"Norge" Conquers The Pole

XXVII

The American-financed, Italian-built, Norwegian airship Norge

On May 12, 1926, the Norge, a semirigid (keeled) airship accomplished the first transpolar overflight of the North Pole. The Norge was not the first aircraft to reach the Pole. Admiral Richard E. Byrd U.S.N. had done so a year earlier in a Fokker trimotor. But Byrd had returned to his point of origin, Spitsbergen. The Norge flew from Spitsbergen straight through to Teller, Alaska in some 32 hours.

Everything about the Norge Expedition was weird. The ship was ridiculously small for the trip, being only 347 feet long and 85 feet around. The stubby ship's gas capacity was a mere 670,000 cubic feet of hydrogen with a payload capacity of only 21,000 pounds. Norge was entirely undermanned, with only 16 crew. As a result, there were no watches, and everybody aboard had been awake at least 48 hours by the time they reached Teller.

 

Roald Amundsen

 

Among the crew were Roald Amundsen, the first man to reach the South Pole, Umberto Nobile, the pilot and a fellow polar explorer, and Lincoln Ellsworth, the discoverer of the Ellsworth Mountains of Antarctica. Ellsworth, who was very wealthy, financed the flight.

The Norge was built not in Norway (as might be thought) but in Italy, and Mussolini's government made much of this fact, irritating both Amundsen and Ellsworth by flying an immense Italian flag from the ship, one that dwarfed the Norwegian and American flags on either side of it. After the flight, Amundsen publicly denigrated Nobile as a Fascist stooge who'd done nothing on board, but Ellsworth, at least, defended Nobile's piloting skills.

Lincoln Ellsworth

Nobile's skills were needed. Not long after liftoff, the ship entered a fogbank that caused a complete whiteout around the ship. Bad weather caused ice to build up on the hull, weighing the ship down so that it lost altitude. Ice on the engine propellers repeatedly ripped the envelope, keeping the rigger busy throughout the voyage. Fortunately, the ice did not damage the hydrogen cells.

Umberto Nobile

The Norge's intended destination was Point Barrow, Alaska, but when Teller was sighted the exhausted crew decided to put down. Ultimately, the Norge was dismantled for shipment back to Italy. She never flew again.