On May 9, 1926, a small three-engine plane named the Josephine Ford lifted off from a snowy runway in Spitsbergen, Norway, and pointed its nose north. Inside were two Americans: pilot Floyd Bennett and Navy Commander Richard Byrd. Their mission was wild - fly more than 1,500 miles round trip across frozen ocean and reach a point no aircraft had ever flown over: the North Pole.
For about 15 and a half hours, the engines roared over endless white. Byrd squinted through a special sun-sighting instrument called a bubble sextant, checking their position. An oil leak appeared on one engine. Bennett wanted to land on the ice and fix it, but Byrd said no - if they stopped, they might never get going again. They kept flying. Byrd later reported they had circled the Pole and turned back. When they landed in Norway, crowds carried them on their shoulders. Byrd became an instant national hero, was promoted, and received the Medal of Honor.
In the years since, historians have studied Byrd's logbook and the math doesn't quite add up. Many experts now believe his plane probably didn't actually reach the Pole, perhaps falling short by 80 miles. Whether or not the first flight really happened that day, Byrd's expedition pushed the door wide open for polar aviation. Two years later he led the first flight over the South Pole, this time with much better proof. The Josephine Ford itself, named after the daughter of Byrd's millionaire backer Edsel Ford, still sits in a museum in Michigan today.
