Seventy years ago, polar explorer and pioneer aviator Richard E. Byrd became the first to fly an airplane to the North Pole. Recently, Professor Raimund E. Goerler, Archivist of The Ohio State University and Chief Archivist for the Byrd Polar Research Center Archival Program made his own discovery: the diary maintained by Byrd during his flight to the North Pole on May 9, 1926.

The book contains 121 pages (76 on the North Pole, 8 on Byrd's Trans-Atlantic flight following Charles Lindbergh in 1927, and 37 on the Donald MacMillan Expedition to Greenland in 1925). One notable feature is that the cover of the diary states "1925." In fact, Byrd used blank pages in this book as a diary for the North Pole flight a year later and then for the Trans-Atlantic Flight of 1927. Only by opening the book and carefully reading pages was it clear that the work had extra-ordinary historical value for the controversial flight to the North Pole seventy years ago.

Byrd's flight to the North Pole was a pivotal event in his career. It made him a leader in aviation and in polar exploration as well as a national hero. Yet, this accomplishment also brought controversy that has continued to this day. Skeptics charged that Byrd did not reach the North Pole and even deliberately invented the accomplishment. One account is that his plane developed an oil leak and that Byrd and pilot Floyd Bennett only circled out-of-sight long enough to claim he had reached the North Pole without even attempting to reach it.

The diary is significant in several ways. First, it contains proof that Byrd thought he had reached the North Pole at the time of the flight. Byrd's notes to the pilot as recorded in the diary (the interior noise of the plane made oral communication difficult) provide instructions for steering and ultimately tell the pilot of their proximity to the North Pole until they reached it.

Second, the diary describes the preparations for the expeditions and includes observations of noteworthy explorers, Donald MacMillan and Roald Amundsen. In 1926, Amundsen, who had previously been the first to reach the South Pole in 1911, was also attempting a flight by airship to the North Pole at the same time and place as Byrd.

Third, the diary provides a first-hand account of the dangerous and adventure-filled flight of the America across the Atlantic in 1927, some forty days after the accomplishment of Charles Lindbergh. The plane crash landed near the coast of France because of terrible weather.

Richard E. Byrd was an internationally famous and historic figure in aviation and in polar exploration. After his Trans-Atlantic flight, Byrd organized two privately funded expeditions to Antarctica in 1928 and in 1933. He was the first to fly across the South Pole in 1929. During the second expedition, from 1933 to 1935 Byrd nearly died. Before his death in 1957, Admiral Byrd led three government-sponsored expeditions.

To many Americans, Byrd was a hero, a figure of almost mythic proportions. Poems and songs praised his accomplishments. People named children in his honor. A motion picture made of his first expedition to Antarctica became an award-winning film that has since been converted to video. His second expedition to Antarctica featured a life-threatening and solitary sojourn at a weather station in the interior which nearly ended his life. That experience Byrd turned into a popular book (Alone) in 1938 that has since been re-printed. In 1996 the Arts & Entertainment Channel will broadcast a documentary about in its "Biography" series. Another televised docu-drama based on Alone is being produced by the BBC and will be sold to public broadcasting in the United States.

The diary is part of an enormous (523 cubic feet) collection of historical materials documenting the life and career of Admiral Richard E. Byrd at The Ohio State University, which named its prestigious polar research center in his honor. In 1985 the first of the collection arrived in Columbus, Ohio and five years later a major addition appeared. From 1992 to 1994, a grant from the U.S. Department of Education (Title II-C, Strengthening Research Libraries) accelerated the laborious work of arranging and describing the correspondence, photographs, artifacts, and expeditionary records. A detailed and indexed guide to the Papers of Admiral Richard E. Byrd (617 pages) resulted.

The Byrd Polar Research Center plans to identify a suitable publisher for the creation and distribution of a facsimile copy of the diary.

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