![]() Mountaineers often say that the descent from a mountain summit is the most dangerous part of the journey, when exhaustion and elation can lead to deadly errors-no less true on a voyage to the summit of the world.įor 24 hours, the Italia sailed through fog and snow flurries, fighting a headwind that sometimes reached thirty miles per hour. They had already been afloat for 22 hours. They had reached their goal, true, but they still had to make the return trip across hundreds of miles of frozen ocean, back to their base in the Svalbard archipelago, in far northern Norway. When their moment of victory had been sufficiently savored, the crew turned the airship south. There’ll be kisses, flowers, and roses from the navy One officer shouted “Viva Nobile!” Someone cranked up a tiny gramophone, and out came the sounds of a popular Italian song, “The Bell of San Giusto.” With the official ceremony complete, the crew celebrated briefly in the airship’s cabin. (“Like all crosses,” His Holiness had warned them, “this one will be heavy to carry.”) In Latin, the parchment announced that the cross was “to be dropped by the leader of the expedition, flying for the second time over the Pole thus to consecrate the summit of the world.” Its upper section had been hollowed out, and a parchment placed inside. Last went a large oak cross, entrusted to the Italia’s crew by Pope Pius XI before they left Rome. Next, the flag of the city of Milan fluttered down, and then a small medal depicting the Virgin of the Fire, a gift to Nobile from the citizens of Forli, a small northern city. ![]() First, he dropped a large Italian flag from the window of the airship’s cabin. Nobile had hoped to make a landing at the pole, but the winds were too strong, so instead he settled for marking his presence from the air. The airship went on circling slowly while its crew-fourteen Italians, one Czech, and one Swede, plus Nobile’s small dog, Titina-prepared for a simple ceremony. Journalist Eva Holland delivers a glittering portrayal of the ill-fated voyage of the airship Italia and the rescue missions it precipitated, set against the backdrop of rising nationalism in Europe. Mussolini's Arctic Airship (Kindle Single) Il Duce already understood how powerful symbols could be. Two years earlier, Benito Mussolini, Italy’s fascist dictator had personally handed an Italian flag to Nobile and the crew of the Norge, to be dropped at the pole. Racing each other across the ice to the poles was one more way to stir up public sentiment, and nationalist fervor was on the rise. The golden age of polar exploration was waning now, but the nations of Europe still jostled to claim prizes and glory in the Arctic and the Antarctic. ![]() ![]() This time, the glory of reaching the pole would be Italy’s-and Nobile’s-alone. But that expedition had been led by the legendary Norwegian polar explorer Roald Amundsen and his American partner and financier, Lincoln Ellsworth. The Italia was just the second vessel ever to reach the North Pole another Italian-built, Norwegian-owned airship, the Norge, had made the trip two years earlier, also under Nobile’s care. Nobile radioed back to his base ship: “The flag of Italy again flies above the ice at the Pole.” It was 1:20 a.m. ![]() General Umberto Nobile, the airship’s commander, gave the order to dive under the fog, and soon the airmen could see the blank ice, fewer than 500 feet below them. A pair of officers used a sextant and the sun to measure the Italia’s position as they covered the final miles, and when they’d reached 90 degrees north, where the planet’s longitude lines converge at the pole, the helmsman began a slow, lazy circle around their goal. Below the ship, a thick bank of fog obscured the frozen Arctic Ocean, but up here the sky was blue, cloudless. So it was bright as the airship Italia approached the geographic North Pole, motoring at 3,000 feet above the endless pack ice. In the Arctic summer, the sun shines even at midnight. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |