Show Me a Hero E-Book

Jeremy Scott

• Herausgeber: Biteback Publishing
• Kategorie: Abenteuer, Thriller, Horror
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2011

Seitenzahl: 390

Beschreibung

The 'Roaring Twenties' they called it: a fun time to be alive. The birth of a brave new world. The jazz age of Fords, flappers, prohibition and bathtub gin. The movies, radio and consumerism have redefined the American dream; this is the dawn of our modern era. The machine is the future and supreme among machines is the aeroplane. The aeroplane - speed, glamour, communication - is the emblem of the Now. And a race is on to be the first to fly to the North Pole ... a perilous feat at the extreme edge of technological possibility in the primitive aircraft of the day. The main contestant: Roald Amundsen, who trudged first to the South Pole fourteen years before but is now fifty-two, bankrupt and tarnished. His principal competitor: Richard Byrd, Annapolis graduate and well-connected Virginian swell. To be the first to achieve the Pole would mean glory to one's country, reward and worldwide fame. To fail, once in the air, would mean almost certain death.

Leseprobe

For Ramage, who dependably has rubbished nine out of ten of my ideas but nevertheless provided sound editorial advice over the course of two decades and invariably ended up paying for lunch.

CONTENTS

Title Page

Dedication

Epigraph

1. LEADING MAN

2. CUE THE OLD CONTENDER

3. THE BACKER

4. ANGELS WANTED

5. STAGECRAFT

6. TRY-OUT

7. THE FINE ART OF UPSTAGING

8. THE SHOW FOLDS

9. FAT EXTRA BRINGS DOWN THE CURTAIN

10. ENTER FOOL

11. NEW SHOW OPENS TO ACCLAIM

12. BACKING LOOKS SHAKY

13. CHARADE

14. THE RIVALS MEET ON STAGE

15. FIRST POSITIONS

16. TRIUMPH AND APPLAUSE

17. OPERA BUFFO

18. STRAIGHT MAN SWITCHES CAST

19. FOOL STEALS THE SHOW

20. STANDING OVATION

21. LEADING MAN ASSUMES NEW PART

22. RE-ENTER FOOL

23. THE OLD CONTENDER MAKES A COMEBACK

24. RESUME ICE

25. EXIT OLD STAGER

26. EXIT FOOL PURSUED BY JEERS

27. STAR TURN

28. SUPPORTING PLAYER SEEKS LEAD ROLE

29. STRAIGHT MAN REBELS

30. HERO’S SOLILOQUY

31. FINAL ACT

32. CURTAIN CALL

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

BIBLIOGRAPHY

INDEX

Plates

Copyright

Show me a hero and I will write you a tragedy.

F. Scott Fitzgerald. Notebooks

The bad end unhappily, the good unluckily. That is what tragedy means.

Tom Stoppard

1. LEADING MAN

The blizzard that roared down from the Appalachian mountains the day before blew out to sea during the night and by dawn the eastern sky is pink and clear. Now the sun, reflected by the canopy of snow covering the Academy’s campus, strikes through the high windows to cast a grid of brilliant light across the floor of the gymnasium, where a handful of Naval cadets are hoisting weights, practising on the vaulting horse, or training on the trapeze and rings which hang on long cords from the roof. Caught in one of these bright dusty beams and framed within it as by a spotlight, a young man stands motionless with face uplifted to the blaze.

Unconsciously theatrical, the stance is very flattering; he could be upon a stage. Graced by health and fitness he can carry off the noble pose, for he is uncommonly handsome, with firm chin and a full head of close-cropped dark hair. It’s the sort of profile you might see on a Roman coin – indeed twenty years later it will figure on a national medal. Caught in that ray of sun, his face is tilted to watch the gymnast currently performing on the high rings while he waits his own turn to use them. We can make a guess at the period of this sunlit youth from the way he’s dressed in narrow shorts and a close-fitting singlet of a cut not seen today; it elongates the line of the torso, and the erect way he holds himself gives the impression he’s taller than he is. Perhaps he’s aware of this.

As the gymnast on the rings completes his exercise and drops to land on the mat, our man moves into position and makes ready. The feat he is about to attempt is original, devised by himself. Though he has rehearsed the choreography, he has not till now linked its moves in a single continuous routine as he now intends. Nor has any member of the college team of which he is the captain, although they have tried. By virtue of long hours spent in practice he has become a better gymnast than the rest, and to bring off this manoeuvre means much to him. He is ambitious to excel – in this, at Annapolis, in life.

He crouches and springs to grasp the rings, hanging there for a moment before hingeing his body forward at the waist to swing into the movement. This is an intricate stunt he is essaying. It will start with a full somersault, followed by a second then a third, but – and this is the crucial move – as his feet swing upward in this third revolution he lets go to alter his grasp upon the rings, and pose dramatically weightless at the summit of his arc… before rolling forward to land gracefully upon the mat below.

He swings into action… completes the first and second revolution, then swoops up into the third. Momentarily the impetus of his body-mass is upward and in this brief gravity-defying instant he releases the rings to change his grasp. One hand connects… the other blunders against the metal, knocking it aside. His body tilts, the sudden drop wrenches his grip from the ring. He falls off-balance, slanted to the side, hits the mat, crumples and goes down, his face a mask of shock. Those near him hear the crack as bones in his foot snap on the impact.

The next glimpse of our hero, Richard Byrd, is four years later beneath stormy skies on an autumn day whose blustery squalls are salted with the briny tide-smells of the estuary and whiff of coal smoke from the passing river traffic. Wearing the double-breasted gold-buttoned uniform of a Naval ensign, he is standing a half-pace behind his ship’s captain among a knot of others at the head of the gangway of the presidential steam yacht Mayflower, waiting to greet the First Executive as he comes on board.

Although he is the youngest and shortest of the handful of officers clustered on deck, and despite the fact that uniforms impose conformity, there is something about Byrd that draws the eye. He is not overawed by the present situation; the importance of the man about to arrive does not unsettle him. True, it is not every day he gets to meet the President, Woodrow Wilson, but this milieu is part of his natural habitat and has been so since infancy. His older brother is a senator; both his mother and father (a state legislator) come from first families of Virginia. A Byrd founded the town of Richmond, another settled the James River estuary, building a palatial colonial house by a plantation employing over a thousand slaves. Wealth and privilege are familiar to Richard Byrd, he has been raised in the family tradition of leadership and public service. That is his heritage and he is aware that he too is expected to achieve eminence; he expects it of himself. We know from our earlier glance at him that he is ambitious, but in the years that have passed since that sighting the seed of ambition lodged within him has hardened, developed sharp edges and grown obdurate. It is not wholly fanciful to compare it to a tumour – as yet undiagnosed and non-malignant, but exerting a pressure which is always there. It is not a desire for wealth, property or possessions which drives him but another yet more consuming motivation. He wants to make a name for himself, familiar to the world. What he craves is nothing less than fame.

When asked what heroes risk their lives for, Achilles answered ‘Fame’. And Richard Byrd is to do the same. Nor is his situation in any way unusual – since prehistory, men and women have been drawn to celebrity’s alluring glow. Yet Byrd’s situation is singular, for at this particular moment in the pre-dawn of mass media with its demand for ‘personalities’, the nature of fame is about to change. Its value will appreciate as the desire for celebrity morphs from wistful longing into craving… finally to obsession. Fame is on its way to becoming what it is today, arguably the most significant driving force in our society. Up there with love, fear, anger and envy among the dominant emotions is a hunger for celebrity.

But this unworthy craving is something Byrd most certainly would not admit to, even to himself. He is no fool, and already preternaturally aware of image. Yet – aged twenty-two, as he stands on the deck of the Mayflower awaiting the President – he has a problem in regard to fame: he lacks an opening. The peacetime Navy provides few opportunities for glory to a junior ensign in its service. This is 1914 and America has not yet become involved in the First World War. Nevertheless Byrd has seen action in Haiti and Santo Domingo. When the US intervened to put down revolution threatening its interests in the Caribbean. He has already proved his courage by saving the lives of two men from drowning. He has shown form in a career which has led to this plum posting on the presidential yacht – although the position is due more to a favour President Wilson owed to Byrd’s father, an influential supporter in Virginia. Still, it is a prestigious job our man is filling, and appropriately he has just married a woman with a Southern pedigree matching his own, whose political connections will be an asset to his career. Observing Byrd today on the Mayflower you would conclude that for someone who wants to become famous in an action adventure role he is in as good a position as any to go for it. Except for one defect…

On the quay below, a stately automobile, followed by another, comes into sight from behind the dockyard buildings to pull up at the gangway. The driver springs out to open the rear door and President Wilson descends carefully onto the cobbled pier. A spare dignified figure in cutaway coat and top hat, he waits for two others similarly dressed to emerge from the vehicle, then moves to the gangway. The President’s stern Puritan face remains expressionless as he mounts it slowly, steadying himself with a hand on the rail.

Aboard the ship sounds the shrill whistle of the bosun’s pipe. The officers at the gang head snap to attention, the Captain comes to the salute. The President lifts his hat in acknowledgement as he steps on board… then follow handshakes accompanied by a slight inclination of the waist, goodwill all round with instinctive deference, a word or two, and now it is Ensign Byrd’s assigned duty to guide the presidential party to their quarters… where in the privacy of his cabin the great man will unbend sufficiently to favour Byrd with what serves for a smile on that grim visage and ask kindly about his father… but that will be in a few minutes when they are below, just now on deck this is still a public setting. The Captain nods at Byrd, and he starts off ahead to lead them to their cabins. A couple of yards in front of the presidential party he steps across the deck… and we realise with a sense of shock that he is crippled: he walks with a limp. Our hero is flawed.

It was a severe disability. That accident in the gymnasium had dislocated Byrd’s ankle and broken two bones in his foot. Then on his first assignment at sea he’d broken it again. An operation in Washington fixed the bones with a metal pin but the fracture did not join properly. He trained himself to walk again through a relentless regimen of exercise, overcoming the pain it caused him, yet the limp remained impossible to disguise. It raised questions about his fitness for duty at sea. He refuted his superiors’ doubts through his ability to command and organise his men. But the questions remained.

The limp was slight but it was a grave handicap. If he was unable to pass physically A1 at his yearly medicals it restricted his promotion in the Navy. In the world conflict now threatening to involve the US he would not be permitted to serve aboard a fighting warship. No doubt he could obtain a desk job in Washington, but he could never rise far in it. When his classmates became captains of their own ships he would still remain a lieutenant. And what possibilities for action or glory in such a deskbound occupation? What chance for fame?

In 1916 Byrd retired from the active duty list because of his disability. The Navy was good to him. He was made up in rank and given the job of lieutenant in charge of setting up a Naval militia on Rhode Island. He completed the assignment very capably while attending courses in commerce and economics at Harvard graduate school. He was then given precisely the sort of job he dreaded at the Bureau of Naval Personnel in Washington. There he was due to live with his wife Marie – plus now a son – in a pleasant rented house in Georgetown. He would leave it each morning at the same hour, pass the working day making out forms shuffling servicemen from one posting to another, and return home at four o’clock. Every evening he and Marie would attend a party – Naval, military or political in cast – where the male guests would be careful not to drink excessively and the wives not to put a foot wrong. Life would be sociable, civilised, orderly – and stultifying.

He took the job because what else? But he did everything possible to escape from it. He applied for sea duty and was rejected due to the limp. He lobbied to be assigned to US Naval forces in the Mediterranean – and was refused. Though his marriage was good, this was a dismal time for him. Outwardly his manner remained faultless but within was bleakness and frustration. He lost a stone in weight.

Then came enlightenment. The solution to his impediment was already there, and it lay in the air. He applied to train as a Naval aviation cadet. It meant pulling strings because of his medical category but he had not wasted his time in Washington at those innumerable parties; he had already laid down a network of contacts which would prove invaluable, now and in the future. Leaving his family in Georgetown, Byrd travelled south to report to the Pensacola Naval Air Station in Florida. It was a decisive move, the first step of a series that would lead him upward to the stars. He had elevated his crippled being into another element, he had no need to limp if he could fly.

The Wright brothers had made the first flight thirteen years before, in a machine more like a box kite on bicycle wheels than anything resembling an aeroplane. That flight had covered only 260 metres and lasted less than a minute. The newspapers and public had greeted the event with wonder and applause, it was seen as a marvellous stunt, but that this was an invention to alter the nature of warfare and the shape of the future went largely unrecognised by the Army and Navy chiefs and those in government. And by big business. No powerful backers came knocking on the Wright brothers’ door with offers to develop their precarious contraption. As a result aircraft design in the US had advanced remarkably little in the interim.

In Europe the invention had been taken up with greater enthusiasm. France and Britain were already ahead in the infant science of aeronautics. The planes being built at that period were so primitive one marvels such clumsy structures managed to stay aloft at all – which frequently they didn’t. To date the flying machine had thrilled spectators at displays, dependably supplied newspapers with a steady stream of disasters, in warfare provided an alternative to balloons for artillery observation, and served to promote alarm among enemy forces – though inflicting negligible damage – by dropping crude bombs which the pilot hurled overboard from his open cockpit. Neither in a civil nor a military context had the aeroplane proved itself any real use.

The seaplane in which Byrd learned to fly was built of wood with twin canvas-covered wings. Fitted with a single motor, it had a large pontoon grafted to its underbelly which resembled a flat-bottomed punt. Small floats on the wings kept their tips from dipping into the water as the machine lumbered into the air and while landing. Cruising speed was 80 mph. Instructor and student pilot sat in open cockpits, each equipped with a set of controls operating power, ailerons, and rudder worked by foot pedals. The noise of the engine was deafening, communication accomplished only by shouting down a makeshift tube.

Byrd was quick to master the skill of flying; he was a dexterous, highly capable if never an instinctive pilot. But he was swift to get to know a plane, to understand what it could do together with its particular weaknesses and limitations. After obtaining his pilot’s wings, which he did without difficulty, he remained at Pensacola as an instructor and had opportunity to study these limitations more closely.

Take-off and landing were when most accidents took place – almost always due to pilot error – but the greatest problem to flight at this time lay in knowing where you were once you were airborne. In cloud or out of sight of land a pilot was lost. Struggling to operate a sextant in an open cockpit and making the necessary calculations on a pad strapped to his thigh while controlling the unstable aircraft with one hand was a haphazard operation at best. And the magnetic compass on the instrument panel was wildly unreliable, for the needle was affected by the iron mass of the engine only feet away.

Byrd applied himself to the task of simplifying the methods a pilot employed to determine his position at any given moment. He possessed a practical systematic brain which he focused on finding a solution. His duties at the air station, where he was now second-in-command, were relatively undemanding. He handled his share of trainee pilots and assisted in the management of the base, but he could be through with work by late afternoon. Parties at this subtropical outpost were few. He was free to spend the evenings on his project. Occupying a bachelor’s room and working at night, in the space of a few months Byrd designed three new flying instruments. One was an adapted slide-rule, simplified by removal of all but the figures required for the specific calculation, and enlarging these markings so they could be read more clearly and swiftly. Another device was a sun compass; the third a bubble sextant which utilised the same principle as a spirit-level to provide an artificial horizon if the real one was obscured. Skilled machinists were at hand on the base and he had them construct prototypes. For an amateur inventor working alone (though there were no specialists in this new field) and moreover a man uneducated in higher mathematics, it was a remarkable accomplishment. With these tools a pilot could navigate blind for the first time, but Byrd needed to prove this to the Navy board for his inventions to be taken up.

In 1918, a year which would end with the Armistice, a new giant Curtiss seaplane was under construction in the US. The NC-1 would have twin wings with a span of 126 feet and be powered by four 400 horsepower Liberty engines delivering a top speed of 85 mph. Requiring a crew of five, it was capable of carrying a substantial bomb load – or, alternatively, additional fuel tanks to increase its flying range. It was the first of the series of giant bombers the US would adopt as their main strategic weapon to this day. When Byrd first learned of the NC-1 he dared to dream the dream: he would fly it over the Atlantic, employing his instruments to make the first America– Europe intercontinental crossing.

Byrd’s heroic fantasy was hugely presumptuous; he’d qualified as a pilot only a year before. Yet during that year he had flown almost every day. Experienced pilots were few, and in the infancy of this new profession he was adept as any. Still, he was only a lieutenant and, due to his medical condition, on the active list only under sufferance. He knew himself this was a brazen ambition, one which could only be achieved by enlisting powerful allies.

Brought up in a family long involved in politics, Byrd knew the value of string-pulling, and he possessed a talent for promotion exactly suited to the times. The expense of this project, and the truly stupendous cost of his later expeditions, would all be met through superlative promotion. His imagination was attuned to the popular mind, he understood what the public wanted; bread did not concern him but he knew about circuses. And he possessed an instinctive skill for another modern art, an art so new it didn’t yet have a name but would come to be called ‘public relations’.

The former football coach at Yale University, Walter Camp, was a national celebrity at this time. Middle-aged, gung-ho and forceful as a pit bull, he regularly exhorted America to get into shape and kick ass. He’d devised a physical fitness programme taken up by many across the country. He’d been a famous figure for years and had contacts with many influential people. Byrd approached him with a proposition. He argued that it must be an American pilot and aircraft that first flew the Atlantic. America was an also-ran in aviation and needed to restore her prestige. Explaining that he was preparing a scheme to put to the Navy, he invited Camp to join him in the project. In return he’d announce to the press that he and the crew were training for the arduous flight on Camp’s fitness programme and dietary regimen.

Camp responded warmly to the idea. Not only did it provide publicity for the product he was peddling, but it was the sort of macho endeavour that exactly fitted his own public image. But he, like Byrd, realised the magnitude of what they were proposing. It so happened that among the people Camp knew was the famous explorer Admiral Peary, and he suggested to Byrd they bring him on board to strengthen their team. Peary had been a childhood role model to Byrd; in 1909 he’d been the first to reach the North Pole. Now in his mid-sixties and long retired from the Navy, he enjoyed a legendary reputation, somewhat, however, tainted by the claim of his former associate Frederick Cook to have got there the year before him. In the light of Byrd’s later questionable adventures around the Pole, it is ironic he should have hit upon Peary as exemplar in the role.

Camp and Peary set up a meeting with the Secretary of the Navy. It must have cost Byrd blood not to attend it himself, but it was wise not to do so. He was already mistrusted by his senior officers; he was known to have political connections and to have pulled strings to secure his posting aboard the presidential yacht. There is nothing that Naval brass dislikes more than to be leaned on by politicians, and to learn that this upstart junior had engineered a personal meeting with the Naval Secretary would have united them in cutting him down to size. So Byrd’s proposal was made strictly through the proper channels. He presented it to his commander at Pensacola, who endorsed the plan and passed it on to Washington for consideration.

The US was now involved in the war in Europe and American pilots were flying primitive warplanes in France, but all of these were European models; not a single American plane reached France in time to engage in combat. The Flying Corps – existing only as a subordinate, unrespected arm of the Navy – had accomplished nothing to date, and the first crossing of the Atlantic would furnish it with validity, even distinction. The admirals on the Navy Board were aware of the Naval Secretary’s wish that the flight should take place but were concerned about the public reaction if it proved a disaster. Failure would reflect upon the Navy. Aerial navigation was an unproved science, and one in which they had no confidence. The Board ruled that, for an American plane to attempt the crossing to Europe, it would be necessary to station picket ships at fifty-mile intervals along its course to provide route markers – and rescue if necessary.

Byrd was exasperated when he learned of the judgement. The Navy was engaged in a war, and it was clearly out of the question to deploy fifty vessels in line across the Atlantic. He realised the Board was stalling in a manner designed not to antagonise the Secretary, a way of avoiding a decision. But his proposal did produce one unlooked-for reaction. He received orders to leave Pensacola, move at once to Halifax, Nova Scotia, and set up a Naval station and refuelling depot on the north Atlantic seaboard. He did not understand what this signified. Had his covert lobbying become known and his punishment was exile? Alternatively, Nova Scotia was the nearest spot to Europe and the logical start-point for a transatlantic crossing. Whichever the Naval Board’s intention, he did as ordered. He requisitioned the materiel and equipment necessary together with two seaplanes, had the lot loaded into railroad boxcars, embraced his wife and entrained with his party for Nova Scotia. Once there, his team had the station constructed and habitable in just three days. Byrd chose good men to work with him, then and later. Mistrusted by his superiors, disliked or resented by many fellow officers, his men were devoted to him. And he to them, it must be added. Never matey with those under his authority, he was always conscious of their welfare. He was a fine leader who commanded affection and respect – and got results.

Very soon the station was operational with both planes flying submarine patrols. It was stocked with gasoline, sufficient not just for their own uses but enough to service several of the huge Curtiss seaplanes now in existence. Meanwhile Byrd saw to his instruments and made ready to pilot a flight across the Atlantic. And then in November came the Armistice. The war was ended.

Byrd was ordered back to Washington to await reassignment. There the pleasure of homecoming was ruined by news that a first air-crossing of the Atlantic was about to start. On 16 May 1919 three Curtiss flying boats took off from Byrd’s station at Halifax, on a course for Europe. NC-1 and NC-3 both developed engine trouble and made forced landings in the sea. The NC-4 reached the Azores, where the plane was delayed for nine days by bad weather. It then completed the second leg of the flight to Lisbon. The transit was not non-stop, yet it was the first crossing of the Atlantic ocean by air and it proved the effectiveness and reliability of the new instruments used to navigate the course.

But their inventor Richard Byrd had been elbowed off the flight. It was a bitter, crushing blow.

With the end of the First World War the two fighting services, Army and Navy, settled back into their normal peacetime activity of fighting each other.

Not everyone in high command shared the Navy Board’s belief that the aeroplane was a weapon of limited usefulness. General Mitchell of the Army, a colourful personality who had made a name for himself in the war, set out to steal the Flying Corps, bypassing his seniors to go directly to Congress with the proposal of creating a national air force under his own command. In high indignation the Navy Board saw someone trying to make off with their toy and in standard infantile reaction protested that they wanted it themselves.

Byrd had enemies on the Navy Board; he’d got up the nose of more than one of the admirals comprising it, but he had friends in Washington together with a network of contacts he’d kept warm during his exile in the wilderness. Washington was the capital of networking and his brother a member of the Senate, but Byrd already knew his way around. With three other pilot officers and the best legal and political advice he composed a draft bill to lay before Congress. It proposed the formation of a separate Bureau of Aeronautics in the Navy Department. He went the rounds, canvassing for support and backers. His was a known face on the circuit, he had a good service record, the Byrd sun compass and other of his inventions were by now standard equipment on long-distance flights, his case was convincing and he was an excellent salesman. He obtained the endorsement of Franklin D. Roosevelt and Naval Secretary Daniels. His indefatigable lobbying ensured the Bill’s passage through Congress, though when it reached the Senate General Mitchell did his best to scupper it. But Byrd had gained powerful supporters and it is testament to his political skills that the Bureau of Aeronautics Bill was passed in the Senate. The despised Flying Corps came of age, and it developed into an entity in its own right with its own command.

Byrd was a member of the Bureau from the start. It was a desk job unfitting for a man whose ambition was to be a national hero, yet his desk was sited in a strategic place from which to promote his own career if the opportunity offered. But now the nature of the game had changed. President Wilson had been voted out of office and replaced by a Republican, Warren Harding. The political and emotional climate of the nation had altered, shifted so radically it had become almost another country. For the first time in history, if not the last, America had lost its nerve and was running scared.

The Armistice had been greeted by an outburst of joy throughout the US. Men and women quit their offices to pour onto the streets and join spontaneous parades. They whooped, cheered and embraced one another, high on victory. Eight hundred Barnard College girls danced in a conga-line through Morningside Heights and couples behaved disgracefully in public places. In New York Fifth Avenue was solid with celebrants partying beneath a fluttering storm of 155 tons of ticker tape.

With peace, censorship was abolished, restrictions on electricity were lifted, Times Square and Broadway blazed bright again. But with defeat of the foreign enemy another enemy was revealed existing within America itself: Bolshevism. Imported into the US by immigrants, Bolshevism found ready support among workers who had been denied the right to strike during the war. Now they did. In cities and plants all over the country they laid down their tools and walked out. Their grievances were legitimate: hours of work were long, wages low and the cost of living had almost doubled in the last four years. They had been promised a better fairer world after the war was won – where was it?

Then in 1919 the Red Scare moved into a curiously modern phase. In his house in Washington, Attorney General Palmer had just gone to bed when there was a loud explosion outside his front door. On investigating, he found dismembered limbs and a headless male torso in a pool of gore on his doorstep. When the police came they further discovered torn scraps of a radical pamphlet. Another bomb, this time in a parcel, blew the hands off a black servant taking the mail to Senator Hardwick, an advocate of tight immigration controls.

The following year brought an outrage at the very heart of New York’s financial centre, where at the junction of Broad and Wall Street the Sub-Treasury Building stood beside the US Assay office. On the opposite side of the road was the headquarters of J.P. Morgan, the fount of world capitalism; beside it the Doric façade of the Exchange itself. On the morning of 16 September, a horse-drawn wagon loaded with barrels came down Wall Street toward the intersection. As it drew level with the house of Morgan it exploded with a giant roar. A huge flash of blue-white flame crashed against the street fronts, bursting the windows as it ballooned into the interior. A wall of smoke and dust billowed down the street in a storm of falling masonry, while from all around came the screaming of the wounded hid in the acrid smoke. The Exchange Building quaked in the blast. Those on the floor – where trading was brisk – felt it tremble beneath their feet, then the high windows shattered and the glass blew down on them in a storm of lethal hail. Among the carnage littered across Wall Street were the remains of a horse and splintered fragments of the dray, but the body of the driver was not recovered.

The effect upon the country resembled that of the twin towers. A security which men and women had taken for granted suddenly was no longer there and the world was another place. Very swiftly the Red Scare developed into one of those bouts of paranoid hysteria which periodically sweep America, from the Salem witch trials through McCarthyism in the 1950s to the present day. The journalist Guy Ernpey suggested that the tools for dealing with the Reds could be ‘found in any hardware store’. The wave of intolerance spread to affect anyone perceived to be less than 100 per cent American: Blacks, Jews, Catholics. One of Chicago’s bathing beaches on Lake Michigan was tacitly divided into two segregated areas. One hot summer afternoon a black boy who had gone swimming there was sprawled on a floating railroad tie thirty yards from shore. Perhaps asleep, he drifted slowly across the invisible frontier dividing black from white. Some white boys on the beach started to throw stones at him. He was seen to push off from the float and swim a few strokes before going under and disappearing from sight. A group of young black men swarmed onto the white beach to attack the stone-throwers. A general melée ensued in which no one was seriously hurt, but this was not so in the resulting race riots which raged through Chicago for a week. There were beatings, stabbings, shootings; homes and shops were torched, thousands rendered homeless and destitute.

Such then was the emotional climate in America at the time when Richard Byrd was seated in his office at the Bureau of Aeronautics trying to work out his personal destiny. The public mood was troubled by the economic recession still persisting three years after the war, poisoned further by the emergence of the Ku Klux Klan and the constraints of Prohibition. Yet, undeterred by the pessimism surrounding him, Byrd came up with an inspiring plan. He put forward a proposal to pilot an aircraft to Europe on a non-stop, solo, intercontinental flight. He argued that the US was so shamefully behind Britain and France in aeroplane design that American-built planes were regarded as obsolescent. It was inevitable that a European machine with a foreign pilot would soon succeed in a first Atlantic crossing, and the most technically advanced nation in the world was about to be publicly trumped. However the reason Byrd gave for attempting the flight was to prove that the navigational instruments he’d invented could be operated in flight by a solo pilot. A flyer could follow a precise course over the ocean to his destination without need of a navigator. Ostensibly this was no publicity stunt he was proposing but an all-American technological achievement.

The plane he intended to fly was a standard two-cockpit Curtiss biplane, currently in use by the Navy. It had a range of 1,850 miles, but if the navigator’s seat was replaced by an auxiliary fuel tank this distance could be increased by an additional 250 miles. These theoretical range limits were calculated for optimum weather conditions, and this could alter drastically in the course of the long flight. It was an alarmingly slim margin to bank on.

Byrd’s proposal was ratified by the Aeronautics Bureau and passed to the Chief of Naval Operations, who approved it. Byrd then took it to the Bureau of Navigation – with whom he was on excellent terms because of his instruments – and obtained its necessary agreement for the flight. With these endorsements he took it to the Secretary of the Navy.

But this was not the individual who had been schmoozed by old Admiral Peary and briefed on Byrd’s merits by Walter Camp. Another politician, Edwin Denby, now sat behind the desk in that well-upholstered office, and to him Byrd’s project looked to be nothing less than the reckless personal adventure that it was. Moreover one likely to end in ignominy when American pilot, American plane and American instruments crashed into the ocean and sank. These were not the headlines the government was looking for just now.

Byrd’s project was denied. Once again his path into a starry future was cut off.

Some men would have been crushed by having their dreams so brusquely erased and surely Byrd was disheartened. Yet many Naval officers would have been more than happy with his situation at the time. He enjoyed a Washington posting which enabled him to live at home with his wife and family, he had an important administrative job, and a salary plus living allowance appropriate for the Capitol. As the services scaled down to a peacetime level others had reason to envy the position he occupied.

The Byrds by now had three sons. His salary, together with Marie’s inheritance, allowed them to live a highly civilised life in Washington. As a senator Byrd’s brother provided access to the right circles, but family connections on both sides together with the contacts he had built up ensured the couple were invited regularly to those parties where it was propitious to be a guest. The job he was doing in the Bureau was valuable, but though it did not show to anyone except Marie, he was bitterly discontent.

His despondency was at odds with what had become a fast-rising mood in the US. Despite the continuing restraints of Prohibition the spirit in America had by now improved remarkably. President Harding’s administration, based on insider dealing, graft and corruption, coincided with a soaring economic recovery. From a smoke-filled room supplied with every known brand of whisky a group of Ohio pals lolling in armchairs with waistcoats unbuttoned ruled over a boom of prosperity such as never before had been seen in history. Everything came together to provide it at this time, but it was the machine that made it possible. ‘The Roaring Twenties’ was one of the names the period was known by, and louder than the strident frenzy of the era was the roar of the machine. Assembly lines and mass production made goods and luxuries available to all, while demand for them rose exponentially sputted by advertising. In America the sun had dispersed the clouds to shine upon a newly prosperous land where the tills were jingling merrily and the sound at night was jazz.

But Richard Byrd was impervious to the optimism enthusing almost everyone. His own future had been frustrated. He was desperately unhappy in his job; he wanted more, much more, and something very different from this. The Navy had failed him, he needed a sponsor. But a sponsor for what? It must be big; it must tap into public imagination, capture hearts and minds and open wallets. The drama had still to be chosen but he was prepared in his role. He had the looks to be a celebrity, he had the persona and the will for it, and he had working for him the imagery of flight, the fact that the aeroplane was the ultimate machine, the supreme symbol of the age. The aeroplane represented speed, glamour, risk and the cutting edge of modernity itself. Air races, stunt flying and record-breaking attempts were drawing crowds all over the country. Flight was fashion, women tied their scarves to resemble propellers, aviator caps were a style item, goggles a motoring accessory, even an aeroplane-shaped coffin was available. Skywriting – first used by Lucky Strike – had become a medium in itself. New Yorkers woke one morning to an airy message in puffy white script: Watch the clouds, Julian is arriving from the sky. Soon after, Hubert Fauntleroy Julian, the first black man to obtain a pilot’s licence, flung himself from a plane to land on 7th Avenue at 140 Street dressed in a scarlet Devil costume. Quite why was puzzling, but his image scooped the front page.

Byrd knew that his venture must be as far as possible from that sort of stunt, yet it had to capture public attention in the same way: it must make headlines. He determined to be the first man to fly to the North Pole. Today flying over the Pole is so commonplace it does not cause you to look away from the in-flight movie to glance at the void below, but then it represented the ultimate destination, the frozen summit of the world. The two Poles were the most inaccessible spots on earth. A flight to the North and back lay at the extreme edge of aeronautical technology. A historic feat, it was charged with as great a symbolism as, decades later, Man’s first landing on the moon. No question, if Byrd succeeded in getting there he would return a hero.

Very soon after hitting upon the idea Byrd realised the need to conceal it from possible sponsors. The motivation would be seen as personal and vainglorious and his objective must be masked behind a different plan. He was characteristically pragmatic in the way he approached the new project. To obtain private backing he needed first of all to improve the strength of his hand; only with good cards could he make a pitch for funds. Among the contacts he’d met through old Admiral Peary was Captain Bartlett, who had commanded Peary’s supply ship and subsequently sailed Naval vessels to the Arctic on survey expeditions. To him Byrd outlined his scheme, and did so with a becoming modesty toward the older and more experienced man. He was seeking advice, he explained, tentatively suggesting collaboration in an expedition. They would join forces to sail as far north as possible up the east coast of Canada until the ice halted their progress. From that point they would use the two aircraft they brought with them to fly probes into the two million square miles of unexplored frozen ocean lying to the north-west in search of unknown lands to claim for the US, together with all they might contain.

Bartlett had acquired a taste for Arctic explorations from his expeditions with Peary, and the idea of blank on the map and an unknown country waiting to be discovered touches a singular spring in the human heart. He was immediately enthused by Byrd’s project. He stood in good odour with the Navy and said he knew where he could get hold of a ship; Byrd showed more confidence than he felt in claiming that he could obtain aircraft from the same service. They began at once to refine their plan. As a team the two were credible. Bartlett’s track record combined with Byrd’s knowledge of flying in Nova Scotia furnished them with the necessary experience. By approaching the new Naval Secretary – no longer the man who had denied Byrd earlier – they stood a good chance of obtaining a ship and aeroplanes for free. What they didn’t have was money.

Edsel Ford’s office did not much resemble a place of work but looked more like the smoking room of a gentleman’s club – except that there was a strict No Smoking rule throughout the premises. This impression of ease and comfort was rudely shattered when the first-time visitor glanced from the windows, which looked out over the uniform roofs of the River Rouge assembly plant which stretched in parallel lines into the smoke-hazed industrial wilderness of downtown Detroit. The prospect was unmatched in its drabness and ugliness, but it was said that when Edsel’s father Henry looked at it he did not see the view but only the garden shed behind the house in Bagley Avenue where he’d built his first ‘quadricycle’ in 1896.

Edsel, a lean-faced dark-haired man of thirty-two, sat at the big library table where he held his meetings, which was spread with an open map, listening to his visitor Richard Byrd. It was rare for a stranger to penetrate this sanctum but Byrd’s letter had caused Edsel to receive him with curiosity and interest – as Byrd had been confident that it would. He’d done his research carefully and prepared his pitch to the known nature of the man and his circumstances. And Edsel’s circumstances were blessed. The company started by his father at the turn of the century was now producing more than half of America’s motor vehicles and had factories spread across the world. Ford had revolutionised the whole process of manufacture by the invention of the assembly line. In 1913 it had taken fourteen hours to assemble a car, one year later it took ninety-five minutes. By now in 1925 Ford was turning out a car every ten seconds across the globe. One in seven Americans owned a car; in this year alone twenty million new autos were registered in the US, three-quarters of them bought on the instalment plan. There were more cars in New York than all of Europe, and every other car in the world was a Ford. As a result of this demand Ford’s resources were larger than those of most countries. It owned coal and iron mines, forests, glass-making and steel plants, a railroad, a fleet of cargo ships and an immense rubber plantation in Brazil – all in order to control the supply and transportation of its raw materials; the privately owned corporation governed the entire cycle of manufacture from concept to finished product and had a surplus balance of $700 million ($8 billion in today’s money).

Edsel had become president of this stupendous kingdom only five years earlier, though he did not rule it absolutely, for Dad still came in to the plant every day. There were sometimes problems with such proximity. Edsel was industrious and capable, but to be born the son of a self-made millionaire, genius and living legend imposes a particular stress upon the psyche; the junior personality must struggle to make its mark.

Byrd’s pitch was well tuned for his potential sponsor, and he opened up to him a vista Edsel would not have stumbled upon himself. He spoke of the vast unknown, that gigantic two million square mile slab of unexplored territory which lay adjacent to North America and capped the globe in white. This frozen void might contain new lands, even an undiscovered continent, and if it did surely this must be claimed for the US. There was a strategic argument for possessing such adjacent territory as well as commercial. Who knew what gold, minerals and energy deposits might lie buried there? And was that enormous area all frozen. Or might volcanoes exist that warmed the ocean, permitting exposed soil and vegetation? Was life possible in some places? Could there be animal or even near-human creatures which, cut off from the rest of the world for millenia by endless plains of broken ice, had somehow adapted to the hostility of their environment to survive? The unknown is a bewitching concept, for its possibilities are boundless.

Byrd was a skilful salesman and his project was fitting for the times. Prosperity and optimism oxygenated the air that people breathed, and they enjoyed a higher standard of living than any populace had ever known. They shared a belief that tomorrow would be even better and the future was American. Byrd was a convincing persuader and his manner with Edsel, respectful without being deferential, was well judged. He spoke as man to man, not as a supplicant. Explaining his and Bartlett’s plans, he claimed he’d secured a ship for the expedition (which stretched the truth, though Bartlett had identified one) and that he was promised three aircraft by the Navy (which was an outright lie), but he knew how to paint a dream and make it live and the dream he painted held allure for Edsel. The idea of ‘new lands’ appealed to the spirit of monopolistic acquisition which informed the age. He, like all Americans, had pride in his country, he rejoiced in its can-do ethos; this was a time when patriotism was not a dirty word. Edsel saw honour in Byrd’s plans: prestige for the nation, for the Ford Corporation – not least for himself. So what did Byrd want from him, he asked.