After graduating, Richard E. Byrd immediately began his expeditions

After graduation, Richard E.Byrd’s expedition started immediately, which is one of these interesting facts about Richard E. Byrd. Byrd's desire to fly over the North Pole was sparked by his experience flying over glaciers and sea ice in western Greenland. Byrd and Floyd Bennett, flying from King's Bay in Spitsbergen, Norway, over the North Pole and back, completed what they claimed to be the first aviation flight over the North Pole on May 9, 1926. Except for an oil leak from the starboard engine of their Fokker trimotor aircraft, the flight, which lasted 15 and a half hours, was uneventful. They both received the American Congressional Medal of Honor for their accomplishment, making them both household names.

One of Byrd's early collaborators, Bernt Balchen, even asserted after Byrd's passing that the voyage to the North Pole had been a fake, so there was some doubt if their jet had reached the North Pole. Byrd's famous flight notebook, which was found in 1996, provided additional insight into this issue. According to Byrd's diary entries, he chose to turn around because he was worried about the oil leak when the aircraft was still approximately 150 miles (240 km) from the North Pole. (If this is the case, Roald Amundsen of Norway, Lincoln Ellsworth of the United States, and Umberto Nobile of Italy—who conducted a well-documented journey over the Pole in a dirigible three days after Byrd's mission—should receive credit for the first flight over the North Pole.)

Byrd was a bright man who understood that to participate in planned and difficult trips, he would need to raise money. For this reason, he approached wealthy investors to ask them to send him money; surprise, the majority of them agreed to take part in his journeys.