ATLAS

UnofficialOMEGA-24-8-4Sheet 4 of 5 of the dossier Operation Highjump

Byrd's "secret diary"

A text of unknown origin, sold in pamphlets and books, that places a flight into the inner Earth in 1947.

Photograph of Rear Admiral Byrd, in the centre of a group of men, explaining a plan.
Rear Admiral Richard E. Byrd, centre, explaining a plan to fellow Operation Highjump members at the Little America IV camp, 1946-1947. Photograph by: US Navy, National Science Foundation · public domain · Wikimedia Commons

Summary

Alongside the battle stories sits a text presented as proof: the "secret diary" of Admiral Byrd. In its best-known form it describes a flight over the North Pole in 1947, during which unidentified craft take over his plane and bring him through an opening into a warm, green land where a "Master" warns humanity about nuclear weapons. A 2012 paperback edition offers a different geography, a flight beyond the South Pole into a lush valley. None of the sources that discuss the document give it a provenance. It surfaced decades after the events, sold as a mimeographed pamphlet in the 1970s by a Missouri-based group, after a 1959 book had already claimed that Byrd made a polar flight in 1947. A blogger who compared the text with other works says some passages repeat dialogue from the 1937 film Lost Horizon word for word. The timeline also clashes: Byrd was taking part in Operation Highjump in the south until late February 1947. The Ohio State University archives, which keep his papers, state that they contain no evidence of a flight into the Hollow Earth, and Jacques Vallée called the story of holes in the pole spurious. The diary documents a legend and its marketing, not an event.

Unconfirmed accounts

  1. Unofficial, unconfirmed

    A "secret diary" attributed to Byrd tells of a 1947 flight in which unidentified craft take control of his aircraft and carry him through an opening in the Earth to a warm land, where a "Master" warns of nuclear weapons.

  2. Unofficial, unconfirmed

    The text surfaced decades later: a Missouri-based group sold it as a mimeographed pamphlet in the 1970s, and a claim of a 1947 polar flight had already appeared in a 1959 book.

  3. Unofficial, unconfirmed

    A 2012 paperback edition presents the diary as "the long rumored 'missing' diary of Admiral Byrd" and now places the flight over the South Polar region, in a land "green and luxuriant", a version that differs from the North Pole pamphlet.

  4. Unofficial, unconfirmed

    A blogger who compared the text with other sources reports that portions of the diary match dialogue from the 1937 film Lost Horizon word for word, and concludes it is "a plagiary and a fraud".

Verified facts

  1. Verified fact

    In 1947, when the diary places Byrd's flight, he was taking part in Operation Highjump, which ran from August 1946 to late February 1947 in Antarctica.

    • Operation Highjump, Wikipedia
      Operation HIGHJUMP commenced 26 August 1946 and ended in late February 1947.
    • Richard E. Byrd, Wikipedia
      Byrd's fourth Antarctic expedition was code-named Operation Highjump.
  2. Verified fact

    The Ohio State University archives, which keep Byrd's papers, say they hold no evidence that he flew into the Hollow Earth, and its polar center describes such claims as having "no basis in evidence".

  3. Verified fact

    The researcher Jacques Vallée, in Confrontations, called the story of "holes in the pole" allegedly found by Byrd a "spurious story".

    • Richard E. Byrd, Wikipedia
      "spurious story" about "'holes in the pole' allegedly found by Admiral Byrd"