|
| |
Land or Ocean? Umberto Nobile Explores the North Pole Terrain
From: Columbia University
| By:
Kenneth LeishColumbia University Oral History Research Office |
EDITOR'S INTRODUCTION |
An airplane moves too fast and flies too high to allow passengers to examine the terrain it traverses, explains Umberto Nobile (right), an Italian aeronautical engineer and pioneer in Arctic aviation. In this excerpt of a 1960 interview conducted by Kenneth Leish on behalf of Columbia University's Oral History Research Office, Nobile describes his 1926 trip over the North Pole in the dirigible Norge--a less than ideal ship--to determine, for the first time, whether ocean or land covered the distance between the North Pole and the northern coast of Alaska. |
Umberto Nobile describes the frustrations of exploring in the airship Norge.
|
Umberto Nobile: When, in 1925, I got a telegram from Amundsen asking me to have a conference with him in Oslo, and I went to Oslo and Amundsen proposed to me to go across the Arctic--across the North Pole to the northern coast of Alaska--with an airship, I thought we had a type of airship suitable for this purpose: the airship N. But not the one that we had already flying then, because it was too heavy to use the full load; it would not allow the quantity of fuel which was necessary to make such a long flight without interruption from Spitsbergen to Alaska. |
I suggested then that we had a second ship in construction. We could use it. He told me that it was very important for us to make this exposition soon, next year. Therefore, I had no other choice than to use the airship N-1, the one which was already flying, but introducing into it as many improvements as I could--just making the structure a little more light, in other words. This was very difficult, because at the time I had had my position only four of five months. |
But when the airship was ready again we had attained more than about 1,500 kilometers of weight, so I considered it fit for this polar flight. So we were excited to make the first expedition with this N-1. We kept its original name of N-1 but under the name Norge, because it was bought by a Norwegian group just before this polar flight. |
Question: Was the Italian government willing to sell it right away? |
Nobile: Yes. We made no difficulty at all. It was just making a contract between the Italian government and the Norwegians. |
In this contract they would buy the airship, the airship would be prepared by myself and I would make all modifications that I thought necessary to introduce. |
Q: What kind of modifications did you make? How did you make it so much lighter? |
Nobile: I told you before. First of all, I made it light by taking out all the things--heavy structures--and substituting with a lighter structure, to gain weight. After that, I had to prepare for the polar flight in aeronautical conditions so different from ours, and it was concerning the engines as well as the hull itself, because I foresaw the danger of ice encrustations. I made a sort of experiment to see if this danger was very serious. I found there was serious danger of encrustations of ice--deposits of ice on the airship--especially on the metallic parts, but I could not find a good method to avoid them, to defend us, very efficiently. Just some little defense could be found, but no more than this. |
As far as it concerned the engines, this was all right. It was easy to make. It was a matter of avoiding freezing water. We had Linebach engines cooled by water. This was all right--they were all right--but this was not the same as ice conditions or encrustrations, because ice encrustations during our polar flight, really, they were a danger for us. When we were in the fog very often, ice was formed everywhere--everywhere, but especially on the metallic parts of the airship. We had ice on the ropes and time by time this ice was detaching itself and fell into the propellers, and the propellers would knock this piece of ice against the hull. So it was really a danger. We succeeded, at the worst, and we could make this crossing. |
Q: When you first heard about it, though, the idea struck you as a good one? You wanted to go along, definitely? |
Nobile: Oh, yes. It was a test for me, to work in an airship. An airship was the best to make exploration. It was impossible to make exploration in an airplane. If you plan to land in some place, and have a chance to make a scientific exploration, that's all right, but you cannot explore, geographically, the ground. If you fly around there, at 200 or 300 kilometers per hour, you will not see anything. But you can do it in an airship. |
Q: When you first heard about the flight, what did you think the troubles would be? You mentioned ice, of course. |
Nobile: I was afraid of the wind--of the wind, which could oppose the flight. |
Q: You say you thought the wind would be a big problem? |
Nobile: Yes. The strong wind. |
Q: The wind, then, you were worried about, and the ice. What else did you think you would have to be very careful about? |
Nobile: Very careful about the wind, which could oppose our voyage across the polar region. We had to fly from about 5,000 kilometers without stopping, without refueling, and we had not so much fuel at our disposition. |
The airship had originally been meant to fly here. It was not meant to make such a flight from Rome to the North Pole, from the North Pole to Alaska, so I was very much worried with this problem of having just as much gasoline as possible, in order to face all possible wind. You must understand that, at the time, the meteorological conditions of the Arctic were not so well known, and the meteorological stations were very few--here and there, but very few. We could not get information enough during our flight. This was a difficulty. |
Q: How big was the crew? How many people? |
Nobile: Altogether, we were 16 people: six Italians; there was a Swedish scientist who came as a meteorologist, he was Dr. Malmgren of Uppsala University, and Amundsen, as well; an American; and all others were Norwegians. You see, altogether we were 16 people. We will be more exact--living beings were 17. |
Q: Because you had your dog. |
Nobile: Because we had the little dog by the name of Titina, who was used to flying, came with me all the time. She had made, I suppose, at least 200 or 300 flights. |
Q: Was she a good passenger? |
Nobile: No. She did not like at all to fly, but she would not allow me to go flying without her. So when I was going on board of the airship, she jumped also. She stayed there a long time just sleeping, yes, but she was very glad when we arrived. |
Q: I see. You left Rome and first you went to ... ? |
Nobile: First to England. We stopped for just two days in England. The Norwegian people had asked me to stop at Oslo; they liked to see this airship. The polar expeditions--the name in Norway was Norge, so they were wanting to see the airship. For this reason I decided to go first to Pulham, stop in Pulham, then from Pulham on our way to Russia, which was where I had decided to stop the airship. We stopped for just a few hours from morning to night in Oslo. Then we went on above Scandinavia, above Sweden and the Baltic Sea, and we reached Leningrad. |
Nobile: No, no. We were already in King's Bay. I had not heard anything about Byrd till I was in Leningrad, but when we arrived we put the airship in King's Bay. There I found Byrd with his Fokker preparing for his flight to the North Pole. |
Q: But this didn't discourage you at all? |
Nobile: Oh, no, because our thought was not to reach the Pole. We supposed that the Pole had already been reached by [Robert Edwin] Peary. So it was not our purpose to reach the Pole, but to reach the Pole in order to go across the big unknown region, which extended between the North Pole and the northern coast of Alaska. This was our aim. So, no. |
Byrd was very amenable and he thought, "I went before, because I was sure that if something had happened to me you would have come to my rescue." Of course we would, in the same way that he, himself, when he knew that for three days there was no news of us, and they did not know what had happened --- |
Nobile: It was bad, yes, so we could not give the news. Then Byrd offered himself to come to search for us, yes. Of course, it was not necessary, because after, when we landed in Alaska, we found there a little radio, so we could give news of us after three days. But for more than two days, three days, word was suspended. They did not know what had happened to us. |
Q: And before this, no one knew whether there was land between the Pole and Alaska or not? |
Nobile: No, no. It was an open question. Many scientists and explorers supposed that there was land--extensive land between the North Pole and the northern coast of Alaska. And the other way, in Europe scientists thought that there was just sea, frozen sea. So it was a question to decide, and the purpose of this expedition was just to decide this problem, and we decided that it was a frozen sea. |
Q: It was about 2,700 miles, is that right? |
Nobile: Twenty-seven hundred. |
Q: About how far was the distance from Russia to Alaska that you flew? |
Nobile: We flew from Russia. From Russia it was about 9,000 kilometers, but from King's Bay till the place where we landed in an Alaskan village, Atela-- just north of Nome--it was about 5,000 kilometers. |
Q: How long did it take you? |
Nobile: It was one of the longest flights made by airship at that time. Yes. |
Q: How long did it take you from King's Bay to Alaska? |
Nobile: Three days. Three days, the whole flight. It was difficult the last day, because the last day, while we were flying over the Bering Straits, we met a storm, which just came in this place, and heavy fog, heavy winds. So the most dangerous part of the flight was the flying over the Bering Straits. |
Q: Tell me a little bit about that. There was a great deal of ice, I suppose, on the ship? |
Nobile: Oh, yes. I told you that between the North Pole and Alaska for about, oh, more than one day we had always ice crusting on the suspending ropes. Yes, from this came danger of which I spoke to you. This means that the ice in pieces was falling on the propeller. We had many holes to repair. |
Q: Was it difficult to repair them? |
Nobile: No, it was not difficult, but sometimes this depended on the place where this splitting happened. But we succeeded in repairing them, almost all. But after all, at least we were without any more material to make repairs. But fortunately, this phenomenon of ice encrusting stopped. |
Nobile: Oh, it was fine. On the polar part, I mean, across the unknown region, was very fine weather. We did not find any difficulty about the wind. The strongest wind we met was about, perhaps, 15 miles per hour. |
Nobile: From 200 meters to about 2,000 meters, according to the conditions, meteorological conditions on the ground. When we were in the ship on the hilly part of Alaska, the hills there, we were forced at a certain moment to go over the hills. But otherwise we were flying low, because, on account of the fog, if we did not fly low we would have lost our position. |
It was necessary to check our speed against the ground. This is rather difficult. If you lost your location, it was very difficult and dangerous on account of this fog. There was heavy fog; we were forced to fly under the fog, just for rendition, but Alaska was hilly country in many places--it's mountains--and this made it very dangerous and tiresome, the last part of the expedition. But though we lost our way, afterwards we found it again. |
When almost three days we had been out, we decided to land in Teller, Alaska, because the storm made the ship heavy and I thought it was not wise to go on and on. At the best, I expected to reach Nome. I would have liked to reach Nome, because I had sent news to Nome. They were preparing for the landing, because the problem of landing was one of the greatest problems--to land in some new place, without any help from the ground--but we were lucky. We were lucky. We were able to make a good landing; we made a very excellent landing with practically no help from the ground, because we reached a small Eskimo village. |
Q: How do you spell the name of the village? |
Nobile: Teller. Teller, Alaska. |
Q: What did the Eskimos say? Were they very surprised? |
Nobile: Oh, they were surprised, yes. These Eskimos that we met, they were just on the northern coast of Alaska, and there were five or six of them just standing around in their parkas. They were looking at us. After, I met, on a voyage to America, a member of the Wilkins exploration, which was there later, and he told me that most of the Eskimos thought that we were devils, because, you know, the North for the Eskimo is fearsome: from the North comes the storms. So they thought that we were devils. |
But in Teller it was a little worse because Eskimo boys--as soon as they saw us coming--they thought we were seals or whales, something like this. But then he rushed to tell his father, the Eskimo, "Please, get a gun; shoot the seal," and his father, of course--he understood that it was not a matter of a seal. This was Teller. |
|
| |
