31 Facts About Bernt Balchen

Bernt Balchen was a Norwegian pioneer polar aviator, navigator, aircraft mechanical engineer and military leader.

The son of a country doctor, Bernt Balchen was born at the farm Myren in Tveit, just outside Kristiansand, Norway.

Bernt Balchen transferred to the Norwegian Army, and was sent to an artillery school, where he graduated shortly after.

Under an assumed name, Bernt Balchen fought as a cavalryman with the White Guards in the Finnish Civil War that followed the end of major hostilities.

Bernt Balchen was very knowledgeable about wilderness and northern survival, skills that he would later exploit.

In 1926, under the sponsorship of Joseph Wanamaker, Bernt Balchen officially joined the Byrd party, as the co-pilot and navigator, with the pilot Floyd Bennett, flying the Josephine Ford on a tour to more than 50 American cities, thereby promoting commercial aviation as a safe, reliable and practical means of transportation.

Bernt Balchen flew the remaining eight hours, and he was paid $10,000 for the effort.

Bernt Balchen flew the Vega to the Fokker Aircraft Company plant at Hasbrouck Heights, New Jersey.

Later, he was part of a team to create a Nordic Postal Union, and as war seemed inevitable in Europe, Bernt Balchen helped negotiate an aviation treaty with the United States.

In 1939, Bernt Balchen was in Helsinki, working on a contract to provide US fighter aircraft to Finland, when the Soviet attack on Finland took place.

Bernt Balchen negotiated directly with Canadian government officials to obtain an agreement to use available airport facilities at the Toronto Island airport on Lake Ontario known as "Little Norway".

Arnold asked Bernt Balchen to join the US Army Air Forces as a colonel to oversee the establishment of the USAAF polar airfields at Qaanaaq, and Sondre Stromfjord Greenland.

Between September 1941 and November 1943, Bernt Balchen trained his personnel in cold weather survival skills and rescue techniques which enabled them to carry out many rescues of downed airmen on the Greenland icecap.

On 25 May 1943, flying in a Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress, Bernt Balchen led a bombing raid that destroyed the only German outpost remaining on Greenland, a forward station at Sabine Island on the eastern coast of that island.

Bernt Balchen then was posted to the European Theatre to run "Operation Where and When", based at Lulea-Kallax Air Base in northern Sweden.

Bernt Balchen commanded a clandestine air transport operation, using 10 Douglas C-47s and helped to set up an escape route between the United Kingdom and Sweden that enabled numerous important diplomats and others to flee the Nazis.

Between November 1944 and April 1945, Bernt Balchen transported 200 tons of Arctic equipment and operational supplies from England to Sweden that were used to make secret overland transport from Sweden to Norway possible.

The leading Norwegian wartime ace Sven Heglund was acting military attache and served with Bernt Balchen, later writing about his time at Kallax.

From November 1948 to January 1951, Bernt Balchen commanded the 10th Rescue Squadron of the US Air Force, which was located in southern Alaska but which operated across all of Alaska and northern Canada rescuing crashed airmen.

Bernt Balchen led this squadron in the development of the techniques that became widely used in cold weather search and rescues.

Bernt Balchen was directly responsible for persuading the US Air Force to purchase the de Havilland Canada DHC-2 Beaver bush aircraft, one that became an important search and rescue aircraft for the Arctic.

On 23 May 1949, while commanding the 10th Rescue Squadron, Bernt Balchen flew a Douglas C-54 Skymaster from Fairbanks, Alaska, via the North Pole to Thule Air Base, Greenland.

Bernt Balchen was primarily responsible for the pioneering and development of the strategic air base at Thule, Greenland, built secretly on his recommendation, in 1951 under severe weather conditions which, by extending the range of the Strategic Air Command, increased the capabilities that made the SAC a significant deterrent to Soviet aggression during the Cold War.

Bernt Balchen joined General Precision Laboratories as a consultant in 1959, as well as working with a host of other companies including Hughes Aircraft, General Dynamics, Canadair and the Electric Boat Company.

Colonel Bernt Balchen was among 27 passengers on board the first circumnavigation of the Earth over both poles.

Bernt Balchen was the only passenger allowed into the cockpit when the four pilots, who were all qualified Boeing 707 captains, performed four 360-degree loops over the South Geographic Pole.

Bernt Balchen was hired as a consultant by Hercules Oil, then Phillips Petroleum and Moran Towing on plans to extract oil from Alaska using pipelines.

Bernt Balchen was buried at the Arlington National Cemetery in Virginia.

Bernt Balchen is buried in Section 2, Grave 4969, next to Admiral Richard E Byrd.

Bernt Balchen received the Congressional Gold Medal in 1930 and the Harmon Trophy in 1956, both for his pioneering in aviation.

Bernt Balchen became honorary member of American Polar Society in 1966.