ItaliaThe Airship Crash Chronicle

Two captains

Roald Amundsen and Umberto Nobile were as different as night and day. One was an offish, somber Scandinavian type who had already traveled to both poles, had no family and preferred to shun society and personal affections. The other was a gleeful Italian, who had designed the first-ever airship destined to reach the North Pole. A favorite of Italy’s fascist party, he used to keep his pet, a fox terrier called Titina, by his side on the hardest trips and, some say, paid the closest attention to the dog’s mood and behavior before departure. Nevertheless, there was one trait that Amundsen and Nobile had in common — both were great dreamers.

The two met for the first time in Oslo in July 1925. Amundsen had asked the Italian engineer to come to Norway to address him with a proposal for a joint trans-Arctic expedition on board the Airship N-1, which was eventually dubbed the Norge. Amundsen vowed that the Norwegian air club would purchase the airship and bankroll all other expenses. The Italian side was to provide the ship and its captain.

The expedition was almost entirely a Norwegian-conceived-and-accomplished undertaking, but all preparations for it were made in Italy. Umberto Nobile

Nobile was very flattered to get such an invitation from the great polar explorer and a handshake clinched the deal. An ambitious pioneer, Amundsen could not wait for the chance to put an end to the old-time debate over whether or not the Arctic ice cap was hiding a northern continent, so he kept encouraging his Italian partner. The expedition left for the North Pole on April 10, 1926.

At first, Amundsen found the presence of a dog on board outrageous, to say the least. Eventually, he had to put up with his fellow traveler’s whims, but could not resist jotting down a sarcastic note in his diary: “Canine cutlets will taste good.” Amundsen positioned himself not only as the expedition’s chief, but also as a master of the situation in general. Alas, his great expectations fell flat — instead of an enigmatic continent, he saw only vast dark water expanses and ice floes below.

In the meantime, the voyage itself stirred up a sensation. The Norge spent a total of 171 hours in the air, including 72 hours above the Arctic Ocean, to have accomplished the up-till-then first-ever trans-Arctic voyage that finally moored in Alaska. It was a real breakthrough in the history of aeronautics. When the expedition was over, Captain Nobile got all the credit, while Amundsen remained just an eminent passenger.

Disaster

Inspired by the successful trip on board the Norge with the world press and Italy’s authorities (Mussolini even promoted him to general) heaping enormous praise on it, Nobile decided to build on his achievement and started brewing plans for another flight to the North Pole on his newly-built airship, the N-4, which as expected was called the Italia.

The Italia was ready for action by the spring of 1928. Pope Pius XI blessed the undertaking. He handed over a large oak cross to Nobile to be brought to the North Pole. Just like any cross, the Pope forewarned, it would be a heavy burden to carry.

The expedition departed from Milan on April 15, 1928. Nobile, for the very first time, ignored Titina’s premonition. His beloved dog resisted with all her might so the explorer had to pick her up to take her on board.

The Italia’s flight got off on the wrong foot from the very first hours. Damaged in a storm over the Alps, the airship had to make a stopover at then Germany’s Stolp (currently Slupsk, Poland). Due to repairs and the delayed arrival of Citta di Milano — the support ship that was commissioned to keep radio contact — the Italia proceeded with the voyage on May 3. Its mooring in Finland also occurred during bad weather. Fortunately, everything went well.

Over Stockholm, the Italia descended to its lowest altitude possible to let one of the crew’s members, Finn Malmgren, drop a note addressed to his mother.

On May 8, the airship arrived at Kings Bay, on Spitsbergen, where the crew immediately got down to business by gearing up for exploration flights.

The airship had a crew of 13, with seven of them having earlier participated in the Norge’s voyage. Following the insistent requests from the board of Milan’s industrialists, which bankrolled the expedition, two journalists were allowed to participate in the airship’s journeys interchangeably. With three scientists included, the mission consisted of 18 members overall.

Two years before that, the Norge showed the whole world that airships were already quite reliable in the Arctic. This time, the purpose was not just to reach the North Pole, but to carry out a series of fact-finding studies. At the North Pole, several researchers equipped with instruments were supposed to disembark for a while to measure the Earth’s magnetism, the force of gravity and the ocean’s depth.

Jagged ice ridges could be seen coming ever closer, just several meters away from the control room. A terrible bang followed in no time at all. The Italia hit the ice 100 kilometers north of Spitsbergen at 10 hours and 33 minutes GMT on May 25, 1928. Meanwhile, the Kings Bay base was a two-hour-flight away.

…I was thrown outside head down. Instinctively, I closed my eyes and thought with indifference, “It’s all over.” Umberto Nobile

Despair

Nobile came round lying on the ice among the airship’s debris, surrounded by some of his crew. The moment the passenger gondola was crushed, the airship, with much of its original weight gone, took off into the sky again and vanished within seconds. It carried away six crewmembers, who at the moment of the disaster were inside the envelope and the lateral engine gondolas. A considerable amount of equipment, gear and food supplies disappeared, too. Only those who were inside the gondola at the moment of collision, now found themselves amid the debris.

The crash survivors spent a while examining each other and the surrounding terrain. Nobile thought his end was just a matter of minutes. The Arctic explorer felt as if his intestines were damaged beyond recovery. Well, it may be even better this way, since he would not be destined to see the despair and agony of his comrades, Nobile kept telling himself.

The wide 50-meter-long red strip of aniline paint that had seeped from the spherical containers the airship’s crew used for measuring altitude resembled a bloodstained trail left by an injured beast. Frantisek Behounek

In the meantime, Behounek discovered a sack with a tent and sleeping bags in the snow. A decision was taken to use the remaining paint to color the tent red, thus making it easier to notice. Several crumpled food cans that had fallen out during the crash were found in the snow. There was some pemmican (dry meat concentrate, chocolate, cream bars and a kegful of butter). Another valuable find that dropped out of the airship was a small bag with the most precious item of all — a Colt revolver and a box containing a hundred cartridges. Five days later, Malmgren would use it to kill a polar bear, thus considerably replenishing the food reserve.

Radio operator Giuseppe Biagi pulled through and his radio transmitter remained intact. This offered some hope, because Italy’s support ship, the Citta di Milano, was on stand-by alert on the high seas during all of the Italia’s three voyages. The ship’s second radio operator, Ettore Pedretti, was destined to be the first to pick up the Italia’s distress call. Pedretti did get part of that message four days after the crash, but for some reason he interpreted it as a signal coming from a radio station in Mogadishu — the capital of then Italian-controlled Somalia in Africa.

SOS-Italia-Nobile. Crashed on ice. Our coordinates are 81°14' North and 25° East. Two had their legs hurt. Unable to move without sled. Giuseppe Biagi

Biagi kept radioing for help on and on without any success. Meanwhile, the batteries were on the verge of dying, along with the optimism of those left stranded from the airship wreck. The day when Pedretti picked up and failed to pinpoint the Italia’s SOS call, the disheartened voyagers had an argument. The next day three of them: Malmgren, Mariano and Zappi volunteered to set out on foot in search of assistance. In three weeks’ time, they hoped, it might be possible to reach the northern extremity of Spitsbergen, where chances of coming across a large ship were high.

The others were very skeptical about the idea of splitting up into two teams. Cecioni vowed that Malmgren, Mariano and Zappi would not endure a single day of trekking on foot across the ice floes and would certainly turn back. “See you tomorrow evening,” he kept saying. At first, Nobile was against the idea of splitting the group, but Malmgren who was an experienced Arctic explorer proposed the plan. Nobile thought the man knew what he was saying and let them go.

May 31: Three black spots could be seen for the entire day, gradually getting smaller as they slowly moved westwards. Frantisek Behounek

Rescue

On June 3, 1928, a young village tractor driver and movie projector operator in a tiny Russian village, Nikolai Schmidt (a shortwave radio enthusiast in his spare time) was spending the evening seated in front of his makeshift radio, surfing the shortwaves. He knew very well that Nobile was in the Arctic, but the news that the expedition went missing had not yet reached Voznesenye-Vokhma, his village in the dense forests near Kostroma. The daily papers were always one week late there. As soon as he got the SOS message, Schmidt sensed there was something very critical. The next day he borrowed some money from a neighbor to send a cable message to Moscow, to the USSR Friends of the Radio Society. The message was forwarded to the Sovnarkom (the Council of People’s Commissars, the then name of the Soviet Cabinet of Ministers), who in turn notified the Italian government.

In the meantime, somebody in Norway began to sense apprehension over the lack of news from the Italia for such a long time and even suspected that a calamity had occurred. That somebody was Roald Amundsen. As soon as he got confirmation, Amundsen made up his mind to assemble a search-and-rescue expedition urgently. At the time of the Italia’s expedition, quite a few Italian journalists were in Norway, which is only natural. Amundsen was interviewed by one of them, Davide Guidici from Corriere della Sera, and he shared his thoughts about life and death:

Oh, if only you could know how wonderful it is to be there, in the high latitudes! This is where I would like to die. May death visit me in a gallant way, just when I accomplish some great mission. May it be fast and easy! Roald Amundsen

Everything that had cast a shadow over his relations with General Nobile must be considered water under the bridge, Amundsen added. He was not to be stopped even by the thought that Bess Magids, an American woman to whom he had been engaged, and who had finally agreed to be his bride, was already on the way to Norway for their wedding that was destined to never happen.

Why Amundsen, no longer a young man (at that moment he was 56) rush to search for a former rival? Did he feel pangs of remorse for the fate of Robert Scott’s expedition, who had lost the race to the South Pole or for the death of his comrades in his own previous quests? Or was it panic and fear of finally settling down and starting the life of a family man? Or even just the unquenchable thirst for a hero’s acclaim?

Whatever the case, Amundsen was not the only one who had realized that the Italia was in trouble. The governments of Italy, Norway, Sweden and the Soviet Union were preparing their own search and rescue operations.

Any attempts by Nobile and the Krasin crew to continue the search for the six crewmembers carried away with the envelope after the crash were banned from Rome, where all had been listed as dead.

I could not stop thinking about the dismal plight of the six others the envelope carried away. Will we manage to bring them back to life? Rudolf Samoilovich

The operation to rescue the Italia’s crew was over. It had lasted for a little less than two months and involved six countries, 18 ships, 21 planes, and 1,500 men.

Upon arrival at Kings Bay, all those rescued were transferred to the Citta di Milano. On July 22, they headed home. The Krasin remained in the Arctic until the autumn searching for Roald Amundsen — dead or alive — but achieved nothing. It returned to Leningrad on October 5 to be welcomed by a quarter of a million city residents.

Memory

Amundsen’s disappearance was a national tragedy for Norway. The Krasin’s crewmembers recalled that as the icebreaker moved along the Norwegian shores local people kept shouting out to them: “Save our Amundsen.” Alas, in the small hours of September 1, a fishing boat called the Brodd picked up a pontoon from the Latham 47. The plane’s fuel tank was found sometime later.

At home the ruling party’s top brass received Nobile with no enthusiasm. He was rebuked for abandoning his comrades on the ice and for the disaster in general. Nobile fell into disfavor and preferred to leave the Air Force. A year later, Nobile received an unexpected invitation from the Soviet authorities to head an experimental airship production plant. He accepted. Nobile came to the Soviet Union in the spring of 1932 together with a group of fellow engineers, one of whom was a member of his crew on the Italia, Felice Trojani.

In the less than five years, Nobile spent in the Soviet Union he arranged for the production of and designed three airships that in some respects were replicas of the Italia. Later he would describe the time spent in the Soviet Union as the best years of his life. As for his favorite pet, Titina, who had scurvy in the Arctic, he took her to a dentist. Rumor has it, the dog got gold teeth. Passing schoolboys found this very amusing and funny. There were even some attempts to abduct the gold-toothed canine, some say. There were even some attempts to abduct the gold-toothed canine, some say. All this happened in the Dirizhablestroi (literally meaning Airship Building) neighborhood near Moscow. Today, this area is the town of Dolgoprudny.

In 1936, Nobile returned to Italy, while some of his men remained in the Soviet Union. Over the next two years, some of them fell victim to the Great Purge, the campaign of terror that affected many participants in this saga. One in seven members of the Krasin’s crew was repressed and the chief of the expedition, Rudolf Samoilovich, shot. So was the DXer who picked up the Italia’s distress call, Nikolai Schmidt.

When war broke out between the US and Italy at the end of 1941, Nobile decided — and finally achieved, though with difficulty — to return to Italy, to share the destiny of his country. After the demise of the Fascist government and the end of WWII, he was reinstated in his rank at the Italian Air Force.

He lived long enough to see himself as a character on the silver screen in the 1969 Soviet-Italian production called The Red Tent, based on a same-name novel by Soviet author Yuri Nagibin. The film version of the 1928 drama featured an incredible assembly of world-renowned Soviet and foreign film stars: Peter Finch, Sean Connery, Eduard Martsevich, Nikita Mikhalkov, Donatas Banionis, Yuri Solomin, Boris Khmelnitsky, Yuri Vizbor and even Claudia Cardinale, whose film character did not exist in real life.

After the film hit the silver screen, Nobile would live for nearly another 10 years. He died on July 30, 1978 aged 93, half a century after his return from a voyage that earned him both praise and condemnation.