Explorers Colonel Umberto Nobile and Roald Asmundsen prepared nearly one year before launching the dirigible Norge in 1926 on its mission to cross over the Arctic Ocean and its unexplored land masses.
Newspapers in Alaska and Lower 48 devoted headlines and page one stories to covering the daring, likely dangerous, undertaking in a giant aircraft.
Then, on May 12, 1926, something went wrong with the Norge – right as it passed over Point Barrow, Alaska.
A navy relay station in Cordova was one of several communications stations to lose all contact with the Norge and its passengers. The airship had been broadcasting on a 900-meter wave length ever since its departure from Spitzbergen.
Newspapers as far away as Florida made the disappearance their main story of the day, “Groping into the icy vastness of the Arctic `blind spot,’ a dozen Pacific coast and Alaska radio stations today are trying to locate the dirigible Norge, many hours overdue at Nome it its polar flight from Spitzbergen,” noted the Tampa Times’ page one of May 14, accompanied by a detailed Arctic map.
Then, on May 17, the world heard good news and bad news.
The International News Service correspondent H. L. Phillips of Nome wrote a dispatch from Teller after taking “an airplane dash from Nome” to be the only reporter on the scene. Once a boomtown, Teller’s population was very small, and no one at the local landing field had a clue about mooring the craft properly. The aircraft was rendered unflyable as crew and inexperienced volunteers towed it to a beach.
Fortunately, no disastrous explosion occurred. The decision was made to descend in a blinding snowstorm at Teller, rather than risk trying to reach Nome, running out of fuel, and plunging into the Bering Sea.
The Norge, low on fuel and its exterior damaged by Arctic winds, made an emergency landing at Teller. The area was coated with about a foot of snow in many places, though much higher in drifts. The temperature at landing was 14 degrees Fahrenheit.
While partially deflated, the Norge came apart after whipping about in gales of wind. The main frame’s girders were also bent beyond control, according to Col. Nobile, inventor and constructor of the Norge.
Nobile salvaged a few crucial parts, and these were being shipped to his home base in Rome, Italy, so that a replacement dirigible could be built.
A few local souvenir takers rushed the ruptured aircraft but were not allowed to take any parts still operable. “Most of the natives stand in awe of the huge monster which dropped into their midst,” wrote Phillips.
Phillips followed up his coverage a few days later after several false stories circulated in newspapers about what Nobile, Amundsen and their crew saw while passing over the North Pole.
“Some water and a lot of blue ice was all that was seen,” Lieutenant Oskar Omdahl said. “No icebergs were seen and no life north of 82 degrees.” However, he and other crew members agreed that fog blocked view from the dirigible for much of the voyage over northern Alaska and the North Pole.
Omdahl was the sole crew member injured. He grabbed a tipping wood stove with a bare hand to right it in the snowstorm, lest it set fire to the craft and explode.
Captain Amundsen appeared relieved that all had reached Teller safely. “I’m glad to be here,” he told Phillips. Although the ship was destroyed, the goal of reaching the North Pole had been accomplished.
Two years later, in June of 1928, Nobile’s airship Italia crashed while on another ill-starred expedition. Nobile survived but Amundsen and a crew of six flew in search of his friend Nobile and disappeared in the Barents Sea, likely dying on contact or from exposure.
Amundsen was 55 at the time of his death.
Umberto Nobile after World War Two taught at the University of Naples. He died at age 93 in 1978.
Hank Nuwer is a freelance writer living in Fairbanks.
