Hour of Gold
Svalbard–North Pole–Alaska, 11–14 May 1926
On 11 May 1926 the headline of the Italian newspaper Il Piccolo read:
‘Under an Italian flag, in the spirit of fascism, Norge sails in the polar sky!’
Newspapers in Rome and Oslo printed special editions to mark the departure of Norge from Kings Bay, bound for the North Pole, Polar Ocean and Alaska. The editor-in-chief of Oslo newspaper Aftenposten had travelled to Rome to report on the Italian response to the expedition and wrote that more newspapers were sold on the day of departure than were sold during the black shirt ‘March on Rome’ of 1922.
At 09.50 on 11 May 1926 Nobile had ordered hands-off and Norge rose slowly into the air leaving the ground crew and the settlement of Ny Alesund below. The engines were started, the engine telegraphs set at 1,200rpm and the airship steered for the western end of Kings Bay at an altitude of between 1,200 and 1,350ft. The people turned into dots and the buildings of the settlement, the green hangar and the 130ft mooring mast with its bright red cone got smaller and smaller. Spectators at Ny Alesund watched the airship dwindle to a dot and then disappear into the north-west.
Amundsen biographer Tor Bomann-Larsen makes the point that the flight received worldwide press coverage but that it had important political overtones for Italy and Norway. Both were young nations with something to prove to the world.
Norge cruised beneath a cloudless blue sky with the snow covered mountains of Spitsbergen reflecting the bright sun. There were 6,959kg of petrol and a proportionate amount of oil aboard. The configuration giving the greatest range was 1,200rpm on two engines with the third stopped. On two engines Norge cruised at an airspeed of about 43kt and could stay airborne for about 75 hours. In still air Norge could cover about 3,225nm. At first the port and rear engines were running. The rear engine was used throughout the flight with the port and starboard engines each running about 50 per cent of the time. The airship was slightly light at take-off but the slipstream cooled the gas making the ship heavy. Nobile ordered 3° to 6° of up elevator to produce dynamic lift. The sum total of static lift from the gas and dynamic lift from the airflow over the hull equals the weight of the ship and it maintains height. This kind of adjustment would continue throughout the flight as the static lift changed with changes in temperature and volume of the hydrogen gas. If the airship is light down elevator produces negative dynamic lift off the hull which is subtracted from the static lift and the airship again maintains height. Maintaining height in this way is standard practice but does increase the total drag of the airship and the cruising speed is reduced and so is the range. At Cape Mitre Norge turned on to a heading of 360° and steered directly for the North Pole.
Norge being walked backwards out of the Kings Bay hangar on the morning of 11 May 1926.
In 1961 Nobile wrote this about the start of the flight:
‘I felt deeply happy: the malaise and weariness that had oppressed me on the previous evening and during the night had vanished as if by magic. How light I felt! A few hours previously I had been shivering with the cold; now I would have liked to take off my furs.’
By 10:00 the sky had clouded over and they flew over Danes Island where Andree, Fraenkel and Strindberg had taken-off in 1897. The mystery of their disappearance would not be solved until 1930.
There were 16 passengers and crew aboard Norge. There were eight Norwegians, six Italians, one American and one Swede. Roald Amundsen and Lincoln Ellsworth spent most of their time in the control car observing. The journalist Frederick Ramm also spent his time sitting in the control car writing his dispatches. During the early part of the flight he was able to file by having his reports sent by wireless. This was the first time a journalist had been able to report while a major aviation expedition was in progress. His newspapers published his stories while the airship was still in the air. A three day flight gives plenty of time for that kind of thing. Thirteen of the sixteen men took an active role in flying and navigating the airship. In the front of the control car Emil Horgen was at the rudder wheel and Oscar Wisting at the elevator wheel. Umberto Nobile monitored the flight and gave orders as circumstances dictated. Hjalmar Riiser-Larsen worked at the navigation table. Birger Gottwaldt looked after the wireless set and helped the navigator by providing bearings to the wireless station at Kings Bay. Frithjof Storm-Johnsen operated sent and received messages in Morse code for as long as reception allowed. Finn Malmgren updated his weather forecasts with data received by wireless from time to time. Natale Cecioni worked in the keel supervising the operation of the engines and helped Ettore Arduino to regulate the distribution of the fuel. Attilio Caratti worked in the port engine car, Vincenzo Pomella in the starboard and Ettore Arduino and Oscar Omdal took turns in the rear engine car.
The rigger and helmsman Renato Alessandrini moved about inspecting every part of the airship. One of his jobs was to inspect the gas valves on top of the ship. It was essential that they be checked to make sure they were functioning and were properly seated. If they were damaged by ice they would not seal cleanly and gas would vent continuously and destroy the airship’s buoyancy with fatal results. To get to the top of the ship Alessandrini climbed to the top of the keel which finished at the nose, out through a hatch, up steps on the outside of the nose and along the top of the envelope checking each valve along the way. The top of the ship was soft. Anyone walking along the top had to time his steps to avoid producing a wave in the outer cover which might pitch him off. Gustav S Amundsen wrote that one long step followed by two short steps damped out the movement of the gas in the envelope. Anyone outside on the envelope experienced the sub-zero air and the wind chill of the 40kt-plus slipstream.
By 10:35 they were over Amsterdam Island and at 10:44 over the edge of the pack ice. They sky had been overcast for a time but now they left the clouds behind them. For the next few hours Nobile checked the groundspeed from time to time and changed altitude to benefit from the most favourable wind strength and direction. First he checked the ground speed by timing the passage of the airship’s shadow against a mark on the ice. Norge’s groundspeed was 29kt. Nobile descended to 600ft and timed the shadow again. This time the groundspeed was just over 37kt. On the ice below the crew saw a white fox and then bear tracks. A little later they saw some white fish in pools on the ice. The sun shone from a cloudless sky and reflected off the ice sheet. Nobile ordered a climb to just over 3,600ft and checked the groundspeed again. This time he used a Goerz drift-meter. If the surface was clearly visible and the airship was in stable flight, this instrument would give an accurate reading of drift, port or starboard of course, and groundspeed. The wind had changed and the groundspeed at this altitude was almost 45kt so he maintained this altitude for the next eight hours. The speed and the clear weather contributed to high morale aboard at this stage of the flight. In 83°N they saw bear tracks. This was the last sign of life for almost two days.
Nobile wrote:
‘Everyone was excited at the thought that in a few hours we would reach the Pole. The sunlight on the vast ice-field gave it a semblance of life, so that no-one on board felt that we were flying over a desert, no one was oppressed by that enormous desolation. Why, then-was it simple and easy as this to go to the Pole?’
At 18:45 the port engine stopped due to icing but was soon started again. The sky clouded over, cleared for a time in 88° north and then, at 22:15 Norge flew into snow and then fog. Ice formed all over the ship in minutes. Nobile had been flying low but climbed to 2,000ft and then 3,000ft to get out of the icing. When the sun was visible sextant sights were taken to determine the latitude. The bright clear sky and shining ice was far behind them and everything in sight was a ‘pearly grey shade’ and looked ‘sad and solemn’. At 89°N the temperature was –10°C outside and –4°C inside the control car. The temperature in the control car was below zero centigrade for the entire flight.
Throughout the flight Riiser-Larsen had been working at his chart table on the navigation. Conditions inside the control car were infinitely better than in the open cockpit or crowded cabin of most aeroplanes. The navigator had a large chart table, plenty of room for his instruments and no slipstream to freeze or distract him. As well as logbooks, charts, pencil, protractor, parallel rule, sextant, sight reduction tables, chronometers and magnetic compasses Norge was equipped with a sun compass, Goerz drift sight and with radio direction finding. The radio equipment was also used to receive time signals to check the chronometers which were an essential aid in determining longitude.
As the airship neared the Pole Riiser-Larsen took sun-sights at frequent intervals. At 00:50 on 12 May Nobile started to lose height and had the national flags readied for dropping. At 01:30 GMT on 12 May 1926 Riiser-Larsen shot the sun and confirmed that they were at the North Pole. Nobile had the engines throttled back and Norge drifted quietly over the ice at 600ft. The flags of Norway, United States and Italy were dropped on the spot. They had reached the spot which had exercised the imaginations of geographers and explorers for centuries, although, in truth, there was nothing to distinguish that spot from any other on the vast ice field covering the Polar Ocean. Cooke, Peary and Byrd had all claimed to have reached the North Pole but careful review of the evidence confirms beyond reasonable doubt that Amundsen and his companions were the first to reach the spot. The careful navigation possible on an airship meant that the logbooks and other records of the flight provided clear and unchallengeable evidence that Amundsen, Nobile and the others had reached the Pole. Oscar Wisting had been with Amundsen’s party when they reached the South Pole on 11 December 1911 so there were now two men who had been to both Poles.
Amundsen’s role was an observer during the flight. The agreement made before the flight was that Nobile would be consulted if any major deviation from flight plan was being discussed but Amundsen, Ellsworth and Riiser-Larsen would have the final say.
Amundsen sitting in the control car of Norge during the flight to the North Pole and Teller on the north-west coast of Alaska which took place 11–14 May 1926 and took 70 hrs 40 min. Amundsen was the expedition leader and joined the airship at Kings Bay. The flight would not have taken place without his prestige and his acceptance of the risk inherent in a long flight over the Arctic Ocean.
Without Amundsen’s hard earned prestige there would have been no flight and if the airship had been forced to land on the ice he would have become leader in reality and not just name. He was open about his role on the flight:
‘Naturally I had the easiest task of all on board. The others did the work of keeping the ship going, and going to the right objective. My function was solely that of the explorer, watching the terrain below, studying its geographical character, and especially keeping an alert eye out for any signs of a possible arctic continent.’
Amundsen sat in the cabin wearing enormous overshoes stuffed with senegrass as insulation, divers’ gaiters and red and white gloves.
From the North Pole all directions are south. Norge headed south following the 158° meridian west of Greenwich which would take them to the north coast of Alaska at about Point Barrow. From the Pole onwards the sun was often obscured and the surface and the sky were grey with yellowish gleams as the sun tried to shine through the overcast. The wan light showed up irregularities in the pack. At 08:30 on 12 May Nobile noted that the sky had been blue for some hours and he noted from time to time how morale was always higher when the sun was out and shining on the ice. They had been airborne for just short of 24 hours and had almost 48 hours to go. The radio was not operating and if they had gone down on the pack they would have been on their own in every sense of the word. Even if radio communication was available they could not expect rescue as there were no facilities for rescue from the unknown reaches of the Arctic Ocean.
By 09:00 Norge was at 85° north and in a fog that persisted until 82° 40’. In the fog the airship iced up and ‘ice projectiles were thrown against the sides of the ship’. Fortunately the ice caused rents in the fabric covering the keel rather than the envelope containing the hydrogen. The crew were busy sticking patches on the damaged sections using a special adhesive called emaillite. The fog not only caused anxiety about damage to the airship but meant that the surface was out of sight for long periods of time. This meant that they could not be sure what was or was not below. Finding land or confirming that it was not there was a major goal of the expedition and it was disappointing that they did not have a continuous view of the surface. Gottwaldt showed Nobile the radio antenna which was sheathed in ice and could not send or receive even if all the equipment was functioning.
By 15:37 the ship was in equilibrium in spite of having used 2½ tonnes of petrol and oil. Norge may have lost some hydrogen but this probably meant that the ship was carrying about that weight of ice. There was no way to de-ice the ship and about this time Alessandrini, the rigger, could not inspect the gas valves on the top of the ship because it was coated in ice and anyone walking on top would have slipped off. The airship flew out of the fog and the ice started to melt. Some of the pieces fell into the propellers and were thrown against the ship. Rents were torn in the side of the ballonets that Alessandrini could not reach to patch. Nobile ordered the side engines throttled back to limit the damage. Norge was driven on by the rear engine which could operate at normal revs because it was below the centre line and was out of the way of the falling ice.
The crew must have been anxious that ice would cause major rents in the envelope. If they lost gas they could compensate for some of the lost static lift by flying dynamically. They would lose some airspeed and range doing that and there was a limit to how much lift could be produced that way. There was also a real risk that the propellers would be damaged. Falling ice could chip them and the out-of-balance forces could tear them from the engines. Ice forming directly on the blades could have the same effect. They flew on hour after hour with their fates in the balance.
Between 80° and 79° north the fog opened out and they could see the surface from time to time. For the first time in hours they could calculate the groundspeed and estimate the drift. The wind had freshened and changed direction and they were drifting 13° to port. Doctor R A Harris, of the United States Coast and Geodetic Survey, had predicted that large land masse(s) would be found in the zone that Norge was traversing. Although they had no continuous view of the surface they could see enough to be sure that no large landmasses were in the area. From 21:15 onwards fog was encountered and Nobile climbed to 3,500ft to stay out of it and the associated icing.
Nobile described the scene when they flew out of the fog and in sight of the surface:
‘Magnificent scenery, the Polar regions, just as I imagined them. The surface of the limitless sea of ice-all white-seems veiled in a transparent whitish mist. Here and there the whiteness is streaked with blue-that tenuous shade of blue, so characteristic of the ice.
The vast expanse of frozen sea, with its shadows, dark patches, embroidery of blue, was truly fascinating. From time to time there appeared long serpentine channels, dark grey in colour; and once, what looked like a wide black river, its banks formed by layer on layer of blue-sprinkled ice.’
The ice on the airship decorated it so that it ‘toned into the arctic landscape’. The engine cars, solar compass, drift meter, the metal rings of the mooring-ropes and every other part were picked out in ice. A piece of ice cut a rent a metre long in the envelope and Cecioni told Nobile that they were almost out of emaillite glue.
At 06:45 on 13 May the coast of Alaska was sighted and at 07:35 Norge crossed the ice edge, the strip of water between ice and coast, and was over land after almost two days flying of the ice of the Polar Ocean. The rocky hills were coated with ice and snow with occasional outcrops of rock showing darkly. Nobile order a turn to starboard and Norge followed the coast. At 08:40 they came to Wainwright which was familiar to at least two of the airship’s crew. Amundsen’s second Junkers F 13 had been stored there, with Omdal looking after it, in the winter of 1922–23. Flight trials had ended in an accident and a dose of reality had caused Amundsen and Omdal to give up their planned flight to the North Pole and on to Svalbard. Amundsen told Nobile where they were and, working back, it was clear that the landfall had been made just west of Point Barrow. They had passed so close to Nome that they had been seen from there and word of Norge’s arrival had been telegraphed south. A note was dropped at Wainwright and this was duly reported in the New York Times. Nome was just under 400nm away by a great circle course and a direct flight would have taken about 9 hours in nil wind but circumstances dictated that they follow the coast and be airborne for almost another day before landing. The mountains between Wainwright and Nome were high and not well mapped, visibility was poor and the weather deteriorating so there was only one way to proceed.
As Norge flew south-west along the Alaskan coast the weather deteriorated and Nobile described what followed as the most difficult and dangerous part of the flight. Norge carried all the charts that they had been able to locate and the one for this part of the flight was not detailed or particularly accurate on the positions and heights of the mountains of north-west Alaska. Poor visibility over the sea was not a great problem but close to land and overland they could encounter high ground unexpectedly if their navigation was inaccurate. Without sight of the surface the wind speed and direction could change and they would not know it. Without a view of the sun the sextant could not be used to provide a line of position. High winds over rugged terrain caused turbulence. The airship pitched and rolled and gained and lost 150ft at a time in the turbulence. Above all everyone on board was very tired after days of little sleep and great mental strain. Nobile’s logbook of the flight had little detail for this part of the flight because he was preoccupied with the demands of flying minute-to-minute in poor visibility and being uncertain of Norge’s position. He reconstructed the flight from memories and brief notes. Norge entered fog for a time and was over land when it emerged but it was featureless and no one knew where they were but guessed near Kukpuk.
Chart of Norge’s flight from Svalbard to Alaska by way of the North Pole 11 May to 14 May 1926. The flight took 70 hours 40 minutes and was the first undisputed journey to the North Pole and the first journey across the Polar Ocean by any means. The dotted line is the 1925 flight in the Dornier Wal flying boats N 24 and N 25 towards the Pole on 21–22 May 1925 and the return of N 25 on 15–16 June 1925.
Fog rolled in again and Nobile climbed to pressure height in an attempt to out-climb it. He was still in fog at 3,500ft and dared not go higher because gas would have to be valved-off and ice might form on the valve seals jamming the valves open. When they flew out of the fog and in sight of the surface they saw frozen sea. A little later they saw the ice turn into a white capped ocean and Nobile estimated that they were north of the Bering Strait over the Chukchi Sea and close to the Russian shore. Nobile ordered a course of just north of east to take them back to the Alaskan side and in due course they sighted the settlement of Kivalina. Riiser-Larsen asked Nobile to climb above the clouds so that he could get a sun-sight with his sextant and Nobile complied. The sun was so high Riiser-Larsen could not take his sextant observation from the control car window. He climbed into the keel, walked to the nose and went out the hatch and up the ladder to the top of the ship. After the sight had been taken the airship would not descend and at 5,400ft Norge kept climbing in spite of gas being valved-off continuously. The ship was trimmed nose up and had to be level or nose down before the engines and elevator would do the job. Nobile ordered three crew members including Gottwaldt into the nose to trim the airship nose down. They did so after some initial confusion and Nobile was able to descend flying dynamically to overcome the excess lift. Ellsworth wrote in Beyond Horizons that all crew members except Nobile and the helmsmen on the rudder and elevator had to go into the nose and take petrol tins and boxes of pemmican with them before the nose would go down and they could descend dynamically although he was writing 10 years after the event and probably had the details wrong.
Riiser-Larsen’s sight gave latitude of 67° 5’ north confirming that they were near Kivalina. Nobile was on the elevator wheel and Riiser-Larsen maintained a lookout out forward in the poor visibility. Riiser-Larsen saw that they were descending and called out to Nobile to raise the nose. Nobile wrote that he and Riiser-Larsen were working as a team and Riiser-Larsen called out and gestured towards the wheel simply to alert him to the proximity of the ground. Norge avoided diving into the surface by only a few feet.
They cruised along at about 600ft. Nobile noted that even the reliable Wisting closed his eyes from time to time while at the elevator wheel. Once Norge’s position had been fixed Nobile ordered a course that took the airship along the northern coast of the Seward Peninsula and then south around Cape Prince of Wales in the general direction of Nome. Nobile was exhausted and handed over the elevator wheel to the tireless Riiser-Larsen and sat down to rest.
They wind was behind them as they flew westward along the coast. They reached Cape Prince of Wales at 03:30 on 14 May having averaged a ground speed of 65kt since leaving the Shismaref Inlet. This was the highest groundspeed noted on the flight. The sky had blackened and Norge was now making little headway into a headwind. The rest of the flight would have been comparatively straightforward but they would have had to be awake and alert for hours more. Nobile and the rest of the crew were exhausted and he elected to make a landing at the small settlement of Teller.
The landing presented a great challenge as there was no trained ground crew to receive them. The problem was that, like all airships, Norge was at the mercy of the wind the moment it touched down. It took a trained crew to assist Norge to dock at a mast and about 200 men to walk the airship in and out of a hangar. He discussed the landing with Riiser-Larsen. The airship was regarded as expendable and Riiser-Larsen proposed getting the whole crew into the control car and cutting away the fabric and leaving both sides open. As soon as they touched down eight could jump out to port and eight to starboard. This was a sensible idea that would probably have worked although the airship would, relieved of their weight, then have risen and drifted off. Nobile decided to attempt a landing. He had selected the frozen lagoon as his landing place. The strong wind may have been an advantage as there would be air flowing around the control surfaces even when his ground speed dropped to zero. He would maintain steerage way until he touched down. He ordered the landing bag readied. It was a fabric tube 30cm across and 7m long with anchors at one end and a rope attaching it to the airship’s bow at the other. It was weighted with spare containers of food and weighed about 275kg. When it was dropped on to the surface the weight kept it flat and the anchors dug in and held the airship nose to wind. As he approached to land he valved gas to make the ship heavy and a small group of men grasped the rope. Norge touched, rear engine car first, and then control car, bounced a few feet and settled. Nobile held the valves open and ordered all crew members to stand fast. He stood by the door of the control car so no crew member could exit until Norge was heavy. Holding the valves open he ordered the crew to disembark one at a time. Nobile sent Alessandrini aloft to cut the rip-panels which let the gas out rapidly and avoided the wind blowing the airship around as if it was a sail. He had Cecioni sever the walkway from the keel to the port engine car so that it was not driven into the keel as Norge rolled on to its side. Norge settled onto its port side without further damage. It was 07:30 GMT on 14 May 1926 (20:30 13 May 1926 local time). The landing is probably one of the outstanding examples of airmanship of the airship era. The flight itself is one of the greatest ever made in an airship. The airship had been airborne for 70 hours 40 minutes. Nobile noted that Norge had flown 2,763nm at an average ground speed of 39kt. Amundsen wrote this of the landing:
‘But for the bump against the air fender [below the control car] causing us to spring some metres in the air, we should scarcely have noticed the landing, so finely was it done.’
On the morning of 14 May 1926 Nobile made a perfect landing at Teller in Alaska. There was no trained ground crew and he relied on a ‘landing sack’ to act as a sort of sea anchor to keep Norge facing into wind while the airship touched down. He ordered the rip panels opened to spill the gas as quickly as possible. This photograph shows Norge deflating as planned.
Another view of Norge deflating at Teller on 14 May 1926.
They had completed the first flight to the North Pole, the first journey of any kind across the Polar Ocean and the first flight from Europe to the Americas by way of the Pole. Although Byrd’s claim to have made the first flight to the North Pole denied Amundsen, Ellsworth and Nobile that particular honour in their lifetimes, the other achievements brought them fame, publicity and, in Amundsen’s case renewed recognition as a successful explorer of the Arctic.