Rear Admiral Richard Evelyn Byrd Jr, A Sailor's Story
Rear Admiral Richard Evelyn Byrd Jr, A Sailor's Story
At Annapolis, Byrd was an accomplished athlete, playing football and competing in gymnastics, though a severe ankle injury, sustained during his academy years, would trouble him throughout his career. He graduated in 1912 and was commissioned into the United States Navy.
Byrd’s early sea duty included service aboard the USS Wyoming, where he earned his first award for valor by rescuing a sailor who had fallen overboard. Subsequent assignments aboard the USS Washington and USS Dolphin placed him in the Gulf of Mexico during the years preceding the Mexican Expedition. He later served aboard the USS Mayflower, where another ankle injury led to his medical retirement from active duty.
Byrd remained in the Naval Reserve and was assigned to the Rhode Island Naval Militia as an instructor and inspector. When the United States entered World War I, he returned to active duty, overseeing the militia’s mobilization before pursuing aviation training at Naval Air Station Pensacola. He graduated as a naval aviator in June 1918 and later commanded U.S. naval aviation forces in Halifax until the armistice in November.
Following the war, Byrd volunteered for, but ultimately did not fly, several transatlantic flight attempts. He was assigned to the ZR-2 mission but famously missed the train transporting the crew. The airship later broke apart over Hull, England, killing 44 of the 49 men aboard, an event that haunted Byrd for the rest of his life.
In the early 1920s, Byrd became one of the Navy’s leading voices in aviation. He helped establish a Naval Reserve air station near Boston and, in 1925, commanded the aviation unit supporting the Arctic expedition to Greenland. On May 9, 1926, he and Warrant Officer Floyd Bennett attempted a flight over the North Pole, remaining aloft for nearly 16 hours. For this achievement, though later scholarship suggests their navigation may have fallen just short, Byrd was awarded the Medal of Honor.
In 1927, Byrd competed for the Orteig Prize, though his aircraft crashed, and Lindbergh won. Byrd nevertheless completed a successful transatlantic flight on July 1, 1927, landing in Ver-sur-Mer when weather prevented a Paris landing. He later wrote on the future of commercial aviation for Popular Science.
Byrd’s greatest legacy came through polar exploration. Beginning in 1928, he led multiple Antarctic expeditions, achieving the first flight to the South Pole from the Ross Ice Shelf on November 28, 1929. During a later expedition in 1934, he spent months alone at a remote meteorological station known as Advance Base, nearly dying from carbon monoxide poisoning. He chronicled the ordeal in Alone, further cementing his reputation as both explorer and writer.
In 1939, Byrd returned to Antarctica with the United States Antarctic Service Expedition but departed early in 1940 for duty with the Office of the Chief of Naval Operations as the United States prepared for World War II. During the war, he inspected naval installations across the South Pacific and later served with the U.S. Strategic Bombing Survey. He was present in Tokyo Bay on September 2, 1945, when World War II formally ended.
Though he retired in October 1945, Byrd returned to Antarctica almost immediately as commander of Operation Highjump, one of the largest expeditions ever mounted on the continent. In 1955, he undertook a final journey south during Operation Deep Freeze, which helped establish a permanent American presence at McMurdo Station.
Rear Admiral Byrd was active throughout his life in the Explorers Club, the National Geographic Society, the American Legion, and several civic and fraternal organizations. He died in his sleep on March 11, 1957, and is buried at Arlington National Cemetery.
Rear Admiral Richard Evelyn Byrd Jr.’s career spanned continents, wars, and eras, marked not by ease but by endurance, curiosity, and a lifelong willingness to go where few others could.
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About the Author
a.d. elliott is a wanderer, photographer, and storyteller traveling through life
She shares her journeys at Take the Back Roads, explores new reads at Rite of Fancy, and highlights U.S. military biographies at Everyday Patriot.
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