Think of what it will mean, to fly in comparative comfort and security above treacherous ice which has threatened other explorers at every step. Never before have I entered an expedition with so few misgivings.
KINGS BAY IN 1926 consisted of twenty-two houses and a company store clustered around a mine shaft. One American newspaper writer rhapsodized, “[A]ll about, the high silent white peaks shine down in the reflected sunlight dazzling to the eyes of the ‘tenderfoot.’” Giant snow banks filled the spaces between the wooden houses, which “looked more like summer cottages at the seashore than homes for the Arctic. All need a stove in every room.” The reporter commented on northern hospitality and the friendliness of the people, but added, with a dramatic flourish Amundsen would have appreciated, “the Arctic smiles now, but behind the silent hills is death.”
In the summer of 1926, Amundsen was not alone in his attempt to reach the North Pole. American and British teams were also planning polar flights. In April, the New York Times had announced:
“Massed Attack on the Polar Regions Begins Soon.” Tiny Kings Bay was a hive of activity as news correspondents from around Europe and America arrived to report on the spectacle of competing national teams racing into the Arctic wastes to seek glory and fame in their new-fangled flying machines, and perhaps to announce the existence of the earth’s final undiscovered islands. There was also a competing Norwegian-German airship expedition, which planned to cross over the North Pole the following year, using a much larger, fully rigid airship of German design, and Australian aviator George Hubert Wilkins was leading an American expedition to fly to the North Pole from Point Barrow, Alaska, in spite of Amundsen’s failed attempt from there two years earlier. There were even reports of a Russian overland expedition.
Bernt Balchen, a young Norwegian pilot and air force lieutenant who was part of Amundsen’s ground crew, recorded the arrival of a mysterious ship that was part of the “massed attack”: “All morning long we have paused now and then in our work, and glanced at the smoking funnel on the horizon, and muttering uneasily to each other. We are not sure yet. It could be a supply ship for the mine, or a sealer headed for the ice pack. We look over the tar paper roofs of the mining camp, toward the superintendent’s house on the hill where Captain Amundsen is living. Has he heard yet, does he know?” The ship neared Kings Bay before it radioed ashore. It was the American ship Chantier, carrying Lieutenant Commander Richard E. Byrd of the U.S. Navy, his pilot, Floyd Bennett, fifty men who formed the expedition party, and two Fokker Trimotor airplanes packed in crates, one named the Josephine Ford. The young and ambitious Byrd, who had made an exploratory flight in the vicinity of Greenland the previous year, was now planning to fly to the North Pole and return along the same route Amundsen and Ellsworth had attempted the previous year. Byrd later claimed that “[a]ll three of us—Amundsen, Wilkins and myself—are seeking to discover new land and also to conquer the Arctic from the air. It is not exactly a race, but there is an element of competition in there.”
Naturally, some of Amundsen’s crew were suspicious and unfriendly. “All work at our base has halted,” recalled Balchen, “and the men of the Amundsen expedition stand in silent groups along the bluff. We resent this foreign ship coming here to our country to snatch the prize, which we feel belongs to Captain Amundsen alone. We of his party are loyal to him to the point of worship, and any one of us would lay down our life without question for one of the greatest of all living explorers.” Balchen’s colourful description then focused on Amundsen, who had skied to inspect the newcomers. “We all look up to the lone figure on the hill behind us. People always turn to look at Roald Amundsen, as their eyes would be drawn to the tallest mountain. . . . His face is expressionless and we cannot read it. Beneath the thick tufts of his eyebrows, white as hoarfrost, his eyes in the deep sockets are hidden in shadow. His cheeks are leathery and folded in hard creases, with a fine network of wrinkles spreading out from the corners of his eyes like a map of all the dog trails he has run. The most prominent feature of his face is the thin and arched nose, which gives him the look of an eagle. It is a face carved in a cliff, the face of a Viking.”
Amundsen’s crew stood watching their leader on the ridge, waiting for him to speak, “but he pivots on his skis without a word and strides back to the headquarters building.” Amundsen never shied from a race—it was good for publicity—and he probably didn’t care much whether Byrd flew over the North Pole first; the North Pole, everyone believed at the time, had already been visited first by Peary, and the object of Amundsen’s expedition was grander in scope: the Norge would cross over the Pole and continue through the unexplored regions of the Arctic Ocean to Alaska. But Amundsen knew that if Byrd failed, the Norge would be commandeered into the rescue operation, probably ruining the chances for his ambitious Arctic crossing that year. Furthermore, the publicity stemming from any disaster that befell Byrd would detract from Amundsen’s own objectives.
The July 1925 issue of Popular Science Monthly earnestly profiled the polar race and its personalities, dubbing it “the most sensational sporting event in human history.” In its June issue, it had proclaimed, “None of us need be surprised if from the desolate North is flashed the news of some of the most far-reaching events of modern times—events that will affect the lives of all of us.” Boy’s Life headlined its lead story “The Attack on the Pole,” filling it with much talk of brave men doing battle with the bitter Arctic. Various other publications displayed similar sensational headlines, some suggesting that the race was the greatest heroic undertaking since the war, if not “in human history.” Amundsen himself provided a thoughtful comment: “Think of what it will mean, to fly in comparative comfort and security above treacherous ice which has threatened other explorers at every step. Never before have I entered an expedition with so few misgivings.”
In addition to the usual raft of reporters for numerous newspapers, there were now also cinematographers with their primitive movie cameras filming the goings-on at Spitsbergen. The newspapers ran a near-daily update on the participants, their equipment and, of course, the weather. Unlike the media that had been available to cover the race to the South Pole a decade and a half earlier, advances in wireless communication meant that regular updates were possible and indeed became common. In the New York Times, the Amundsen-Ellsworth polar expedition was covered so extensively that some updates merely indicated that “snow and winds keep Norge in shed,” continuing with a description of the snow and the winds and just how they were keeping the Norge in its shed. Other articles speculated on what Amundsen expected to discover, where he planned to land in Alaska and where he would seek refuge in the event of disaster. Nearly every literate person must have known about the event, given the quantity of print coverage.
Every few days, reporters stationed in Kings Bay also sent back reports about Byrd’s preparations, including the details of how he unloaded his planes from the ship, how the construction of the runway was progressing and when a supply ship arrived. Of great interest was the ways in which the rival groups entertained each other in the isolated settlement. Amundsen and Ellsworth invited Byrd and Bennett and several others to “the big mess hall where four languages are spoken at every meal. There are no flowers in Spitsbergen yet, so the table decorations of sprouting onions in tin cups were the only green things on the island. It was difficult to know whether to eat or admire such blossoms,” the reporter admitted.
The explorers were on their best behaviour with the press; however, the problem was that Byrd and Amundsen had each sold exclusive rights to the documentation of their adventures, but to competing syndicates. The result was that one group’s reporters couldn’t photograph, film or write about the activities of the rival group without violating exclusivity contracts. Amundsen would be in violation of his contract if he allowed the media following Byrd’s enterprise to document his own expedition in any way, and vice versa. But Kings Bay was a small place, and the media really couldn’t help but stumble over one another. A sort of media war broke out as each group of journalists tried secretly to get a scoop from the other, particularly after the Norge cruised into its hangar on May 7 after a difficult ocean crossing from Europe. The ground crew manoeuvred the spectacular cigar-shaped airship into its hangar with ropes and pulleys. The hangar dominated the scenery around Kings Bay and was impossible to ignore, being 30 metres high and 110 metres long.
There were “undercover operations and secret infiltrations,” according to Balchen. “Scouts from the rival syndicates creep past each other, the Amundsen raiders disguised in American sailor hats, and the Byrd snipers wearing Norwegian ski caps.” With no night, thus no darkness, to conceal furtive actions, the task was made more difficult, but even so a flash bulb might pop and motion-picture cameras whirr near the Josephine Ford and the Norge when least expected. “A skulking still photographer pops out of an empty crate to click a close up of the Josephine Ford or as we enter the dirigible hangar we see a pair of heels disappearing out the other end, the scurrying figure bowlegged under a heavy camera and tripod.”
At first there was some unhelpful competition between the two expeditionary groups, born of the crews’ excessive loyalty to their commanders. When Byrd wanted to unload the components of his airplane at the dock, the Norwegian captain of the coal boat stationed there refused to move his ship, so Byrd and his men were forced to haul the equipment ashore across the ice floes that clogged the bay. Although Amundsen had no authority over a local coal ship, Byrd felt that Amundsen was trying, however passively, to obstruct his efforts even while remaining outwardly friendly. Ellsworth felt that he and Amundsen had “every reason to be disgruntled” for what he believed was a trespass on their prior right to be in Kings Bay. Byrd’s presence was feared to be damaging their chances of recouping their enormous expenses by flooding the market with more books, lectures and motion pictures. Saturation was an uncomfortable prospect.
Amundsen, however, could not retreat into defensive partisanship. He did not want a repeat of the competitive situation with Scott and the race to the South Pole a decade and half earlier. Amundsen’s initial seemingly unhelpful attitude toward Byrd probably stemmed from a fear of violating the exclusive media contracts he had signed. After Byrd had failed in several attempts at a lift-off, Amundsen offered the aid that ensured Byrd’s success. In particular, he got his men to help with the selection of a suitable location for Byrd’s runway and with its construction. He also advised Byrd on the best time to attempt a lift-off, provided tips on when the ice was hardest and therefore offered the least resistance, and supplied Byrd and his pilot with emergency supplies and equipment—snowshoes, warm boots and a small sledge—none of which they had brought.
Perhaps most importantly, Balchen helped construct stronger skis for the Josephine Ford after two had cracked during a test flight, something he said he did at Amundsen’s request but which Byrd at the time felt was done in spite of Amundsen (Balchen and Byrd later became friends). Byrd could hardly have gotten into the air without Amundsen’s help: “We had much to learn,” he admitted privately. When Byrd commented that Amundsen was being very generous to a competitor, Amundsen replied that he didn’t feel they were competing but were engaged in different facets of the same goal; that Byrd was merely flying to the North Pole, while Amundsen and the Norge were crossing to Alaska—what else could he say? “Nothing stimulates like competition,” Amundsen claimed, “nothing encourages exploration more. It seems absurd that all should stay away from a place that someone had announced his intentions to explore.”
Nobile had wanted the Norge to depart before Byrd did, but perhaps to counter the lingering notion that he had been devious in rushing to the South Pole without informing Scott of his intentions, Amundsen flatly denied Nobile the chance to ready the Norge to leave before Byrd had completed his flight. It was the first public disagreement between the two proud men. Amundsen was determined to give Byrd his chance to fly to the North Pole, but Nobile was displeased at losing a chance for further glory for himself, his airship and Fascist Italy, probably in that order. Also on May 7, a cable arrived from Point Barrow, where Wilkins had finally brought his planes. Wilkins asked about the weather in Spitsbergen: was it good for a crossing from Alaska? But he would have no better luck at Point Barrow than Amundsen had had in 1923; his airplanes were damaged in the test flights, and he was forced into an ignominious retreat.
In Kings Bay, Amundsen, Ellsworth and their crew anxiously waited for good weather—clear skies and low winds—while Nobile worked on the Norge, repairing a damaged engine and adding glycerine to the cooling system to prevent the engine from freezing. Balchen was hastily giving skiing lessons to the five willing Italians, who had never seen snow—“the poor souls longed for their sunny Naples,” he wrote. On May 8, Byrd and his men had finally readied the Josephine Ford for the flight, but the airplane still couldn’t lift off, and Balchen suggested that Byrd try again at midnight, when the snow would be firmer and offer less resistance. Its engines roared to life once again, and this time the Josephine Ford shot down the icy runway and lifted into a clear sky. When silence returned to the base, the men tried to get on with their regular duties; but there was an edge of anxiety that disrupted everything. Occasionally they stopped to turn and listen while scanning the northern sky.
The next day they were sitting down to dinner in the mess hall, about fifteen and a half hours after takeoff, according to Balchen, when “one of the Italian soldiers comes bounding into the mess hall, out of breath. He chatters in broken English, ‘she come—a motor!’” They dropped their forks and rushed to welcome the incoming airplane, photographers and reporters readying their equipment. Because Byrd was arriving several hours earlier than expected and his American media crew were still aboard their ship, it was Amundsen’s motion picture crew who filmed the momentous event. As Byrd and Bennett climbed out of the machine onto the snow, Amundsen organized “nine good Norwegian cheers.” A photograph shows Byrd and Bennett dressed in their flying furs, Amundsen and Ellsworth standing on either side, shaking their hands and congratulating them. Amundsen probably should have been a little curious about the timing of the flight—Byrd had returned ahead of schedule and with broken navigational equipment, and he claimed to have made the return flight by dead reckoning. Given the known speed of the Fokker airplane that Byrd and Bennett were flying, it has since been established that reaching the North Pole would have been impossible in that timeframe. On that day, though, Byrd was heralded as a hero for his aeronautical feat.
On May 11, Nobile pronounced the Norge ready to fly. Cables were attached to the enormous airship, and dozens of men were hauling it slowly from its hangar onto the snowy field when an unexpected wind blew up partway through the operation. There had been disagreements among the organizers. Nobile had slaved all night, getting the airship loaded and ready for the flight because he was planning to leave around one in the morning, when it was coldest and the airship would have the greatest lift. But as the Norwegian contingent failed to arrive, Nobile anxiously waited for hours, valving-off gas three times as the temperature rose, until Amundsen, Ellsworth and Riiser-Larsen slowly trudged over after having had their breakfast. Nobile, tired, hungry and irritable after his vigil, noticed that the wind had picked up again and wanted to cancel the flight for that day. Amundsen, however, dismissed Nobile’s concerns as “nervous excitement,” and Riiser-Larsen proceeded to organize hauling the Norge from its hangar while Nobile stood by, nervously “supervising”—a quick gust could spin the airship into the side of hangar and break a delicate fin or an engine. No one knows why the Norwegians arrived so late, or indeed why Nobile didn’t just go and rouse them from their cabins, but the language barrier is the probable culprit: the Italians didn’t speak Norwegian and the Norwegians didn’t speak Italian, and Ellsworth spoke neither language. So English became the operational language of the expedition, even though many of the crew did not speak English except in the most rudimentary fashion.
Fortunately the Norge was not damaged by the gusts, and the flight crew quickly boarded. The ground crew let go of the ropes and the dirigible shot into the air, propelling its way toward the North Pole in a cloudless blue sky. As the icy peaks of Spitsbergen receded in the distance, the North Pole was 1,200 kilometres away and the cruising speed of the Norge was about 80 kilometres per hour. Byrd and Bennett, who had fired up the Josephine Ford, flew alongside the Norge for a while before returning when the airship reached the pack ice. The next day, newspapers around the world ran special editions to celebrate the launch. In Italy, in an incident that didn’t augur well, it was proclaimed that the airship was sailing “under an Italian flag, in the spirit of fascism.” Norwegian newspapers were equally possessive. The Norge flight had become politics, not mere entertainment, and certainly not science—there were no scientists on board.
As the Norge buzzed ever northward across the frigid expanse, wispy patches of polar fog snaked across the ice. The only signs of life were occasional seals, polar bear tracks and a few birds. After nearly a day of travel the fog cleared to reveal, once again, a featureless, wind-blown plain of white nothingness. It was empty, eerie and haunting in its desolation, particularly for anyone not used to the polar environment. On the other hand, it was a routine flight in terms of the activity required of the crew, distinguished chiefly for its cold temperatures and the men’s trepidation at entering the unknown.
All the crew had small tasks to do as they operated various propulsion or steering machines. Piloting an airship was certainly not a one-person job. There were ten men in the cabin, and six others out in the rigging checking the gas cells and valves, while others checked on and maintained the engines at the rear of the enormous airship. Men from the cabin crew continuously rounded the vessel on its catwalks, their eyes always scanning for possible problems, spelling each other off when they could no longer endure the bitter cold. Nobile’s dog stayed close to her master, though her presence was technically a breach of the rules. (Amundsen overlooked this, perhaps in a spirit of generosity.) Cooking on board ship was prohibited, to avoid the risk of an explosion resulting from escaping gas. It can hardly have been a relaxing flight for the crew, clothed in fur garments in the unheated cabin, comforted with thermoses of coffee and tea and cold sandwiches, hardboiled eggs frozen as solid as rocks, all the while wondering about gas leaks.
Most of the actual piloting was done by Oscar Wisting, as Lieutenant Emil Horgen controlled the lift and horizontal rudder wheels. Riiser-Larsen was the principle navigator, doing the calculations by hand and relaying the information to Nobile, who then made judgments and told the pilots what to do. The radio operator kept busy relaying messages of the airship’s progress across the top of the world to eager newspapers. Although there was a perpetual drone from the engines and occasional engine trouble caused by frozen water vapour, the only real danger came from ice forming on the dirigible as it entered fog, which made it heavier and harder to control when its valves and flaps jammed. Whereas it needed to be low to the ground for better visibility in the fog, it risked a deadly ice build-up at lower altitudes as well.
Other navigators, including Ellsworth, were busy with sextant observations, sun readings and magnetic compass bearings, in an effort to determine position. The Norge neared the North Pole at around 1:30 a.m. on May 12. As Riiser-Larsen squinted into his sextant, he announced: “Ready the flags. Now we are there.” Nobile called for the engines to be cut, and all went quiet as the giant dirigible slowly drifted over an unremarkable icy spot. It then began to slowly circle the lifeless location at about 100 metres elevation. In the great cabin, Amundsen stared over at his old companion Wisting, who had been at the South Pole with him. Now they were together at the opposite end of the earth, the first people in history to obtain this distinction. They did not say anything, merely exchanging a quiet handshake. No doubt it was an emotional if un-demonstrative moment. Amundsen, then Ellsworth, and then Nobile, brought out their national flags, attached to sharp metal poles, and dropped them to the ice below, where they stuck upright, fluttering slightly in the wind.
Nobile had firmly told Amundsen and Ellsworth to bring only small flags, about the size of handkerchiefs, to keep the weight down on the airship, so they stared in astonishment when he brought forth an enormous Italian flag, carried reverently in a special casket under Mussolini’s orders. Nobile also brought forth several other pennants and flags representing various cities and associations, which he dumped out the window of the cabin making the airship look, in Amundsen’s words, “like a circus wagon in the skies.” One of Nobile’s fluttering flags was so large that it drifted toward one of the engines and was caught in the slowly spinning propellers, nearly damaging the rotor. Amundsen laughed at Nobile, annoyed both at the duplicity and the Italian’s conceit. It was reminiscent of the time when Nobile told all the men on the voyage to reduce their clothing allowance and then provided all of his own men with ceremonial uniforms. Nobile ignored the derision and wrote in his log book: “Planted the Italian Flag at the Pole.” From here all directions led south.
How many men could claim to have been at the North Pole by 1926? Frederick Cook’s claim to have been the first arrival had never really been accepted, and he was widely believed to have provided fraudulent evidence. Peary was widely believed at the time to have been there on foot, but that claim has been challenged and is no longer universally accepted. He may not have been deceitful, but he failed to account for the drifting of pack ice in his calculations and was overly generous in his estimations of the distance he travelled over the ice. He probably never came within a reasonable distance of the North Pole, certainly not enough to be credited with attaining it. As for Byrd, the controversy over his flight was to come in the following years, when the true distance he claimed to have flown was calculated to have been unrealistically far for that type of airplane and that duration of flight. The crew of the Norge, on the other hand, were the first to indisputably reach the North Pole. All of Amundsen’s records have stood the test of time. This is something uncommon for that era, when assessing an explorer’s claims was difficult and yet the fame, prestige and money awarded for claiming an exotic geographical conquest were great enough to propel men into fraudulent claims for their achievements.
After an hour of circling the North Pole, the Norge’s engines roared and the airship turned to cross the unknown expanse toward Alaska. For Amundsen and Ellsworth, the exciting part of the journey was just beginning—the search for new land. Every hour brought never-before-seen terrain and the possibility of bumping into the mountain range Peary claimed to have sighted years earlier. The two explorers hovered near the airship’s windows, their eyes scanning the horizon for any variation in the ice plain. Meanwhile, exhaustion was beginning to take its toll on the crew. They had already had a night of interrupted sleep before they left, and then another aboard the airship, where the incessant noise of the engines and the howling of the wind, freezing temperatures and cramped conditions were not conducive to relaxation or sleep. Discarded thermoses and food littered the cramped cabin floor. Although excitement had accompanied them to the North Pole, weariness now set in. Nobile got some sleep—a lot, according to Amundsen; barely a few hours, Nobile claimed afterward.
A couple of hours after they left the pole, mysterious pools of fog began to appear. They grew larger, until finally the Norge was enveloped in fog. Not only did this hamper visibility, frustrating Amundsen and Ellsworth, but it began to slowly condense into ice on the exterior of the airship. Eventually the ice formed an enormous crust and made the airship much heavier, ruining Nobile’s carefully arrived-at weight-to-gas-and-ballast calculations.
Occasionally chunks of ice would break off and slide down the canvas coat of the airship, falling into its engines. When a chunk hit the whirling propeller blades it was shot into the outer shell, rending it in several places. The real worry was that the shards of ice would puncture a gas chamber or damage a propeller blade, either stalling or deflating the airship, and causing it to crash on the ice. So Nobile reduced the rotational speed of the outer engines, slowing the airship down and prolonging their journey. The irregular positioning of the remaining and accumulating ice continued to create a great danger, however: it was forming more heavily on the bow of the ship, pulling the nose down until the crew’s frenzied shifting of ballast compensated for it. Soon ice coated the aerial wire that dangled behind the airship, too, cutting off all contact with the outside world; a situation only Amundsen regarded as normal. Not only could the Norge not report its position and observations, it no longer had access to updated weather reports in Alaska. Rescue ships were put on alert because no one knew why radio contact with the airship had ended. But no rescue ship could reach the crew where they were now. Nobile later accused Amundsen of deliberately cutting radio contact, for which there is no evidence; but the dire situation no doubt heightened the tension and excitement of the expedition in a way that regular check-ins could never do.
After a few hours, the fog dissipated and the airship droned onward, looking for land. The crew saw no land, only ice covering a vast sea. Then, as chunks of ice continued to slide off the exterior of the airship, causing more tears in the outer coating, Riiser-Larsen called out “Land ahead to starboard!” And when the crew took their measurements, they determined that the Norge was drifting along the north coast of Alaska. The last great unknown region of the earth had been crossed, and there was no new land to be found. Later that morning the airship cruised slowly over a frozen beach. Amundsen thought the land looked like Point Barrow, but with visibility poor he couldn’t be certain. Pushed by an increasing tailwind and turbulent conditions, the ship headed along the coast until the crew saw some Inuit below, looking up at them and waving. Then they saw the red roofs of a caribou farm that Amundsen and Omdal knew to be near Wainwright; in fact, they could see Amundsen’s cabin, where people stood on the roof cheering and waving. Among the crowds were George Wilkins and his co-pilot, the Norwegian Ben Eilson, the other competitors in that summer’s race to the North Pole, who had been unable to fly after their earlier crash due to fog.
But the voyage wasn’t over. The final day of the four-day flight was the most dangerous and most difficult. The men were exhausted. Riiser-Larsen reported having hallucinations, and others fell into stunned slumber where they stood, having slept little since leaving Kings Bay. Amundsen and Nobile were faced with yet another decision: take the long route, following around the coast to Nome, or turn inland and over the mountains to reach Nome directly. These mountains had never been crossed by a flying machine and their elevation was unknown, making the trip particularly dangerous.
Soon the decision was made for them. Erratic winds began to buffet the Norge and more ice began to form as the airship drifted uncontrollably out over the Bering Strait. The crew scrambled out along the rigging to knock off the ice, its weight threatening to drag the craft into the frigid waters. The men were poorly equipped to respond to this emergency. Many had received only basic training, and they were still unable to converse in a common language. The airship was alternately driven low over the water and tossed into the air. “I cannot attempt to give any details of this breathless race under the implacable fog, among the hills, over the ice of Kotzbue Bay, over frozen lagoons,” Nobile wrote afterward. “Who can tell what route we followed, or how we wound in and out of the fog? Even today I can still live through the emotions of this wild flight under the fog, without knowing where we were or where we were going; but the recollection is confused, as in a nightmare.”
The temperature fluctuated with the Norge’s altitude changes, making it nearly impossible for Nobile to accurately estimate how much hydrogen to valve off in order to keep the airship as high as possible. There was no more ballast to drop to make the craft lighter, but if Nobile released too much gas it would be too heavy when the storm cleared. Should they fly under or over the fog? What was the weight of the ice on the outside of the ship? When the airship finally made its way back toward the coast, Nobile feared that a rogue gust of wind would knock the airship into the mountainous terrain. If it did hit, there might only be seconds to jump from the damaged airship before it exploded—the vast volume of hydrogen would go up in flames instantly with a spark of electricity or an open flame. So the airship continued south along the coast, weaving between hills, trying to keep below the fog. Villages appeared and disappeared, people waved. There was little the crew could do to change their predicament.
Riiser-Larsen decided to check their position by using his sextant to take a reading on the sun. He climbed along the ladders to the bow to get out from underneath the shadow of the airship, as Nobile was steering it higher to get above the fog. As soon as the airship cleared the fog, the sun heated up its surface and the hydrogen gas expanded, swelling the chambers to bursting. The automatic valves started releasing gas, but not fast enough to solve the immediate crisis of the chambers nearly bursting. The airship was still pointed up for the ascent. Nobile desperately spun the elevator wheel, but it didn’t respond. In desperation he began yelling in Italian and gesticulating wildly in the direction of the front of the airship, while the Norwegians looked on in bewilderment.
Only after a few agonizing moments did they realize what he was saying. They rushed to the nose of the airship, clambering along the gangplank and shifting their weight until the airship slowly tilted downward before its gas chambers exploded. But now the airship was plunging precipitously through the fog toward the ground. The men dashed back to the cabin. During a period of only a couple of minutes, the Norge had soared to 1,650 metres before plummeting to little over 180 metres while being blown inland with the wind.
On another occasion Nobile forgot to respond to Riiser-Larsen’s shout to fly up—he stood at the elevator wheel stunned and unresponsive, probably literally asleep at the wheel, while the airship roared toward a hilltop, until Riiser-Larsen pushed him aside and cranked on the wheel. The ship reversed direction again, barely avoiding the ground. And once, they came so close to a hilltop in the fog that the dangling antenna hooked on some rocks and snapped off. Although Amundsen saw these incidents as yet further evidence of Nobile’s poor flying ability, they more likely pointed to the unsuitability of using hydrogen-filled dirigibles to fly in regions where temperatures and winds fluctuate wildly.
More storms followed along the coastline while the Norge bucked in the headwinds, at one point making no progress at all. Nobile, totally exhausted, fell asleep in Amundsen’s chair. Nevertheless they continued, and a few hours later spied the roofs of houses below. They agreed to land the airship, even though Amundsen knew the community wasn’t Nome. The Norge cruised over a three-masted ship in the frozen bay and readied an enormous anchor and the landing ropes. But it was still not over. Before anyone had climbed down, a sudden gust pushed the airship toward the shore, pulling loose the anchor. Nobile cranked the valves to release hydrogen. The great machine began to sag and shrink, accompanied by the sounds of a tonne of ice cracking and falling from the outer shell. Its terrified crew slid down the ropes while the great beast collapsed around its skeletal framework, limp and unresponsive, in a field not far from the cottages. A group of onlookers gathered round, quietly staring at the deflated behemoth. Where were they? “Teller” came the reply—still about 160 kilometres north of Nome, but safe enough. The New York Times promptly ran a curious story, “Amundsen Visited Teller Back in 1922,” detailing his previous visit to the community in the Maud to purchase reindeer meat.
The world’s final patch of undiscovered geography was discovered not from the deck of a heaving ship or from behind a pack of panting dogs, but from inside the technological wonder of a flying ship, where the explorers were curiously removed from the event. Outside the window of the droning machine the surface of the earth had passed unremarkably beneath them, as if in a dream. It was a strangely modern end to the age of exploration, ushering in an age of passive observation, in which the machine was as much the hero as the people who operated it.
Amundsen and Ellsworth didn’t fully appreciate the technical challenges of flying an airship under any conditions, let alone in the Arctic. They just wanted someone to pilot the craft according to their instructions, much as they hired men for many other jobs requiring technical proficiency. Nobile was the wrong person for this arrangement—picky, proud, an academic and a high-ranking military officer—he was a man of distinction in Italy who felt he should have been given greater respect in the Arctic. When this was not forthcoming from Amundsen and Ellsworth, Nobile felt no compulsion to honour his agreements with them. He was also the wrong man by profession. He wasn’t a pilot for hire, a private individual looking for employment; he was a high-ranking officer in a foreign armed force, and as such was not entirely at liberty to make his own personal decisions. Clearly, Amundsen and Nobile were incompatible personalities grappling for respect and leadership; but it was the fallout from publicity that turned irritation to hatred.
After a few days in Teller, Amundsen, Ellsworth, Wisting and Omdal boarded a launch for Nome. The wireless in Teller wasn’t working, and Amundsen wanted to get his story out. Nobile and Riiser-Larsen stayed behind to supervise the packing of the airship for its trip back to the southern United States, though it was severely damaged and might never fly again. The Teller wireless transmitter was soon repaired, and Nobile sent off his own press report to the world detailing the adventures of the Norge, highlighting his own and the Italian role. This news was received with great fanfare in Italy, where 100,000 fans cheered a speech marking the event given by Mussolini, who was flanked by a large Italian flag alongside smaller Norwegian and American flags. According to his contract, Nobile had no legal right to do this. The contract stated that “Nobile shall be under obligation not to publish any papers, articles, photographs or designs relating to this expedition without the authorization of the Norwegian Aero Club. . . . [This] includes radio or other telegraphic communications sent from the airship or from land stations during stops.” He was entitled to send a communication to the Italian government “on the condition that these communications shall in no case be published before the press-telegrams”—which, of course, they were.
Amundsen and Ellsworth finalized their version of the story later in May and sent it to the American newspapers that had paid a great deal of money for the story (first to the New York Times, which had paid $55,000 for exclusive first rights). But Nobile’s attempt to scoop them damaged their newsworthiness: parts of the story had already been poached and had made the rounds as general news. This threat to their exclusive contract must have reminded Amundsen of the Northwest Passage scenario all over again.
He and his comrades were not received as enthusiastically in Nome as they had hoped. Amundsen had promised that the airship would land in Nome, and according to a newspaper account “the Chamber of Commerce had gone to considerable expense placing a cable and four anchors on the Nome landing field. A triumphal arch had been erected on the main street and streamers and banners lined the street, while all the buildings and homes were decorated.” Over one hundred men had been readied to haul the landing ropes of the airship. Not surprisingly, they didn’t understand the difficulties of airship landings, and “a feeling of resentment against Amundsen was expressed by many over the failure of the explorer to bring the Norge to Nome.” Then Nobile made a separate and ostentatious display of his arrival a few days later and kept his Italian crew separate from the Norwegians, even organizing a celebration ceremony in honour of the flight to which neither Amundsen nor Ellsworth was invited. The three explorers and their crew departed together on a steamship bound for Seattle, frequently posing for photographs but with the two sides never actually speaking to each other during the twelve-day voyage.
Whether Amundsen had a premonition of the public relations disaster that was brewing or whether he was pondering more personal matters, Ellsworth noted a certain melancholy in his partner as the steamship pressed south. “I saw Amundsen standing at the rail, his chin on his hand, looking at the receding coast of the land of his choice. I stepped beside him and observed that his eyes were moist.”
“I suppose I will never see it again,” Amundsen said.