Things could have turned out very differently indeed. But vanity and a thirst for recognition turned offended heroes into tragic losers, and what should have been a glorious triumph in the race to the North Pole became the greatest disaster in the history of the Arctic. The rescue operation involved 21 aeroplanes, 16 ships and dog sleds. And it claimed 18 lives.
The protagonists in this tragedy: Umberto Nobile, an Italian airship engineer with the rank of general, and Roald Amundsen, a Norwegian explorer and the first person to reach the South Pole in 1911.
Also featuring: an Italian President, a Russian radio operator, a Swedish pilot, an American millionaire, a British ghost and a dog with a fear of flying. Plus more than 1,500 rescue workers from six countries.
Prelude I: The Ship, August 1921, Seattle, USA
For three years, Roald Amundsen remained stranded with his ship, the ‘Maud’, in the ice drift of the Northeast Passage, hoping that the drift would carry him to the North Pole. The expedition was supposed to last until 1925, but when Amundsen realised he would not reach his destination, he abandoned the attempt and sailed the ship to Seattle.
Prelude II: The Aircraft, May 1925, Ny Ålesund, Spitsbergen
Roald Amundsen is virtually bankrupt. He has therefore teamed up with the German aircraft manufacturer Dornier and the American surveyor, millionaire and sponsor Lincoln Ellsworth for a renewed attempt to reach the North Pole from Spitsbergen. This time with two Dornier aircraft. The expedition fails because the aeroplanes land in a channel of water 200 kilometres short of the North Pole and become frozen in. The crew are reported missing on the ice for 26 days. Everyone survives. Roald Amundsen is rather angry. Admittedly, the North Pole is considered to have been conquered since 1909, when Robert Peary and Frederick Cook both claimed to have been the first to reach it. But there is still much glory and honour to be had at the North Pole for a daring explorer like Amundsen, and that is precisely what the old Norwegian craves. After all, it was he who, in 1911, became the first person to reach the other ‘end’ of the Earth, the South Pole. Now Amundsen is determined to reach the North Pole come what may.
He has long dreamt of discovering new land somewhere in the vastness of the Arctic, which would then be named Roald Amundsen Land in his honour.
Prelude III: The Offer, September 1925, Rome, Italy
Roald Amundsen is bankrupt. Contemporary accounts describe him as grumpy, domineering and egotistical. It is therefore hardly surprising that the Norwegian sets off with very little enthusiasm for his very first meeting with the Italian engineer, lecturer and mathematician Umberto Nobile. Amundsen arrives as a supplicant.
Nobile is a world-class airship builder. When Italy entered the First World War in 1915, Nobile applied to join the military but was rejected because of his small, slight build. On his third attempt, he succeeded: he entered the service of the military airship workshop in Rome, became its director in 1919 and was awarded the airship pilot’s licence in 1923 with the rank of lieutenant-colonel. Meanwhile, Nobile was designing airships himself.
The Italian Prime Minister, Benito Mussolini, offered Amundsen an airship designed by Nobile for a flight to the North Pole – on condition that the designer also flew along, as leader of the expedition. Naturally, this did not sit well with Amundsen. But he agreed. The Norwegian Aero Club and the sponsor Lincoln Ellsworth purchase the airship N1 from the Italian government (N stands for the builder Nobile, 1 for his first design) and rename the airship ‘Norge’ (Norge means Norway in Norwegian).😊
Act One: The Dispute, 12 May 1926, 02.20, North Pole
After a brisk 16-hour and 40-minute journey from Spitsbergen, the ‘Norge’ reaches the North Pole and circles the coveted point. With a mild outside temperature of minus 11 degrees, the Norwegian, American and Italian flags are dropped. Amundsen thinks the Norwegian flag looked the finest as it fluttered in the wind. Expedition leader Nobile’s Italian flag is the largest of them all. Ellsworth is delighted, as he is celebrating his 46th birthday today. Nobile’s mixed-breed dog, Titina, who is also on board, barks joyfully despite her fear of flying. The ‘Norge’ continues across the Arctic and, after a total flight time of over 70 hours, lands safely in Teller near Nome. The world rejoices. Umberto Nobile is the hero of the hour. Benito Mussolini, who has since risen to become Italy’s dictator, promotes him to the rank of general. At the victory parade in Seattle, Nobile is presented with flowers. Amundsen is not. Amundsen considers this unfair; he is offended. As he later writes in his memoirs, he believes that the glory is due solely to him, Amundsen. Now the dispute escalates. Amundsen states publicly that he considers Nobile to be technically inadequately qualified. Nobile retorts that Amundsen behaved like a demigod on the ‘Norge’, did not take part in the work in the cabin and merely kept an eye out for new territory.
Whereupon Amundsen rants that Nobile had been nothing more than an employee on the ‘Norge’ and that, flying the Italian flag, the airship looked ‘like a circus wagon in the sky’.
Which, in turn, Nobile is not prepared to take lying down. He decides to build a new airship and fly to the North Pole once more, entirely without Amundsen and entirely without Norwegian support. He built a new airship, the N4, named ‘Italia’: 104 metres long, with a volume of 18,500 cubic metres, three 245 PS Maybach engines, and a top speed of 117 km/h.
Act Two: Victory and Drama, 24 May 1928, 00.20, North Pole
They’ve done it! On its third attempt from Spitsbergen, in rather poor weather, the airship ‘Italia’ reaches the North Pole. Nobile throws the Italian flag out of the cabin for the second time – along with a massive wooden crucifix given to him by Pope Pius XI.
As the crew includes not only the 14 Italians on board but also a Swede and a Czechoslovak, they are both allowed to unfurl their national flags as well. The communist anthem ‘Giovinezza’ and patriotic hits in the style of ‘Bella Italia’ ring out loudly.
Nobile has shown the whole world: Bella Italia can manage without Amundsen! Titina the dog is also on board – the only dog in the world to have been to the North Pole twice. However, as the weather grows increasingly stormy, Nobile is unable to drop off some scientists at the Pole for research, as planned. Instead, he circles the North Pole for two hours and finally gives the order to head back towards King’s Bay in Spitsbergen.
Soon, a thick bank of fog looms ahead of them. Nobile climbs to an altitude of 1,000 metres, where visibility is still abysmal, and navigates using the magnetic compass. This is nothing out of the ordinary. But the headwind is growing ever stronger. Ice pellets are falling. Some stick to the hull of the ‘Italia’. Others are accelerated by the wind from the turbines and pierce the airship’s hull. The airship is becoming increasingly heavy due to the large amount of ice. And finally, ice jams the elevator.
It is 25 May 1928, 7 o’clock in the morning, position approximately 180 kilometres north of the north coast of Spitsbergen. Now everything happens at breakneck speed: the ‘Italia’ plummets within seconds – its rear end slams into the pack ice – the force of the impact tears the gondola away from the tail engine – as the airship is now hundreds of kilos lighter, the front section crashes onto the pack ice – the forward gondola also breaks off – ten men are hurled onto the ice – ‘lightened’ by the loss of another gondola, the airship rises again – inside the airship are six mechanics – the airship drifts away, adrift and uncontrolled.
An initial assessment of the damage is sobering: The airship has vanished along with the six men; it has probably caught fire and sunk into the sea. The mechanic Vincenzo Pomella was killed when the front gondola broke off. The technician Natale Ceccione has broken both legs. Commander Umberto Nobile is also seriously injured, with one arm and one leg broken. The remaining seven men are, by comparison, only slightly injured. The dog Titina is nervous but unharmed.
A blessing in disguise: the detached rear gondola contains everything the crew needs to survive on the ice: provisions, a tent, clothes, weapons, batteries, matches and a shortwave emergency radio set, which Nobile had spontaneously brought on board at the last minute before take-off. Radio operator Giuseppe Biagi immediately begins sending SOS signals. But all he hears in reply are the latest sports reports and the newest pop hits. A misfortune within a misfortune: for days on end, the world knows nothing of their crash.
Act Three: The Search, 3 June 1928, 7.30 pm, Vosnesenie, Russia
The ‘Italia’ has been missing for ten days. No one knows whether Nobile and his men are still alive. On the supply airship ‘Città di Milano’, stationed in Spitsbergen at the expedition’s starting point, a fragmentary SOS radio signal was picked up, but it was ignored as a radio operator’s mistake.
Meanwhile, the survivors on the ice have killed a polar bear. Four days ago, three men set off as a sort of advance party to make their way to shore and fetch help: the two naval officers Adalberto Mariano and Filippo Zappi, and the Swedish meteorologist Finn Malmgren.
3,000 kilometres away, in the Russian village of Voznesenye near Arkhangelsk, amateur radio operator Nikolaj Schmidt picks up an SOS call, which he attributes to the airship ‘Italia’. There are survivors! Schmidt’s discovery makes headlines around the world. On 6 June, the radio operator on the ‘Città di Milano’ manages to make contact with Giuseppe Biagi on the ice. What now begins will develop into the largest rescue operation ever undertaken in the Arctic. Famous aeroplane pilots, the new heroes of the skies, set off on reconnaissance flights. Sled dog teams fan out. Ships set sail. By the time the rescue is complete, 21 aircraft and 16 ships from six nations will have been involved, with more than 1,500 rescue workers deployed.
The whole world is absolutely thrilled. Except for one person: Roald Amundsen.
Act Four: The Defeat, 18 June 1928, 4.05 pm, Tromsø, Norway
Amundsen wants to go down in history as the greatest explorer of all time. After all, he did win the race to the South Pole against the British explorer Robert Falcon Scott back then! But he also knows that dead heroes live on longer. Robert Scott met a heroic death on his return journey from the South Pole and thus went down in history on an equal footing with Amundsen.
Now Amundsen is determined, at all costs, to prevent the same thing from happening to him with Umberto Nobile. In Amundsen’s view, it is better to save Nobile than to run the risk of him dying and thus becoming a hero for all time. What’s more: should he, Amundsen, save Nobile, Amundsen will become the ultimate hero.
Amundsen therefore approaches the Italians. But the dictator himself, Benito Mussolini, does not wish Amundsen to be supported in his endeavour.
The French government steps in and provides Amundsen with a seaplane, a Latham 47, complete with a crew of four. Naturally, Amundsen accepts.
The aircraft is flown from France to Tromsø; Amundsen insists on continuing the flight the next day – even though the Latham 47 is in poor condition and the weather is critical. With Amundsen and other men on board, as well as 2,500 litres of fuel, the aircraft is extremely heavy and only manages to take off from the water on the fifth attempt.
At 6.45 pm, the final radio message is sent. Then contact is lost. The aeroplane crashes into the sea. Amundsen and his companions remain missing without a trace to this day.
Two and a half months later, on 31 August, a Norwegian trawler will fish a wing float from the Latham 47 out of the water. It would probably have comforted Amundsen to know that, although Nobile survived, he too would not emerge from this story as a hero.
Act Five: The Pilot, 24 June 1928, on the ice
Swedish Flight Lieutenant Einar Lundborg, in a daring manoeuvre, lands with his observer at the crash site. Four days earlier, an Italian pilot had finally spotted the red tent in the pack ice and dropped provisions. Now Lundborg even manages to land. There is only one free seat in his three-seater Fokker CV. Lundborg insists on flying out the captain – Umberto Nobile – first. Nobile is to coordinate the massive international rescue operation from the base in Spitsbergen.
‘That is my strict order,’ says Lundborg, who knows that a captain is actually supposed to be the last to leave his sinking ship. So the Italian allows himself to be flown out – along with his dog, Titina. Lundborg takes Nobile to Spitsbergen and flies straight back to rescue more people from the ice. But during the subsequent landing, the aeroplane overturns and is wrecked. Although Lundborg survives with minor injuries, he is now trapped in the pack ice himself.
Act Six: The Rescue, 12 July 1928, on the ice
Giuseppe Biagi radioed the ‘Città di Milano’: ‘Sighting the Krassin, about ten kilometres south-west.’ The crew were saved! Twenty-seven days earlier, the Russian ship ‘Krassin’ – at that time the world’s most powerful icebreaker – had set sail from Leningrad to rescue Umberto Nobile and his crew. Thus, after 49 days, the drama has at least come to a reasonably happy ending.
For just one day earlier, on 11 July, the ‘Krassin’ had chanced upon the completely exhausted Adalberto Mariano and Filippo Zappi – two of the three men who had set out from the crash site to seek help. The third member of the rescue party, Finn Malmgren, did not survive the trek. Mariano later had a frostbitten foot amputated on board the ‘Città di Milano’.
The final tally: half of the 16-strong crew of the airship ‘Italia’ survived. Plus the dog.
Aftermath I: The others, 13 July 1928 to the present day, Europe
• Even without a land named after him, Roald Amundsen remains the most successful Arctic and Antarctic explorer of all time. A two-week search operation carried out by the Norwegian Navy in 2009 for the wreckage of the crashed aircraft proved unsuccessful.
• Einar Lundborg dies in a plane crash three years after the ‘Italia’ disaster. He is celebrated today in Sweden as a national hero.
• In 1929, Benito Mussolini presents Einar Lundborg with a watch as a token of gratitude. He later has little success with his fascism. He is shot dead by partisans on 28 April 1945.
• Nikolaj Schmidt probably dies in 1942. To this day, sources disagree as to whether he was a cinema projectionist, a teacher or a farmer. Perhaps he was all of these.
• Shortly after their rescue, Adalberto Mariano and Filippo Zappi were faced with serious allegations that they had eaten their Swedish colleague Finn Malmgren whilst marching through the pack ice. The suspicion of cannibalism was never conclusively cleared up.
• Giuseppe Biagi became a partner in a petrol station in the Italian capital. He died in Rome in 1965.
• Hjalmar Riiser-Larsen has not yet been mentioned at all. The Norwegian aviation pioneer and Amundsen confidant was one of the two Dornier pilots on Amundsen’s flight attempt (Prelude II), was on board the ‘Norge’ (Act I) and took part in the search for the survivors of the ‘Italia’ (Act III). The latter was one of the reasons why Amundsen boarded the aeroplane in which he met his fatal accident: he wanted to get there before his former companion. Riiser-Larsen died on 3 June 1965 in Copenhagen.
• The icebreaker ‘Krassin’ is now a museum ship in St Petersburg.
• In 1929, the ‘Funk-Stunde Berlin’ radio programme broadcast the highly successful radio drama ‘SOS … rao rao … Foyn … Krassin rescues the Italia’. It is now the oldest fully preserved radio drama in the German language.
Epilogue II: Nobile, 13 July 1928 to 30 July 1978, Italy
Nobile’s rescue was celebrated around the world – except in Italy: because, as captain, Nobile had been the first to be rescued, he fell out of favour as a poor example for fascism and was dishonourably discharged from the army by Mussolini. Other sources claim he resigned voluntarily.
Nobile went to Russia, where he worked as an airship engineer. He later became a lecturer in aeronautics in America, spent several years in Spain and eventually returned to Italy. He was rehabilitated in 1945. In 1961, he brought a libel suit against former military officers and politicians, seeing himself as the victim of intrigues. However, the trial did not restore his honour either. Umberto Nobile spent the final years of his life in seclusion in Rome. He died on 30 July 1978, almost completely blind and confined to a wheelchair. Dozens of mementoes from his heyday were found in his flat – along with the stuffed dog Titina.
The dog is now on display at the Italian Aviation Museum in Bracciano.
Christian Hug, PolarJournal