Byrd's Dogs

Dog-lovers were moved by the revelation of a hitherto unpublished story about the third Byrd expedition's escape from the Antarctic in 1941. Hemmed in by a closing ice pack, the 26 men at the Palmer Land camp had to risk an emergency flight out in their battered Condor plane. The plane could make only two trips, would be barely able to carry the men. What to do with their well-loved sled dogs?

Byrd's men made a hard decision. Of the 61 dogs, 34 were shot. But if the plane should crash on the second takeoff, the men would need dogs to help them try an escape over the ice. Reluctantly they buried three 50-lb. sticks of dynamite, under the snow, staked the 27 youngest and strongest dogs over the charges, attached to the dynamite an alarm clock rigged to close an electric circuit and set off the charges. It was set to go off three hours after the takeoff. The plane barely got off the ice. As they flew away, the last thing the men saw in the vast loneliness of snow and ice was the cheerful, upturned faces of their dogs, patiently crouched above the time bomb.

At the Chinook Kennels in New Hampshire, where Admiral Byrd got the sled dogs for his expeditions, there now stands a Byrd memorial: "To All Noble Dogs whose lives were given [in] Little America ... to further science and discovery."

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