A Chronology of
Admiral Byrd's Life
- 1888: October 25, birth at Winchester Va.
- 1908-12: United States Naval Academy.
- 1914: First flight in an airplane.
- 1916: Retired from active duty because of an injury
to his foot that prevented sustained duty at sea.
- 1916-17: Naval aviation cadet at Pensacola, Florida.
- 1925: August expedition to Greenland with Donald
MacMillan, financed by Edsel Ford and John D. Rockefeller, with planes from
Navy and Navy volunteers.
- 1926: May 9, flew the Fokker tri-motor plane
Josephine Ford from Spitzbergen with pilot Floyd Bennett and claimed
to have reached the North Pole. This expedition was privately financed
and made up of volunteers.
- 1927: June 29, Trans-Atlantic Flight of America,
a Fokker tri-motor commanded by Byrd reached France some thirty days after
Charles Lindbergh.
- 1928-30: Byrd Antarctic Expedition, privately
financed.
- 1929: With Bernt Balchen as the pilot, Byrd flies the Floyd Bennett, a Ford tri-motor airplane, across the South Pole.
- 1933-35: Second Byrd Antarctic Expedition,
privately financed.
- 1934: March to August, Byrd stays alone in a hut
some 120 miles from base to record weather and observe aurora. Rescued in
August from carbon-monoxide poisoning. His autobiographical account of
this ordeal, Alone, became a best seller.
- 1939-41: U.S. Antarctic Service expedition, led by
Byrd but government financed.
- 1946: Operation Highjump to Antarctica, involving
13 ships and 4,000 men, mostly U.S. Navy, with Byrd as "Officer in Charge,"
but not in command.
- 1955: Operation Deep Freeze to Antarctica to provide
logical preparations for the beginning of IGY 1957/58. Byrd was nominally
in command.
- 1957: March 11, death of Admiral Richard E. Byrd.