Arctic hero Roald Amundsen perished in search for his rival
OBSERVERS were surprised when Roald Amundsen joined the 1928 search for his rival, Italian aviator Umberto Nobile.
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REPORTS in 1941 of a man known as Amundsen inhabiting a remote Alaskan village followed similarly optimistic speculation in 1931 that the Norwegian explorer was still alive.
The 1941 report said a man discovered at Folk Bay, Alaska, claimed he was Amundsen.
“The man refuses to talk or be photographed, but the Eskimos call him Amundsen,” the account continued.
The location of Folk Bay was not specified, and no further reports on Amundsen emerged from Alaska.
The Norwegian government had abandoned the search for polar explorer Roald Amundsen, then aged 56, and his five aircraft crew members in September 1928. The first man to reach the South Pole, arriving in 1912 after leading the first expedition to traverse Canada’s Northwest Passage between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans in 1906, and a member of the first verified flight over the North Pole, made in 1926, vanished on June 18, 1928.
Amunden’s team had volunteered to join dozens of search missions trying to locate Italian aviation engineer and explorer Umberto Nobile and his 15 expedition companions, who crashed on a mission to land a dirigible at the North Pole.
Nobile, who designed and built the 105.4m long by 19.4m wide Italia balloon, powered by two engines, in Rome with backing from Italy’s Fascist government led by Benito Mussolini, had made several successful flights from Kings Bay on Oscar II Land on the Norwegian island of Spitsbergen, in the Greenland Sea, in May 1928.
On May 23, 1928, the Italia, carrying Nobile and 15 colleagues, left to fly to the North Pole. They reached the Pole without trouble but on their return the weather turned so bad that the Italia could not land and headed back to Kings Bay. Halfway back it was caught in a blizzard and crashed into the ice pack, with the dirigible descending slowly. The cabin struck the ice and part of it broke away, tossing Nobile, his dog Titina and nine other men into the snow. The balloon then floated back into the air, carrying the remaining six crew who were never found.
One man thrown out died instantly, and two, including Nobile, had broken legs. The other seven rigged a shelter with a red tent jettisoned in the crash. They also had some emergency rations and a tiny radio set, but after five days without any response to their radio calls, three decided to walk across the ice for help. Two, Italian Navy officers, would be picked up safely on July 12.
As dozens of rescue missions left Norway, Canada and Russia to search for Nobile’s expedition, some observers were surprised when Amundsen joined them. Nobile had also built and piloted the Norse dirigible that carried Amundsen over the North Pole from Europe to America in 1926. Amundsen claimed to have conceived of an expedition using a dirigible, then considered the Rolls Royce of flying vessels. Although expensive, they delivered outstanding range and durability. Joining Amundsen and Nobile on the expedition was American explorer Lincoln Ellsworth, who added $100,000 to funding from the Aero Club of Norway to finance the trip, as Amundsen was then bankrupt.
Initially known as the Amundsen-Ellsworth 1926 Transpolar Flight, the name was amended to Amundsen-Ellsworth-Nobile Transpolar Flight to recognise Nobile’s contributions. The expedition was also increasingly political, with Norway promoting a Norwegian expedition to fly across the Arctic basin to the North Pole, led by Roald Amundsen. Italy promoted the flight as an expedition to the North Pole led by Mussolini, where Amundsen was present but did not do anything.
When Italy sponsored Nobile on a US tour in November 1926, it was reported that in his lectures Nobile claimed Mussolini had ordered the expedition, that the idea to use an airship to cross the pole first come from Italians, and that although Amundsen had a similar idea, his idea came after the Italians. Nobile also claimed Italians were the key to the success of the expedition, and explained that Ellsworth “and others” deserved credit, but most should go to Mussolini.
When Amundsen learned of Nobile’s US tour, he had himself and Ellsworth removed as honorary members of the Aero Club of Norway, causing a rift with his major sponsor.
Amundsen and Ellsworth also attacked Nobile, claiming he was an incompetent navigator and that although Nobile claimed to have plotted their course, the airship was actually navigated by Norwegian air force officer Hjalmar Riiser-Larsen.
On June 18, 1928, Amundsen and a team of five men, Rene Guilbaud, Leif Dietrichson, Albert Cavelier de Cuverville, Gilbert Brazy and Emile Valette, took off in a French Latham 47 flying boat from Tromso, a city in northern Norway, to help find Italia survivors. Amundsen’s party disappeared into the Barents Sea, where a wing-float and gasoline tank from their aircraft were later found.
Riiser-Larsen joined the search for Amundsen, but was never found. Nobile, who was rescued 40 days later in July 1928, died in 1978, aged 93.
Originally published as Arctic hero Roald Amundsen perished in search for his rival
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