Terror on the Ice- The Forgotten Arctic Disaster

Writing a book or a movie? Want to instantly communicate that your story takes place in an alternate reality? Just add zeppelins! More than any other form of transportation, rigid dirigible airships or zeppelins are emblematic of a bygone era of technology – and of a romantic, optimistic future that never was. From the flights of the first zeppelins at the turn of the 20th century, airships held the promise of long-distance air travel in comfort, style, and luxury unmatched by any conventional aircraft. But as we have already covered in our previous videos The Largely Forgotten Airship Disaster That Helped Kill the Cruise Ships of the Sky and The Real-Life Marvel-esque Flying Aircraft Carriers, this vision was not to be, as a series of tragic disasters culminating in the fiery 1937 demise of the Hindenburg revealed just how dangerous airships really were. The future of air travel belonged to the aeroplane. But passenger transport was not the only role envisioned for the airship. Naval planners wanted to use them as the eyes of the fleet, while explorers saw them as an ideal means of reaching far-flung, uncharted corners of the globe. But once again, a series of disasters plagued these undertakings; and few were more headline-grabbing at the time – or forgotten today – as a 1928 Italian attempt to reach the North Pole by air. This is the story of the ill-fated voyage of the airship Italia.

The lure of the mysterious Arctic has called to explorers for centuries, but it was not until April 6, 1909 that a team led by U.S. Navy commander Robert E. Peary finally succeeded in reaching the North Pole by foot and dogsled. But such expeditions barely scratched the surface of the Arctic; some 15.5 million square kilometres of frozen wasteland – nearly twice the area of the continental United States – remained unexplored. Speculation abounded as to what lay within that uncharted expanse. Peary claimed to have spotted an island among the pack ice, which he named Crocker Land after one of his patrons; perhaps an entire continent lay undiscovered just beyond the Arctic Circle. But covering such vast areas by foot or ship was painfully slow and potentially deadly; the Arctic, it was soon realized, was best explored from the air. But the primitive heavier-than-air craft of the 1910s had nowhere near the endurance and range to reach the Pole. Balloons and airships, however, just might.

It had been tried before – with disastrous results. In 1897, Swedish engineer Salomon Andrée, along with engineer Knut Fraenkel and photographer Nils Strindberg, attempted to reach the Pole in a free hydrogen balloon called the Örnen or “Eagle.” Lifting off on July 11, 1897 from Danes Island in the Svalbard Archipelago, the trio drifted off northwards and were never heard from again. It was not until 1930 that the remains of the expedition were discovered on Svalbard’s Kvitøya or White Island. According to diaries and photos recovered at the campsite, the trio flew for 475 kilometres until storm winds forced them down onto the pack ice. Packing their provisions into sledges, they trudged for nearly two months before reaching Kvitøya, where they soon died – likely of exhaustion, starvation, or carbon monoxide poisoning from a malfunctioning cookstove.

A decade later in 1909, American journalist Walter Wellman attempted to conquer the pole in a 50-metre long, 7,300 cubic metre airship dubbed the America. Setting off on August 15 from Danes Island with a crew of five, America made it 50 kilometres before a large piece of equipment suddenly broke off, causing the airship to rocket into the sky. The crew quickly vented hydrogen to bring the ship back down and returned to their tender ship. However, while being towed back to port, the America broke loose and exploded. To add insult to injury, Wellman soon learned that Robert Peary had just reached the pole by foot. The following year, Wellman attempted to use the America to make the first aerial crossing of the Atlantic. While the attempt was unsuccessful, with poor weather and various malfunctions forcing the crew to abandon ship, the flight is notable for performing history’s first recorded air-to-ground radio transmission: “Come and get this goddamn cat!” The message, sent by engineer Melvin Vaniman, concerned the airship’s cantankerous feline mascot, Kiddo – proving that whatever means of communication humans devise, they will inevitably use it to talk about cats…

It would be another decade and a half before a serious effort was made to reach the Arctic by air. This historic voyage was scheduled for the spring of 1924, and was to be flown by the United States Navy’s first rigid airship: the ZR 1 or U.S.S Shenandoah. Built by the Naval Aircraft Factory in Philadelphia and launched on August 20, 1923, Shenandoah was one of two rigid airships ordered by the Navy as long-range fleet scouts – the other being the R.38 built by Short Brothers in Cardington, England. The Navy had originally planned to commandeer two German military zeppelins as war reparations, but these craft were destroyed by their crews in an act of defiance. R.38, which was already under construction when the war ended, was thus adapted to U.S. Navy specifications. However, R.38 was designed as a so-called “height climber” which sacrificed weight structural strength in exchange for altitude. This made the airship dangerous to operate in the thicker air at lower altitudes, as the lightweight structure would not withstand the stronger aerodynamic forces. Indeed, alarming bending of the hull was noted during early flight trials, but this was ignored, and the trials themselves cut short in order to expedite delivery to the Americans. Then, on August 24, 1921, during an evaluation flight over the Humber estuary, the R.38’s pilot put the airship through a series of violent maneuvers at a speed of 100 kilometres an hour and an altitude of 750 meters.This proved too much for the airframe, which suddenly ripped in half. 77,000 square metres of hydrogen exploded, shattering windows on the mainland, and the flaming bow of the airship plunged into the Humber river. Only one survivor was pulled from the wreckage. Meanwhile, the stern descended more gently and landed on a sandbar, where four more men were rescued. Of the 17 Americans and 32 Britons aboard, only 1 and 4 survived the disaster, respectively.

Two years later on December 21, 1923, the crash of the R.38 was followed by another major disaster when the French airship Dixmude – a former war reparations German zeppelin – ran into a thunderstorm over the Mediterranean and exploded, killing all 50 men aboard. These incidents demonstrated not only the vulnerability of airships to strong winds and other aerodynamic forces, but also the danger of filling them with explosive hydrogen. Thankfully, the United States had a near monopoly on the only viable alternative: Helium, a byproduct of petroleum extraction refined in only a single plant in Fort Worth, Texas. But while significantly safer than Hydrogen, Helium had only 92.6% the lifting capacity and, at $120 per 1,000 cubic feet, cost nearly 40 times as much. Nonetheless, the U.S.S. Shenandoah was filled with an eye-watering $2.5 million of Helium – nearly $45 million today – in preparation for her anticipated Arctic flight. To help her along her way, a series of mooring masts would be erected across North America, with a final mast being mounted on a ship moored in the Arctic Ocean.

As a warm-up for the Arctic flight, in the fall of 1924 Shenandoah set off on an epic transcontinental flight that would take her from Lakehurst Naval Air Station, New Jersey – later the site of the infamous Hindenburg disaster – across the United States to California, then up the West coast to Washington State before returning back east to Lakehurst. Departing on October 7, 1924 under the command of Lieutenant Commander Zachary Landsdowne, Shenandoah returned on October 25, having completed the journey in 235 hours and 1 minute. It was the first time the North American continent had been traversed by air. By the time she returned to Lakehurst, Shenandoah was joined by her sister ship ZR 3 or U.S.S. Los Angeles, built by the Zeppelin Works in Friedrichshafen as a replacement for the ill-fated R.38. Unfortunately, there was only enough helium in the United States to fill one giant airship, so the lifting gas from Shenandoah was transferred into Los Angeles so she could perform her flight trials. And by the time Shenandoah flew again in the summer of 1925, her Arctic voyage had been scrapped as too expensive and risky. And it was just as well, for Shenandoah soon met the fate that befell so many of her brethren. Around 3AM on September 3, 1925, while on a demonstration flight over the American midwest, Shenandoah ran into a violent line of thunderstorms near the town of Ava Ohio, and was ripped apart. Miraculously, 29 of the 43 men aboard survived. But while the Shenandoah disaster did little to dampen American enthusiasm for rigid airships, it briefly put an end to U.S. efforts to reach the North Pole by air. Others were now free to make the attempt, and the next to try was a true legend in the field of polar exploration.

In 1926, there were few explorers more experienced and celebrated than 54-year-old Norwegian Roald Amundsen. A world-renowned expert in Arctic navigation and survival, the “Old Viking” (as he was affectionately known), had been the first to traverse the infamous Northwest Passage, sailing the sloop Gjøa across the Arctic Ocean from Baffin Island, Canada to Nome, Alaska between 1903 and 1906. Five years later, he led the first successful expedition across Antarctica, reaching the South Geographic Pole on December 14, 1911. Between 1918 and 1921, Amundsen attempted to reach the North Pole via the Northeast Passage aboard the ship Maud, but was unsuccessful. He thus set his sights on conquering the Pole by air.

In contrast to his predecessors, Amundsen believed that the airplane had sufficiently matured to make a polar flight. Thus, in May 1922, he purchased a Junkers-Larsen JL-6 monoplane and hired Norwegian pilot Oscar Omdal to fly it. An American-built version of the German Junkers F-13, the JL-6 was one of the most modern and reliable aircraft of its day, featuring a distinctive corrugated-aluminium construction. The type had already broken numerous distance and endurance records, making it ideal choice for a polar flight. However, right from the start, the expedition was beset with misfortunes. In order to familiarize himself with the aircraft, Omdal attempted to fly the JL-6 from New York to Seattle where Amundsen’s ship, the Maud, was anchored. But while flying over Pennsylvania, the engine stalled and forced Omdal to make an emergency landing, completely destroying the aircraft. Another JL-6 was quickly purchased and christened the Elisabeth after Kristine Elisabeth Bennet, the wife of one of Amundsen’s patrons. Along with a Curtiss Oriole biplane named Kristine, Elisabeth was delivered directly to the Maud, which left Seattle in the spring of 1922 and sailed for Wainwright in northern Alaska. Unfortunately the spring and summer of 1922 were beset with storms and strong winds, and Amundsen and his crew were forced to postpone the flight and hunker down for the winter. The next attempt was set for June 20, 1923. As the weather began to clear and the date approached, Elisabeth was reassembled and on May 11, 1923, Omdal took her up on her first test flight. Amundsen later recorded what happened next:

“He approached the houses, losing altitude very quickly, and barely missing them. He ended up down on the lagoon, a few metres from where he had taken off. The left ski cut across under the engine, flipped a half circle and overturned on the right wing. Oskar Omdal was never in any danger. We all ran over to the aircraft. The landing gear that was fastened to the left ski was broken. Omdal said that the engine had been working very unsatisfactorily … after this, I have little hope of a flight.”

Though the crew attempted to effect repairs, it soon became clear that Elisabeth would never fly again. Reluctantly, Amundsen abandoned the expedition and sailed back to Seattle. Norwegian consul Haakon Hammer, one of Amundsen’s main financiers, offered to furnish a third JL-6 for another attempt, but Amundsen, fed up with the unreliability of the Junkers aircraft, declined the offer.

Undeterred, Amundsen set about organizing a new expedition. By this time, he was effectively broke, his accountant having grossly mishandled his finances. And despite his outsized reputation in his home country, he failed to find any Norwegian backers for his aerial endeavour. He thus embarked on a lecture tour of the United States to raise funds, but failed to attract any interest. Bitter and defeated, Amundsen wondered if his exploring days were finally over.

Then, while brooding in a New York hotel room, Amundsen received an unexpected phone call. The caller was one Lincoln Ellsworth, the 46-year-old son of wealthy coal magnate James Ellsworth. An adventurer in his own right, Ellsworth was a trained engineer and pilot who had already led several expeditions across the Andes mountains. A huge fan of Amundsen’s Ellsworth relished the opportunity to explore the Arctic with the old master, and the two soon began discussing a new aerial expedition. Not satisfied with merely dashing to the pole and back, Amundsen proposed crossing the entire Arctic from Spitsbergen in the Svalbard archipelago to Point Barrow, Alaska – a distance of some 2,400 kilometres. As no aircraft at the time had the range to complete such a flight non-stop, Amundsen and Ellsworth hatched a plan: they would fly two aircraft to the Pole, one carrying extra fuel. Upon landing on the ice, the fuel and crew of the first aircraft would be transferred to the second, with the first being abandoned while the second flew on to Alaska. It was a bold – and dangerous – plan, so to placate potential backers Amundsen and Ellsworth claimed they were simply making a simple dash to the Pole. Concerned for his son’s safety, James Ellsworth was reluctant to fund the venture, but eventually contributed $85,000 – more than $1.5 million today – to the expedition, the rest being furnished by various organizations including the Aero Club of Norway. With this money, Amundsen and Ellsworth purchased a pair of German-built Dornier Do J Wal or “Whale” flying boats. With a sturdy aluminium hull and powered by two 355 horsepower V12 engines, the Wal could carry six crew members over a range of 2,400 kilometres and take off and land from water or – under certain conditions – ice. Unlike the colourfully-named Kristina and Elisabeth, the two flying boats were simply designated N-24 and N-25. Along with Oskar Omdal, Amundsen and Ellsworth hired Norwegians Hjalmar Riiser-Larsen and Lief Dietrichson as pilots and German Karl Feucht of the Dornier company as a mechanic.

Though well-prepared and well-provisioned, the expedition still faced many daunting challenges. The expedition could only take place within a short window in the Arctic spring and summer, when watery leads opened up in the pack ice for the flying boats to land on. Violent squalls and thick fogs could quickly set it, reducing visibility to zero; while sunlight reflecting off the snow and ice could temporarily blind unprotected eyes within hours. Worse still, magnetic compasses did not work reliably so close to the magnetic pole, forcing the crew to use other instruments like sextants and sun compasses – all of which required clear skies to operate.

Nonetheless, by early May 1925 the expedition had established its base camp at the settlement of King’s Bay, Spitsbergen. After waiting several weeks for the unpredictable weather to clear, the team at last set off on May 21, with Amundsen, Riiser-Larsen, and Feucht flying in N-25 and Omdal, Ellsworth, and Dietrichson in N-24. Radios ordered for the expedition had not arrived in time, forcing the two crews to communicate via hand signals. Almost immediately the flight ran into a thick fog bank, but this dissipated after two hours, giving the expedition a clear view of the vast, glittering ocean of pack ice beneath them. After eight hours, Amundsen ordered Riiser-Larsen to set down so he could fix their position. Using his sextant in the bouncing, vibrating aircraft was difficult, and he could get more accurate readings down on the ice. It was just as well, for at that moment one of the N-25’s engines suddenly failed, forcing Riiser-Larsen to put the aircraft down in a nearby lead in the ice. A few minutes later, Dietrichson landed the N-24 in another lead 5 kilometres away. But as soon as the N-24 skidded to a halt, the aluminium hull began to flood with water. The landing had sheared off a number of rivets. If the aircraft sank, it would take with it the extra fuel needed to carry the N-25 – and the explorers – the rest of the way to Alaska. The crew thus raced against time to drag the swamped aircraft up onto the ice.

Meanwhile, back at N-25, Amundsen made a disappointing discovery: the expedition had only reached a little over 87º latitude – father north than any aircraft had flown before, but still more than 240 kilometres short of the North Pole. But at that moment the expedition faced far bigger problems. Despite heroic efforts by Omdal, Ellsworth, and Dietrichson, it soon became clear that N-24 would never fly again; the exhaust system was burned out and the valves irreparably damaged. Her crew thus packed up all the supplies they could and set off towards the N-25. However, the rough ice conditions eventually defeated them, while Dietrichson, who had forgotten to wear his protective goggles, was rendered snowblind. When he finally recovered a few days later, he and Ellsworth set off once again across the ice, but gave up after 7 hours and returned to N-24.

But there was some good news: by May 23 the drifting pack ice had brought the two aircraft close enough for the crews to communicate by signal flags, and the crew of the N-24 once again attempted a crossing of the ice. The expedition nearly ended in disaster as Dietrichson and Omdal fell through thin ice into the frigid Arctic Ocean below. Only quick action by Ellsworth saved them from an icy death. Though both were frozen to the bone and Dietrichson had broken five teeth, they were alive and eventually reached the N-25. By this time the lead they had landed in had frozen over, so the crew spent the next four days hacking the aircraft out with axes and hauling her up onto the ice. Then they set up camp, surviving off hot chocolate, pemmican, and melted old sea ice while they waited for a lead to open up that would allow them to take off.

Weeks passed, and yet no leads appeared; the weather remained unseasonably cold. Amundsen calculated they could wait until June 15 at the latest before their dwindling rations finally ran out. But as the deadline drew nearer, still no leads appeared in the ice. With time running out, the expedition decided to take a gamble and try taking off from the ice instead. Thus, despite being exhausted and on partial rations, they hacked away an estimated 600 tons of ice and slowly, painstakingly dragged the aircraft towards the nearest suitable runway. By June 14, one day before the deadline, they were finally ready, but slushy conditions prevented a takeoff. The next morning the slush had frozen, and the crew clambered into N-25, revved up the engines, and barrelled down the ice runway. Despite a bumpy, hair-raising ride, the flying boat finally crawled into the air and the explorers turned south and headed for home. Eight hours later, they had just sighted the northern coast of Spitsbergen when a jammed rudder forced them to set down on the ocean. They then taxied over the water until they came across a sealing ship, which took the aircraft under tow and carried the crew back to King’s Bay. The expedition’s safe return came as a shock to the rest of the world, who had assumed they had perished out on the ice.

The 1925 expedition convinced Amundsen that heavier-than-air craft were not yet mature enough for polar exploration, and thus turned his attention to a rival technology: the airship. In late 1925, backed by Ellsworth and the Aero Club of Norway, Amundsen chartered a brand-new semi-rigid airship recently completed by Italian aviator, engineer, and Air Force General Umberto Nobile. Christened the Norge or “Norway”, the craft measured 106 metres long, held 19,000 square metres of hydrogen lifting gas, and was powered by three 260 horsepower Maybach engines that gave it a top speed of 112 kilometres per hour and a maximum range of 5,600 kilometres. On April 13, 1926, Amundsen and Ellsworth arrived in King’s Bay, Spitsbergen to set up the expedition’s base camp. The following day the Norge, commanded by Nobile, took off from Rome and flew north, making stops in Pulham, England; Leningrad, the Soviet Union; and Oslo and Vadsø, Norway before reaching King’s Bay on May 7.

But no sooner had he eased the Norge into her open-topped hangar, Nobile received some alarming news: a rival expedition led by U.S. Navy lieutenant Richard E. Byrd had arrived in King’s Bay six days after Amundsen and Ellsworth and were also preparing to fly to the Pole. Funded by such luminaries as John D. Rockefeller Jr, Vincent Astor, and Edsel Ford – son of Henry Ford – Byrd’s expedition had acquired a Fokker F.VII trimotor – christened the Josephine Ford after Edsel Ford’s daughter – which had just enough range to make the 2,400 kilometre round trip to the Pole and back. Eager to beat the Americans to the punch, Nobile told Amundsen he could make the Norge ready to fly within six hours. But Amundsen, wary of reports of incoming bad weather, preferred to wait. After all, he was interested in exploration, not merely setting records. His crew thus struck up a cordial relationship with Byrd’s, inviting them to dinner aboard their ship and providing the Americans with vital survival equipment like snowshoes and sledges.

Finally, on May 8, 1926, Byrd and pilot Floyd Bennet taxied the Josephine Ford onto the ice runway and attempted a takeoff. However, the aircraft proved overloaded and failed to leave the ground. After stripping the aircraft of all unnecessary weight, the pair tried again, and at 1:30 AM on May 9, the Josephine Ford lifted off the runway and banked north towards the elusive Pole. For such a historic undertaking, the flight was surprisingly uneventful, with the only real hiccup being a small oil leak caused by a loose rivet in the tank. However, once the oil level dropped below the rivet, the leak stopped and the Josephine Ford flew on. While Bennet kept the aircraft steady, Byrd, bundled in the back in polar bear-fur pants, busily tended to his navigational instruments, painstakingly tracking their progress across the featureless wastes. Occasionally he stopped to glance out the window at the vast expanse of pack ice, later recalling that:

“We felt no larger than a pinpoint and as lonely as the tomb, as remote and detached as a star.”

Then, after eight hours in the air, Byrd’s instruments indicated that they were over the pole, and he and Bennet turned back and headed for home. Helped along by a 160 kilometre per hour tailwind, they landed in King’s Bay at 4:30 PM – fifteen hours after takeoff. Byrd and Bennet were feted across the United States, receiving a parade in New York City and receiving the Congressional Medal of Honour. However, some were skeptical of their claims. In the 1950s, Norwegian-American explorer and bush pilot Bernt Balchen – later one of the first men to fly over the South Pole, argued that even with the tailwinds reported by Byrd, the Fokker F.VII did not have the range to reach the Pole. Furthermore, weather charts compiled at meteorological stations in Russia and Alaska showed calm air over the Pole on that day. Finally, when Byrd’s navigation diary was examined, several erased – but legible – sextant readings were discovered indicating that he had only made it 80% of the way to the Pole before turning back. Nonetheless, Byrd and Bennet are still widely recognized as the first to reach the North Pole by air – though their claims remain controversial.

Undaunted, Amundsen, Ellsworth, and Nobile carried on with their preparations. Though they had been beaten to the pole, there was still glory to be had in crossing the top of the world nonstop. Their route would take them 1,600 kilometres from King’s Bay over the North Pole to Point Barrow, Alaska, and then south to Nome, where the airship would be dismantled for shipment back to Italy. But while the Norge had far greater endurance and range than the Dornier flying boats of Amundsen’s 1925 expedition, the crossing would be no less hazardous. The airship carried barely enough fuel to cover the distance and no ballast; if the crew encountered strong headwinds, icing, a gas leak, or any other complications, there was a good chance they would become stranded on the ice pack, far from any possible rescue.

On May 11, 1926, the weather cleared and the Norge lifted off from King’s Bay with a crew of sixteen, including Amundsen, Nobile, Ellsworth and seven Norwegians, five Italians, and one Swede. Cruising along at 80 kilometres an hour at an altitude of 400 metres, the airship soon entered a thick bank of fog, which made navigation difficult and caused ice to build up on the airframe. Nobile thus pulled up to 1,000 metres to clear the fog. The rest of the flight was largely uneventful, and at 1:30 AM on May 12, the Norge finally crossed the North Pole. In that moment, Amundsen and crew member Oscar Wisting – who had accompanied Amundsen on his 1911 expedition to Antarctica – became the first people to conquer both poles. In a modest celebration their accomplishment, Amundsen and Ellsworth threw small, handkerchief-sized Norwegian and American flags overboard. But then Nobile, patriotic but tactless, proceeded to drop a massive Italian flag – an act of one-upmanship which irritated Amundsen to no end. It would not be the last time the two explorers would butt heads.

Though they had reached the Pole, the ordeal was far from over for the crew of the Norge. Nearly 1,000 more kilometres and 24 hours of flying remained before they reached Point Barrow. So small was the ship’s crew that not all were able to rest adequately, while the conditions aboard were so cramped and frigid that sleep was all but impossible. But on the morning of May 13, the cold and exhausted crew finally spotted the coast of Alaska, and turned south towards Nome. However, they were soon beset by thick fog and violent crosswinds, and after struggling through this weather for 24 hours Nobile finally decided to land near the tiny Inuit settlement of Teller. The Norge touched down at 7:30 AM on May 14, 1926, having just completed the first aerial crossing of the Arctic. The epic 5,088 kilometre journey had taken only 70 hours and 40 minutes, while from Rome to Nome the Norge had traversed some 12,500 kilometres – nearly 1/3 of the planet’s circumference – in 171 hours. The expedition had also proven that no solid land existed in the vast expanse of pack ice between Spitsbergen and Alaska; the mysterious “Crocker Land” reported by Robert Peary was nothing but an illusion.

But this grand accomplishment was soon soured by the simmering rivalry between Amundsen and Nobile. While Amundsen considered himself head of the expedition and Nobile merely a hired pilot, it was Nobile who received all the glory, with both U.S. President Calvin Coolidge and Italian Dictator Benito Mussolini holding grand receptions in his honour. Already irritated by the upstart Italian, Amundsen now became a bitter enemy, dedicating no fewer than 95 pages of his 1927 memoir My Life as an Explorer to denouncing Nobile and downplaying his contributions. But Amundsen, now in the twilight of his career, could do little to harm Nobile’s reputation, and he retired from exploration soon after.

Meanwhile, Nobile pressed on with plans for even greater feats of aerial Arctic exploration – feats which would further glorify Mussolini’s fascist state. The flight of the Norge had covered some 128,000 square kilometres of previously uncharted ice cap, but 3.8 million still remained to be explored. Nobile thus proposed a series of long-distance flights to cover the rest, and designed a new airship – dubbed the Italia – for this purpose. This expedition would be far more ambitious – and dangerous – than even the precarious flight of the Norge, a fact which Nobile acknowledged in a speech given in Milan:

“We have absolute confidence in the preparation of the expedition. All that could be foreseen has been foreseen – even the possibility of failure or catastrophe. We are quite aware that our venture is difficult and dangerous – even more so than that of 1926 – but it is this very difficulty and danger that attracts us. Had it been safe and easy, other people would already have preceded us.”

Completed in early 1928, the Italia was nearly identical to the Norge save for a slightly larger lifting gas capacity. On April 15, 1928, the airship lifted off from Milan and headed north towards King’s Bay with 18 men aboard: expedition commander Nobile; helmsman Renato Allessandrini, physicist Aldo Pontremoli; journalists Ugo Lago and Francisco Tomaselli; navigators Adalberto Mariano, Filippo Zappi, and Alfredo Viglieri; elevator operators Natale Cecioni and Felice Trojani; radio operators Giuseppe Biagi and Ettore Pedretti; engine mechanics Ettore Arduin, Calisto Ciocca, Attilio Caratti, and Vincenzo Pomella; Swedish meteorologist Finn Malmgren; and Czechoslovak physicist František Běhounek.

While crossing northern Italy and southern Germany, Italia ran into severe hailstorms which damaged the propellers, envelope, and tail fins and forced her to land in Stolp, Germany (today Słupsk in Poland) for repairs. This took ten days, as the necessary technicians had to be brought in from Italy. Finally, on May 3, Italia lifted off once again and continued north, reaching the airship mast at Vadsø, Norway, early the next morning. After being grounded for several days due to bad weather, on May 6 the airship finally reached King’s Bay, where her support ship Città di Milano was already anchored. Captained by Captain Giuseppe Romagna Manoja, the ship would serve as the expedition’s main base of operations and radio station.

Nobile planned three flights for the Italia, each exploring a different region of the Arctic. The first flight took off on May 11, but Nobile was forced to turn back after only eight hours due to heavy ice buildup on the Italia’s envelope and fraying of the control cables. The second flight, which departed on May 15, was far more successful, enjoying clear weather and covering 4,000 kilometres of uncharted territory in sixty hours. In addition to geographic and pack ice observations, physicists Běhounek and Pontremoli took valuable measurements on magnetic phenomena and cosmic rays.

The third and final expedition departed at 4:38 AM on May 23 with 16 men aboard – journalist Francisco Romaselli and radio Operator Ettore Pedretti remained back in King’s Bay. Nobile’s plan was to reach the North Pole via a new route along the Greenland coast. Once there, the Italia would drop a team of scientists onto the ice and circle the Pole before picking up the team and, depending on weather conditions, either circle back to the Siberian island of Severnaya Zemla or carry on northward to Canada. Assisted by strong tailwinds, Italia reached the pole in 19 hours. As weather conditions made dropping off the scientific team impossible, Nobile instead circled the pole, conducting a brief patriotic ceremony in which the Italian and Milanese flags, a medal of the Virgin of Fire, and a giant wooden cross supplied by Pope Pius XI were dropped onto the ice. Meanwhile, an onboard gramophone played the Fascist battle hymn Giovinezza.

But despite the celebratory mood, Nobile now faced a difficult decision. Weather conditions were rapidly deteriorating, making both his planned courses unattractive. And the headwinds which had helped the Italia to the pole would work against her on the way back to King’s Bay. However, meteorologist Finn Malmgren predicted that the strong southerly winds would soon give way to mild northerlies; Nobile thus decided to turn south and return to King’s Bay.

Unfortunately, Malmgren’s predictions failed to materialize, and the crew of the Italia soon found themselves fighting thick icy fog, violent snow flurries, and an ever-accelerating headwind that slowed their groundspeed to a mere 40 kilometres per hour. Meanwhile, thick layers of ice accumulated on the envelope and control surfaces, making the airship difficult to control, while the propellers flung chunks of ice through the envelope like bullets. Conditions continued to get worse and worse until, at 9:25 AM on May 25, while cruising at only 230 metres, Italia’s elevators jammed in the upward position, sending the airship into a steep nosedive. Acting quickly, Nobile ordered all engines stopped, managing to halt the dive a mere 76 metres above the ice cap. Without power, the airship quickly rose to an altitude of 2,700, rising above the icy fog. This allowed the navigators to fix the airship’s position: still more than 280 kilometres northeast of King’s Bay. But as the airship emerged into the sun, the hydrogen gas in her envelope expanded and vented out the safety relief valves, making her less buoyant. Once the elevator cables were finally repaired, Nobile ordered Italia back down into the fog to prevent further gas loss. For the next half hour, Italia struggled on through howling winds and dense, freezing fog until, suddenly, she began to sink by the tail. Nobile ordered all engines full, but it was too late. The airship slammed into the ice, tearing off the control car and the rear engine gondola and depositing ten men onto the ice. The envelope, suddenly much lighter, sprang back into the air and drifted away, carrying the remaining six men – helmsman Renato Alessandrini, journalist Ugo Lago, physicist Aldo Pontremoli, and engine mechanics Ettore Arduino, Calisto Ciocca, and Attilio Caratti – with it. They were never heard from again.

Meanwhile, back at the crash site, the situation was grim. One man – rear engine mechanic Vicenzo Pomella – had been killed on impact, and many more severely injured. Worst among the injured was Nobile himself, who had broken his right arm and leg. The nine men were stranded on the barren pack ice in freezing conditions, hundreds of kilometres from help. But there was some good news: in an act of selfless heroism, the crew trapped aboard the envelope had tossed as much of the scientific team’s survival gear onto the ice as they could before the wind carried off the envelope. Among this gear the survivors found a tent, a revolver, 45 days worth of rations, and a portable survival radio, which radio operator Guiseppe Biagi soon managed to get working. Immediately he began transmitting distress signals to the Città di Milano back in King’s Bay.

But nobody was listening. Back at the Città di Milano, radio operators had ceased monitoring transmissions from the Italia. They were too busy transmitting personal messages from the crew or news stories for journalists. And when one young operator reported hearing a faint SOS, his claim was dismissed. Captain Romagna would later make all sorts of excuses, including that he believed the Italia’s transmitter to be broken or her crew to be dead. In reality, his lack of action was likely informed by politics. Roald Amundsen was not the only major enemy the naive Nobile had made; he had also fallen into the crosshairs of founding Italian fascist Italo Balbo, then Marshal of the Air Force. Derisive of Nobile – whom he publicly called a “prima donna” – and convinced that aircraft – not airships – were the future of Italian aviation, Balbo worked behind the scenes to discredit Nobile in the eyes of Mussolini and other top government officials. Indeed, when Nobile first announced his plan to return to the Arctic, Il Duce was skeptical, warning: “Perhaps it would be better not to tempt Fate a second time.” Balbo, however, insisted:

“Let him go, for he cannot possibly come back to bother us anymore.”

Balbo further turned down Nobile’s request for three seaplanes to help rescue his crew in the event of a crash and spread rumours that Nobile – who had little interest in politics outside simple patriotism – was secretly a communist and anti-fascist resistance leader. Thus, as he waited for rescue out on the ice, Nobile was unaware that, as far as the Italian government was concerned, he and his men were as good as dead already. But as more days passed with no news from the Italia, the government came under increasing pressure to mount a rescue effort. Finally, on May 27, the Città di Milano was ordered to leave King’s bay and sail towards Spitsbergen’s northern coast. However, thick sea ice severely impeded her progress. Nonetheless, on reaching the north coast, Captain Gennarto Sora of the Italian Army Alpini ski detachment led a heroic over-ice attempt to reach the survivors’ camp, but was unsuccessful. On the same day, the Italian government hired two Norwegian whaling vessels – the Braganza and the Hobby – to search for the Italia. Aboard were two pilots – Finn Lutzow-Holm and Roald Amundsen’s old colleague Hjalmar Riiser-Larsen – along with two aircraft to assist in the rescue. However, their progress was also impeded by the ice; it quickly became clear that only a purpose-built icebreaker would be suited to the task.

Soon the search for the Italia’s crew turned into an international affair, with a total of seven nations contributing men and equipment to the rescue effort. Norway, Denmark, Sweden, and France sent dozens of ships, aircraft, and pilots, while the Soviet Union dispatched three icebreakers: the Malygin, the Sedov, and the Krassin, the former of which were equipped with Junkers monoplanes flown by pilots Boris Chukhnovsky and Mikhail Babushkin – who in 1937 became the first person to land an aircraft at the North Pole while resupplying a Soviet drifting-ice station – and for more on the fascinating history of these installations, please check out our previous videos A Total Legal Clusterf$$k: Murder on Ice and The Real Story of Capturing an Ice Fortress With a Badass James Bond Film Device. Eventually, Arturo Mercanti, a former Air Force chief and personal friend of Nobile’s, convinced the Italian government to contribute three flying boats – two Dornier Wals and a Savoia-Marchetti S.55 – piloted by Air Force Majors Luigi Penzo, Ivo Ravazzoni, and Umberto Maddalena.

But perhaps the most surprising member of the search effort was Nobile’s bitter rival, Roald Amundsen. Upon hearing of Nobile’s disappearance, Amundsen set aside his animosity and quickly organized an effort to rescue his old colleague. On June 28, along with pilots Lief Dietrichson and René Guilbard and three other French crew members, Amundsen took off from Tromsø, Norway, in a French Latham 47 flying boat and headed North towards Spitsbergen. They were never seen again. Though parts of the aircraft were later found washed up on the Norwegian coast, the bodies of Amundsen and his colleagues were never recovered.

Meanwhile, conditions at the survivors’ camp were getting steadily worse. The drifting ice pack was carrying them further and further away from King’s Bay, travelling more than 20 kilometres per day. While the men were equipped with fleece-lined flying clothing, they did not have very much proper Arctic gear, and suffered greatly in the bitter cold. Meteorologist Finn Malmgren was also behaving erratically. Guilty over his role in the crash and likely suffering from internal injuries, he twice had to be stopped from committing suicide – one time by drowning himself in the ocean and another by shooting himself with the expedition’s revolver. But on May 29, he partially absolved himself by shooting a curious polar bear that wandered into the camp, supplementing the survivors’ rations with 180 kilograms of fresh meat. Soon, he and navigators Filippo Zappi and Adalberto Mariano grew tired of waiting for rescue, and on May 30 decided to set off on foot in search of help.

All the while, radio operator Guiseppe Biagi continued to send regular distress signals and monitor the airwaves, receiving sports scores and updates on the international search for the Italia. Unfortunately, the search and rescue effort was badly coordinated and operating largely in the dark. As Biagi’s distress signals had not yet been picked up, nobody knew exactly what – if anything – had happened to the Italia or where on the ice pack the survivors were located. But all that was about to change, thanks to a curious twist of fate. On June 3, Nikolai Schmidt, a 21-year-old radio amateur in the Russian village of Vokhma – more than 2,000 kilometres southeast of Spitsbergen – picked up one of Biagi’s distress signals. Though Schmidt knew that the Italia was in the arctic, news of her disappearance had not reached his remote village. He thus sent a telegram to the Radio Friends Company in Moscow, who passed it on to the Council of People’s Commissars, who in turn informed the Italian government. Upon hearing of this discovery over the radio, Nobile ordered the survivors’ tent painted in red stripes to make it more visible to rescue aircraft. This was done with aniline dye from marker bombs used to determine the airship’s ground speed.

Two days later on June 5, Italian Air Force Major Umberto Maddalena, homing in on Biagi’s radio signal, made the first sighting of survivors’ camp and dropped parcels containing radio batteries, warm boots, smoke signals, and food including eggs, marmalade, and fresh fruit. Two days later he returned and dropped more supplies including medicine, a cooking stove, and cigarettes. By this time, the summer heat was beginning to melt the ice pack, and large pools of water were forming around the tiny red tent. Time was running out for the crew of the Italia. On June 18, Captain Gennaro Sora of the elite Italian Alpini mountain infantry, accompanied by Arctic explorers Ludvig Varming and Sjef van Dongen, set off from the Città di Milano on foot and dogsled to try and reach the survivor’s camp, but ice conditions eventually forced them to turn back. On June 22, an aircraft flown by Swedish pilot Einar Lundborg dropped more parcels – including two bottles of whiskey – as well as a message announcing that he would make a landing the following day if the survivors marked out a suitable site. Nobile duly ordered a flat section of ice marked out with strips of red parachute silk, and, as promised, the next day Lundborg made a safe landing. However, conflict soon broke out when Lundborg insisted on taking Nobile and Nobile alone. Nobile refused, arguing that as commander of the mission, he should be the last to leave the ice. But Lundborg countered he would be of more use aboard the Città di Milano, coordinating further rescue efforts, than lying with a broken arm and leg on the ice. Nobile reluctantly agreed, and soon he and his dog Titina were winging their way back to Spitsbergen. Yet despite Lundborg’s promises, when Nobile arrived aboard the Città di Milano, Captain Romagna ordered him confined to his cabin, where he could contribute little to rescue efforts. The decision to leave his men behind would haunt Nobile for the rest of his life.

By early June 1928 – early six weeks after the Italia had crashed – no further survivors had been rescued, and the red tent was almost completely surrounded by frigid meltwater. On the same day he had picked up Nobile, Einar Lundborg had attempted to fly back to rescue more survivors, but had crashed on landing and become stranded on the ice. On July 6, he was rescued by fellow Swede Birger Schuyberg in a lightweight biplane. Schuyberg originally intended to return to the campsite to pick up more survivors, but deteriorating ice conditions made this impossible, and the Swedish contingent officially pulled out of the rescue effort. Shortly thereafter, the Norwegians, Finns, French, Italians, and Danes also pulled out. The Soviet icebreakers Malygin and Sedov had also become stuck in the ice

The last remaining hope for the survivors was the Krassin, slowly ploughing its way through the two-metre-thick ice pack at barely two kilometres per hour. Despite running low on coal and damaging its propeller, on July 12 Krassin finally spotted two figures on the ice. It was Filippo Zappi and Adalberto Mariano, who had set out on foot in search of help. Malmgren, they revealed, had died one month before; depressed and exhausted, he simply lay down in the snow and never got up. For years, rumours would swirl that the two Italians had cannibalized the Swede in order to stay alive. Pressing on, the Krassin eventually reached the red tent and rescued the remaining five survivors.

In total, eight of the Italia’s crew and nine rescuers – including Roald Amundsen – died in the arctic airship disaster of 1928. But for the leader of the expedition, General Umberto Nobile, the ordeal was far from over. Despite having little choice in the matter, Nobile was roundly criticized for abandoning his men and disowned by his own government. Seven months after the disaster, an official inquiry found Nobile responsible for the loss of the Italia and guilty of dereliction of duty. Disgraced, he moved to the Soviet Union, where he helped design a number of semi-rigid airships. After briefly returning to Italy, following the outbreak of the Second World War in 1939, Nobile moved to the United States to teach aeronautics at Lewis University in Illinois. Though offered U.S. citizenship, he declined and returned to Europe in 1942, starting first in Rome before moving to neutral Spain where he spent the rest of the war. In 1945, the Italian Air Force cleared Nobile of all charges relating to the Italia disaster and promoted him to the rank of Lieutenant General, prompting him to return to his home country. His reputation restored, he was later elected to the Italian Constituent Assembly as an independent candidate affiliated with the Communist Party and taught aeronautical engineering at the University of Naples. Umberto Nobile, arctic exploration pioneer, died in Rome in 1978 at the age of 93.

Though all but forgotten today, Nobile’s accomplishments were commemorated in July 1958 when the U.S.S. Nautilus, the world’s first nuclear-powered submarine, crossed the North Pole by sailing under the ice. Upon the completion of this historic feat, the ship’s commander, William R. Anderson, wrote to Nobile that:

“From your courageous flight over the polar ice pack in 1926 it was established that there was no land between Alaska and Spitzbergen. Without this knowledge, found by you and confirmed by aerial expeditions that followed you, we would not have known enough to undertake our voyage.”

Today, flying over the North Pole is so routine it hardly warrants mention, with dozens of commercial flights every day taking the polar route over the top of the world. But as with any now-common feat, someone had to do it first, and it is thanks to the bravery, determination, and sacrifice of pioneering explorers like Umberto Nobile and Roald Amundsen that this great world of ours has gotten so much smaller.

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