Richard Byrd's expedition to Antarctica
The experience of flying over sea ice and glaciers in western Greenland had fired Byrd with the ambition to fly over the North Pole. On May 9, 1926, Byrd, acting as navigator, and Floyd Bennett as pilot made what they claimed to be the first airplane journey over the North Pole, flying from King’s Bay, Spitsbergen, Norway, to the Pole and back. The flight lasted 151/2 hours, with no mishaps beyond an oil leak from the starboard engine of their Fokker trimotor airplane.
