in long distance flight. So he was a visionary in a much broader sense I think than, than Lindbergh was. Lindbergh later, of course, developed all of the basic routes for Pan Am and so on. But it was Byrd who first saw the commercial possibilities of aviation. Beyond that it was Byrd who of course, saw the physical and the scientific benefits of aviation. You want to be careful here too, what you're talking about. When we talk about aviation we want to be very careful that you talk about heavier than air craft. Because in the '20s there was a real struggle between whether or not the future belonged to dirigibles, lighter than air craft, which of course finally went down with the Hindenberg, that kind of future, or whether it belonged with heavier than air craft. And Byrd and Lindbergh and a handful of others really pushed the notion of a fast moving, long range airplane to be used in a variety of ways. And to that extent Byrd was a real, and a very substantial contributor to the history of aviation. 

Being the First to the North Pole

Q: What did it mean for Byrd to be the first to fly to the pole?
LR: Byrd had to be first in anything he did. I think he felt always that it wasn't worth doing unless he was the first person to do it. He was the first boy from Winchester and probably from Virginia ever to go to the Philippines and go around the world at the age of 12. He had to be first at things. Again, you don't do what everybody else has done, even what one other person has done. You do the single gesture that nothing, that no one else has done before, flying to the North Pole, flying to the South Pole, flying with a much larger airplane and three or four other people to Paris instead of just doing it on your own. The sort of thing that would make a distinctive mark in the world that he would be remembered by. No one will ever take away from Dick Byrd the fact that he was the first person ever to fly to the South Pole along with three other companions. But he was the one who made that trip, he was the one who set himself up and defined the trip as something that he alone had done. And this meant everything in the world to him. It was what he was.

Q: What were the pressures on Byrd to make it to the Pole? Wasn't he in debt? 
LR: Well, flying to the North Pole was a real make or break problem for Dick Byrd, because, first of all he had made a big deal about this. He had gotten a great deal of money, he had generated a large amount, necessarily generated a large amount of publicity in order to get the money. This was also a time, and you want to remember this was a time of real spread eagle nationalism in a lot of the country. The Americans were going up against the Scandinavians. And the Arctic had always been a Scandinavian preserve. And the polar regions had. Scandinavian and British, those were the people who had really done a lot of work in the Arctic region, Peary and Cook were kind of interlopers in that sense. So again it was the United States against the world and so on. And Dick Byrd had exploited this attitude. At the same time he knew very little, nobody knew anything, no one was an expert in polar flying, in heavier than air machines. For example, at Spitsbergen he had some very serious problems with overload of the plane, with trying to get it off the ground. They cracked up once, they busted a ski. There was serious question for a moment as to whether or not they had actually busted up the airframe to the point where it was unflyable. So here's a guy who's facing a real crisis, he's several thousand dollars, more than several thousand dollars in debt. He's got radio contracts, the press is on him, to be the great, polar hero. And he's up there in Spitsbergen with what may be a busted airplane and frankly not a great deal of understanding of what the requirements and demands and risks of polar flying were. He knew them generally but he didn't know them specifically until he began the operation itself and found out how difficult it was. 

The Flight

Q: Can you, maybe just describe the first attempts and failures to get off the ground. What was happening to the plane?
LR: Well, they, they went, they took off down a slope at one point and just couldn't get off the ground. The problem was the plane was overloaded and it was nose heavy. Again, all of these questions of weight distribution and so on, that, all of these people were working out the air mail pilots flying across the American mountains were working on these problems, everybody was. I mean this was a tremendously risky time. A tremendously dangerous enterprise that Byrd had undertaken. And he just didn't and his colleagues just didn't know the dimensions of all the problems they faced until they had to do it. And that's where Byrd almost came a cropper, and his career as a great aviation and polar explorer could have ended right there at Spitsbergen, as I say if that, in that crash, which in fact just busted a ski, the whole plane might have been damaged and you'd have had to scrub the whole operation and Byrd would have come back to the United States not in disgrace, but certainly as someone who had failed. And failed in something that he had made a great deal of noise that he was not going to fail in. So his career was really on the line right at its threshold point. 

Q: Great. How difficult was that flight? How arduous was it? 
LR: Well, it required a great deal of sense in polar navigation. Byrd had always been a superb navigator, and he had developed some aerial navigation devices as early back -- as Pensacola days. So you constantly had to keep track of your route. The problem of drift off, substantial drift off was always there. You had to constantly keep an eye, and make sure you were heading directly toward the Pole, because the tendency would have been with magnetic compasses to swing off the direction there. The plane itself was pretty sturdy for the time. But again it was still a very new technology. This was a time when planes were failing frequently. Floyd Bennett, the pilot was a superb young naval enlisted man and an excellent pilot. But the major point was that if you went down there was very little chance of rescue for quite a time. There was eventual opportunities for rescue, if you could last for three or four weeks they might find you. But basically you were really on your own out in the middle of a howling wilderness. 

The News of Byrd's Achievement

Q: When Byrd made it to the Pole was it splashed to the world by radio right away? What happened? How big of news?
LR: When Byrd got to the Pole he radioed back that he was flying over the North Pole and that was radioed then from Spitsbergen back to the United States. And it was a very big deal. It had only been less than 20 years since Peary had supposedly trekked to the Pole. It was still almost an unattainable objective, and Byrd had done it, and he had done it along with Floyd Bennett in this little spit kit of an airplane. Yeah, so baling wire and glue and so on. That was the public perception of it. Now the plane in fact was quite, was quite sturdy for its time, but that was the public perception, ah, two heroic young Americans flying to the Pole. And this was, this was flashed not only to, to the United States it was flashed to the world. For example, Byrd was, was quite enthusiastically received in England when he came back from Spitsbergen, and he came back through England and then back to the United States. There was a genuine outpouring of gratitude, of admiration for what he had done, and it was it was unstinting.

Q: Why did Byrd get a huge reception and a ticker tape parade when he returned to the States. This whole issue about Americans needing Byrd's type of hero at this point.
LR: Well, you have to understand something. The 1920s belonged to Dick Byrd. The 1920s were Byrd's decade, of greatest achievement and of greatest adulation. And basically what Dick Byrd appealed to were two strains in American thought and in the American psyche. One was the notion that we have to have a frontier. Americans were almost panicked by the end of the frontier back in the 1890s which was, of course, in living memory for many, many Americans. And from the 1890s really on to today, we're constantly looking for new frontiers. It's part of the American heritage. The other thing that Americans are afraid of is growing old. They don't want the nation to grow old. They don't want it to become as corrupt as Europe supposedly is, and so on. That's a very strong theme in American history. So what someone like Byrd and later Lindbergh did was they appealed to these two driving demands in the American nature. One for new frontiers to conquer, to conquer nature, to conquer space itself. And the second thing was to be forever youthful. And old men did not go out and fly the North Atlantic or fly to the North Pole. So the third, and then there's a third element. And that element was the fact that western civilization got very, very old as a result of the great war. If there's one theme that comes out of the great war, it's the murder of youth. And what people were looking for in the '20s, not only in the United States, but in Europe too, and this reflects Byrd's very enthusiastic reception, first in England after his North Pole flight and then in Paris, after he flew to the North Atlantic, what they were looking was the fact that youth hadn't been murdered, that promise hadn't disappeared as a result of the great war. And this is what heroes like Byrd and Lindbergh and Roald Almundsen and so forth, this is what they gave people. 

The ticker tape parade becomes an absolute standard in the United States in the 1920s. This is really where it really begins in a major way. It's interesting that the ticker tape parade really has died out in this country. We really haven't had it since the astronauts. And this is what Byrd represented to people.

Q: But there was a sense that he was still a hero even though he had crashes. The public believes he can do no wrong?
LR: I think the public feels that he's a very intrepid explorer, but remember what else is happening at this time. And this is not well known. After Lindbergh in the summer of 1927, everybody tried to fly to Paris. And about 30 people went down in the effort from not even getting off much more than ten feet off the ground to disappearing over the Atlantic. Byrd made it and he survived. This was the point Byrd is a survivor. And this means a very great deal to the public. He can fail in the small things, but he's a survivor, he's not killed and he's up to try it again. He's up to try it again. After all, what's he going to do. Almost immediately after he comes back from the transAtlantic flight he announces that he's going to go down to Antarctica and make an attempt to fly to the South Pole. So he keeps this momentum of movement and of action and of achievement going. And in the late '20s Dick Byrd had a reputation almost equal to that of Lindbergh, if not equal to that of Lindbergh as the intrepid industrial age hero.

Q: When you go to the North Pole why can't he fail when he goes to the North Pole?
LR: Well, he can't fail for a variety of reasons. In the first place, he is comparatively an unknown. Nobody knows who he is. Other people do, and the Navy knows. And he is able to ingratiate himself with a number of backers, and they are willing to support him. But, as a public hero, he's not known at all. He is in deep debt to private financial interests. He has signed book contracts and radio contracts. I think he's already signed some up for a lecture tour. He can't fail. One can imagine him coming back and trying to get on the lecture trail with how I failed trying to fly to the North Pole. Dick Byrd was a risk taker all his life. And none moreso than at the beginning. He really stuck his neck out. He was out on a very long limb. And if he hadn't been able to complete the North Polar flight in ways that generally satisfied the public at the time that he had in fact reached the North Pole, then he would have been just another has been. Aman deep in debt. The family would have had to come in and bail him out. Harry would probably have found a job for him somewhere, and he would have been an interesting footnote, if even that, in the history of polar aviation.

The Transatlantic Flight

Q: What's Byrd trying to accomplish with the Trans-Atlantic flight?
LR: I think Byrd made it very clear that really what he was looking at was something different than what Lindbergh was looking at. Lindbergh was wanting to be the first person to fly from New York to Paris. That was the prize money that had been put up and was there for years. Byrd was trying to do something else. Byrd was after the North Pole flight, very much taken up with the notion of international air travel, and what he wanted to do was to prove that a large multi-engine plane carrying a number of people could fly from New York to Paris. It didn't necessarily have to be first, he certainly would have wanted to be first. I don't think he would have turned down the opportunity to be the first, one of the first men to fly from New York to Paris, but that wasn't his objective. His objective was a larger one. It wasn't the stunt of getting there first. It was to demonstrate the feasibility of large heavier than air craft, to provide the foundations of international air travel that would, in effect, transform international life, which of course it has. 

Byrd's First Antarctic Expedition

Q: How big was Byrd's first Antarctic expedition?
LR: Well, it was very large. Byrd's private Antarctic expeditions, first of all, were the largest mounted to that time. They required an enormous amount of logistical planning. He had to balance out the, his own needs and desires to explore Antarctica by aviation and above all to make the spectacular flight down to the South Pole with his publicly professed commitment to science to bring good scientists down there and so on. He had to balance off his inclination to test new technologies. In this particular case the internal combustion engine, not only on airplanes, but on tractors and so on, with the need to maintain tried and true means of transportation, that is to say dog teams and so on. So it was a tremendous undertaking and for a man who had never been there before, I mean most people who went down to Antarctica, many of them had been juniors on earlier expeditions and so on. They had some idea of, some acquaintance, some relationship with the place. They had gotten their feet wet as it were, before they went down there. Here Byrd says, well, I'm going to go down to Antarctica which is 10,000 miles away and I've never seen the place before, and by the way I'm taking tractors and scientists and airplanes and so on. It was a breathtaking means of exploration. 

Q: What was unique about this expedition? What was he trying to do for the first time?
LR: Well, no other people had wintered over before. Scott had wintered over and a lot of other people had wintered over. What was unique about this expedition was that he was going to be using advanced technologies, industrial technologies, the tractor, but particularly the airplane to see more of Antarctica than had ever been seen before. The glory of the airplane is that it's a moving balcony. So your perspective is immeasurably broadened and deepened by what you can see from the air. You can just do an enormous amount more. And this was again, much of the promise of the first Byrd expedition was that you were going to bring back and, and really begin to fill in the outlines of what was down there. 

Conditions at Advance Base

Q: What happens to men when they're living in such cramped conditions?
LR: Well, there's a number of strains. There is the strain, first and foremost of being absolutely isolated and cut off. And this is something that modern day scientists in Antarctica and the Arctic just really can't recapture. At a time when if you have an emergency at the South Pole station in the middle of the winter, you can fly in a plane from New Zealand to Med-evac somebody out and so on. When you have one winter flight in. When you have VCR's, when you have well-stocked kitchens and so on. It's very difficult to throw your mind back to a time when men lived in very crude wooden huts, in bunk rooms with five or six people there, as Byrd and other people have indicated, every little human irritation from how you cut your eggs in the morning to how you smoke your pipe with it, with a raspy bowl and so on, it begins to grate on people's nerves. And you have to really have a tremendous sense of self-discipline to be able to live with a, with a very large group over a very long period of time. Then beyond that is, and Larry Gould and some other people have claimed that it didn't bother them, but other people it clearly did bother, was this long period of darkness. You are deprived of light. The only light you have is the artificial light that you bring with you. So here you are, you're stuck down here in the middle of an absolutely inhospitable, stormy continent with no means of rescue should something go wrong. No assurance that the pack ice the next year is going to be loose enough so that you're little wooden ships and, and iron sheathed ships are going to be able to get in and even rescue you. So you have no idea when you're going home. And you have to live with these guys whom you have been thrown together with at the last moment. So the strains are tremendous. 

Byrd's Fear of Flying

Q: OK What about the story of Byrd's fear of flying?
LR: Dick Byrd was afraid of flying. I've talked to people who were down with him on his second expedition in '33-'35 and also with him briefly in the U.S. Antarctic service expedition in '39 and '40. There's no two ways about it. He took a bottle along, took a flask along to steady his nerves. This is a guy, after all, as an aviation pioneer who had seen what an airplane crash could do to people. And he was a sensitive character. The sensitivity which allowed him, for example, to be a good leader of men and to bring large expeditions through to success, also gave him a hyperactive imagination as to what might happen when his planes went down. And he took incredibly daring risks, both in the North Pole and in the South Pole, and in flights around Antarctica. Some of these exploratory flights to the Rockefeller Mountains and so on. And occasionally it's clear that the strain and the stress got to him. When you consider the number of people who are still afraid of flying today in incredibly safe airplanes, his courage in getting up in a airplane when it really frightened him, is amazing. Again, I think it speaks very well of him that he did these things. 

The Controversy of the North Pole Flight

Q: What makes people suspicious that Byrd actually made it to the pole?
LR: Well, there was basically the time differential. He would have had to be in the air, given the speed that he was going, at least 16, maybe even 17 hours to have made it up to the North Pole. The problem is compounded by the fact which he readily admitted of a fuel leak that slowed the plane down even further. Now what he claimed was that favorable winds blew him, basically blew him back from the Pole at a lot faster than the indicated air speed. There's also a disappearance of records, the feeling that the National Geographic had covered up the failures in the flight. There's a growing consensus now that he certainly made a noble effort, but that he probably missed the Pole by anywhere from 75 to 150 miles. I tend, generally to assume that he probably got within about a 100, 120 miles of the Pole, and there's some feeling that he was high enough at the time so that he could look ahead and see where that mythical, kind of mythical or vague geographic point was, and satisfy himself that basically what he was seeing at the North Pole was what he was seeing right underneath him. There was nothing new about it. Though of course, Peary had supposedly and some people think that Cook had been there already. So there really wasn't anything new to see in the first place. But that he could satisfy himself that at least he had seen it.

Q: But you believe he thought he made it or was close enough? You're willing to give Byrd the benefit of the doubt?
LR: Yes, I think he thought he made it, or that he got so close that as I say he could look ahead and see. I certainly think and this is the most important part. I certainly think he made the good faith effort. I think it was a grueling flight. It was a dangerous flight. It was a gutsy thing to do, and ah, I think he ought to be, he, [stuttering] that ought to be appreciated. Whether he actually got to the geographic northern most point on the globe is another matter. I don't think he did. 

Q: With the documentation we have available to us now do you think we can ever prove for sure that he made it or didn't make it, or?
LR: No. I don't think you will ever know for certain. It's tantalizing, it's ambiguous. And the documentation we have at the moment is a series of rather discordant notes that anybody on a long and grueling flight would make. There are some erasures, but that's understandable too. Navigators make calculations and then they erase them and make other calculations depending on changes in drift and speed and direction and so on. So I don't think we're ever going to know. And to say Dick Byrd didn't make it to the pole or Dick Byrd did make it to the Pole, I think is too categorical. I don't think you can say that. 

The Second Antarctic Expedition

Q: Why was Byrd compelled to go back to Antarctica for the second expedition? 
LR: Well, the basic point I think is that first of all he felt for whatever forces drove him that he could not rest on his laurels. And the second point was, and he, he made this quote and it was quoted in his obituaries, that once having gone to Antarctica he was "pathetically desirous" of getting back. The Antarctic exerts that kind of a lure on a lot of people. It's a very strange, beautiful, wild place. And Byrd, nobody has described the Antarctic and its beauty and its treachery any better than Dick Byrd. His books are certainly well worth, and his articles are certainly well worth reading for that. What he wanted to do now was use advanced technologies of all kinds, centering around the internal combustion engine to really break down and unlock the secrets of Antarctica. He would use airplanes, he would use sledges, he would bring scientists down again. And he would find ways to continue to promote himself as a kind of intrepid explorer who did things and who took risks that nobody else would take.

Q: Why was Byrd compelled to go to Advance Base?
LR: Well, I think it's very difficult to really come up with any kind of categorical answers to why Dick Byrd decided that he wanted to man Advance Base alone. He obviously had been talking about it for several years. He approached a number of people with the idea and told him that of course they would be there with him. He, in "Alone", he makes this statement that he first thought about manning it with three people and then decided that that wasn't feasible. Then he thought about two but two of them would constantly be at each other's throats. So he finally decided that the only thing to do was to man this by himself. There was some minimal scientific value to it in the sense that the meterological conditions 123 miles down the Ross Ice Sheet ah, the Ross Ice Shelf would be different than they would, far more volatile sea ice conditions that you'd find at the edge of the, of the Ross Sea. But the question as to whether or not it was worth risking, one, a person's life to man a meterological station, and two, risk other people's lives in case that person had to be rescued, this, I think was something -- Byrd of course, states, and his stated opinion was that he wanted to get away from the hullabaloo. He had, for almost ten years exhausted himself mounting first the North Pole flight and then getting money for the transatlantic flight and then the first Byrd expedition, when he flew to the South Pole. And he was exhausted. And he wanted to get away to be by himself to replenish his spirit. And there is evidence, very strong evidence that Byrd did come away with this with an enhanced sense of spiritual peace and so on. After all, in 1940 he becomes head of the No Foreign Wars Committee, he's titular head, honorary chairman. But he obviously comes back from the ice, from his stay ah, alone with a heightened sense of kind of mystic peace and so on. So I think all of those elements were, were involved. 

Byrd's Ordeal at Advance Base

Q: What happens to Byrd at advance base physically and spiritually? And you talked about for the first time he lost control?
LR: I think what happened to Dick Byrd at Advance Base was something that he never anticipated. He basically was poisoned for a prolonged period of time by fumes, which he thought were coming from his stove, but in fact were coming from his generator ah, that he used to power his broadcasts and so on. He is very courageous, I think, in many ways in writing about his ordeal. He could have written about it in a much different way. He could have tried to pass himself off as this intrepid person who somehow perseveres. He makes it clear that he got very sick. At one point he said, he talks about kind of lying on his bunk fingering his, his clothing and I gained a little and lost a lot. He makes it clear that he went through a pretty terrible ordeal.

I think the other thing that, that was disturbing about advance base for Byrd was the fact that he lost control of the situation. He doesn't make this at all clear in "Alone." He fudges over this, but ah, there's evidence from other documentation that at one point at least he said, come quick. This was when the advance party was already out on the ice. But he was deteriorating very quickly. And I think it humiliated and embarrassed him that he had to ask for help. I mean this was, his whole persona had been of the person out on the cutting edge of adventure and the frontier, who really didn't need any help. Dick Byrd did it alone. Dick Byrd was, was the great hero. He didn't do it alone but he was the great hero. He had help. But he didn't have assistance. He really was able to orchestrate and control situations of great adventure. And this is his persona. He was the commander. Now all of a sudden he is obviously crippled, not only physically but mentally, by a problem that he cannot fix. He's driven to his bed. He is, at one point wakes up fingering his clothes and mumbling to himself. He writes that, I gained a little and lost a lot. That's a tremendous admission for somebody to make. And so I think he lost a great deal of confidence that he could control his adventures from that time on. Now "Alone" is an absolutely magnificent testimony to the endurance of the human spirit over great adversity. But running between the lines and not very far beneath the lines is this sense of a failure. And that is something that he had never really experienced before. Ah, frustration, yes, for example when he couldn't land in Paris because of the fog. But failure, no. 

The Conflict About Rescuing Byrd

Q: Can you tell me about the conflict at advance base about rescuing him?
LR: There was a big conflict at Little America over going down to get Dick Byrd and there were two reasons for it. First there was the question of whether or not Byrd was really ill. And because he, in effect, wanted to, as long as he possibly could, prevent his distress from being known, there was that question. Gee, is he really in that bad of shape. The second question led naturally, flowed naturally from the first. It's terribly dangerous. We're going to have to go down there in the middle of the polar night to rescue this guy. The only light that there was was moonlight, which of course when it was shining was incredibly bright. It lit up the polar landscape almost so you could read a newspaper. But when the moonlight wasn't there, when the moon was down or when there was cloud cover and so on, it was tremendously risky to go through those heavily crevassed areas to get to advance base. And a lot of people said, in effect, look, Dick Byrd's a great guy and so on, but he put himself in this situation. And hate to be brutal but better one guy die than four or five of us trying to go out after him. Harold June felt this way and others felt this way. And when you read over the record, and there were some very, very bitter discussions in Little America about this, you can come down on either side of the equation. And this is what led Dick Byrd's sense I think of embarrassment and humiliation because he was as aware of this as anybody else.

Admiral Byrd's Legacy

Q: Tell me what do you think Byrd's legacy was?
LR: Well, I think Dick Byrd really for all of the weaknesses and so on that are coming out, Dick Byrd remains a very great individual. And I think we have a tendency now to overestimate his weaknesses, to emphasize them, to prey on them, to be obsessed by them. He probably didn't get to the North Pole, he claimed, insisted that he saw mountain ranges before everybody else when in fact he hadn't. His last film, for example that he did for, in 1947, "The Secret Land," contains some awful stories that in fact didn't take place. But I think that Dick Byrd's legacy transcends that. For all of his fears, for all of his anxieties, he pushed himself to do great things, and he was legitimately and authentically one of the great aviation pioneers of this century. He was also, and he was justifiably proud of this, he never lost a man in the two expeditions that he commanded to the Antarctic. He, and this must be emphasized, the vast majority of those who went down with Dick Byrd either up to Spitzberger or down to the ice, spoke about him with great affection, with great respect, with enormous loyalty. He got the best out of just about everybody that went down with him. And I think he deserves to be remembered as one of the real pioneers of 20th century aviation, as one of the really great last explorers. He really was the last explorer in the sense that after he came back from Antarctica in '34, polar exploration for that time and indeed exploration in general went right over to governments. Never again would you have the individual person who went out and got the money, mustered the resources, got the people, took them down there, got them through the ice pack and was absolutely and completely responsible for them every time, from every moment from the time they cast off their lines in the United States to the time they came back and docked. And his achievements I think are very, very great. 

Q: Do you think that Byrd was ultimately a tragic figure, and why?
LR: Well, it's interesting. I think Byrd thought he was a tragic figure. He felt that he wasn't wanted anymore, though in fact if you look back on it the Navy did better than, than many of us thought that he had maintained his position as basically head of the new operation "Deep Freeze" in the '50s and he went down to the South Pole. But he -- in '56, and was supposed to go back in '57 just before he died. But he felt that the world had passed him by. They don't want me anymore, he would tell colleagues. I think he was much too hard on himself, as I think a lot of people who set enormously lofty goals for themselves are too hard on themselves. He never, I think, took time out to really appreciate what he had accomplished as an aviation and a polar pioneer. He was constantly swinging for the fences. He was one of these guys who, you know, ah, went out and batted in the bottom of the 10th, ahead 10 to 0. He, he couldn't stop. But in fact, he wasn't a tragic figure. He contributed an enormous amount to the aviation history and polar development of polar science, and polar exploration in the 20th century. He's a very significant character.