Norge Airship Polar Flight
The Norge airship flight in 1926 is considered to be the first successful attempt to reach the North Pole by air. Although the airship was designed and manufactured in Italy, it flew under the Norwegian flag as the project was funded by the Norwegian side. The initiator of this successful expedition was the famous Norwegian polar explorer Roald Amundsen. The airship was piloted by Italian General Umberto Nobile, who designed it. The entire expedition was a worldwide success.
Obr. č.1: General Umberto Nobile (source: raicultura.it).
Nobile, after returning to Italy, was hailed as a hero, and then the regime of Benito Mussolini decided to repeat the expedition, this time as a purely Italian project. In 1928 a new expedition by the Italia airship, flying under the flag of the Kingdom of Italy and piloted again by General Nobile, began. However, the second expedition ended in disaster when the Italia airship crashed on its return from the North Pole. But some of the crew including its captain Umberto Nobile were rescued. Immediately after the accident an action to save the shipwrecked was launched. Roald Amundsen was the first to sign up, despite the fact that he did not have a very good relationship with General Nobile. If the “irony of fate” label applies to any history, then this is certainly true for the Italia airship expedition. Amundsen himself perished in the rescue operation but Nobile and the others survived. The shipwrecked were eventually rescued by the Soviet icebreaker Krasin. Among the rescued members of the crew of the Italia airship was the Czech radiologist František Běhounek, who wrote a book about his adventure (The Polar Sea Castaways).
Figure 2: Norge airship on Leningrad. Carte maxime with the postage stamp of the USSR from 1991.
Despite the interesting history of both expeditions, we encounter this topic on postage stamps issued by the Kingdom of Italy in a rather limited way. It gained its space only after the fall of the fascist regime in Italy.
Figure 3: Icebreaker Krasin on the USSR postage stamp from 1976. The Airship Italia is shown in the top left-hand corner.
Photos 2 and 3 used in this article – private collection of the author.