Word: balchen
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Dates: during 1927-1927
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Having bubbled over with affectionate excitement for Charles Augustus Lindbergh a month before, Paris last week settled down to a steady schedule of festive welcome for its second detachment of transatlantic air guests-Heroes Byrd, Acosta, Noville, Balchen, Chamberlin and Levine. The last two arrived from Berlin via Austria and Czechoslovakia in their Bellanca ship, Columbia. The first four arrived hollow-eyed and shaken after their fog-ridden cruise, anxious night and wet landing in the America. In Paris they had difficulty mixing sleep with hospitality and with their natural inclinations to make the most of a great moment...
...first night in Paris, Pilot Acosta, despite a broken collar bone, continued to pilot his comrades through an informal demonstration at Joseph Zelli's justly celebrated Montmartre night club. Lieutenant Noville, rough, ready and with gay French blood in him was perfectly at home. Blond, blocky Bernt Balchen did not come into his own until his fellow Scandinavians held a special Viking evening for him in the Quartier Latin. Newsgatherers made life hard for Hero Chamberlin by treating Hero Levine, politely yet distinctly, as a large black fly in the ointment. Mr. Levine was a civilian and owed...
Clarence D. Chamberlin, Mr. Levine's onetime employe, was no longer obliged by contract to pilot Mr. Levine and declined the latter's invitation to fly the Columbia home. Mr. Levine approached Lieut. Bernt Balchen, Byrd aide, and Sir Alan Cobham of England, but without success. Then it occurred to Mr. Levine that his homeward pilot might well be a Frenchman. He approached Pilot Pelletier D'Oisy, Paris-to-Tokyo aeronaut. He talked with one-legged Pilot Tarascon, who was to have flown the Atlantic last year with the late Pilot Coli. Finally, after long night sessions, he decided...
...Lieutenant Balchen piloted the America into the waves, as gently as possible. The impact hurled Commander Byrd, watching at his cabin window, into the sea. He saw Lieutenant Noville climbing out of another window, dazed and unable to hear his shouts. He swam to the cockpit, helped Lieutenant Balchen extricate himself from the wreckage. Everyone yelled for Bert Acosta-he was not in the cabin-but soon he appeared out of the dark waves. Two days later, a Paris surgeon discovered that Mr. Acosta had a fractured collarbone, the only serious injury of the crash...
...Lieut. Balchen, 28, the youngest member of the America's crew, was born in Tviet Hopedale, Norway, received his flying training at the Norwegian Naval Academy. It was he who suggested to Commander Byrd that he use skis instead of wheels on his polar plane. Lieut. Balchen came to the U. S. in 1926 to serve as test pilot and engineer in Anthony Fokker's company...