From Pole to Pole

by Garth James Cameron

  Einar Sem-Jacobsen (1878-1936), pioneer of military aviation in Norway. He designed a system of man-lifting kites for Amundsen in 1909. In 1913-1914 he taught Amundsen to fly on Farman “Longhorn” aircraft operated by the Norwegian Army. In 1914 Amundsen bought a Farman in France and Sem-Jacobsen attempted to fly it back to Norway.

  The flight from Paris to Christiania was to be made in stages and on May 20, 1914, Sem-Jacobsen flew from Paris to Reims in two hours and then set off across the Ardennes. A forced landing was made which resulted in some damaged struts. Repairs were made and they set off again. Flight for May 29, 1914 reported that the flight from Reims to Liège had been completed with stops at Rocquigny and Namur. Weather was a problem on the leg from Liège in Belgium to Krefeld in Germany. He set off but encountered strong headwinds at the Belgian-Dutch border and returned to Liège to wait for better weather. The bad weather persisted until May 25, when Sem-Jacobsen’s commanding officer ordered him to dismantle the aeroplane and ship it to Norway.

  On June 11, 1914 (the day of the flight test for his aviators certificate) Amundsen was receiving dual instruction from Sem-Jacobsen when there was (what looks like) a heavy landing which seriously damaged the aircraft. Amundsen took and passed his test on another Farman. He received a telegram of congratulation from King Haakon VII. On September 18, 1915 he was issued with Fédération Aéronautique Internationale (Norge) Aviator’s Certificate number one.

  On June 11, 1914, it was arranged for Amundsen to take the test for the issue of a Fédération Aéronautique Internationale aviator’s certificate. He was in his forty-second year. Three flights were required for the issue of an aviator’s certificate, all of them solo. The first and second flights were identical. On them the candidate had to cover 5 km over a closed circuit. There were two turn points marked out on the ground 500 m apart, and the aeroplane was flown in continuous figures of eight with the markers in the center of each loop of the figure until 5 km had been covered. After each of these two flights a normal landing had to be made, with the engine shut off at or before the moment of touchdown, with the aeroplane finishing its landing roll within 50 m of a point designated before the flight. On the third flight a climb to at least 100 m was required. The candidate was then required to switch off the engine and glide down to a normal landing. The aeroplane was flown solo and the examiners viewed the flights from the ground. The spot landings were perhaps the easiest part of the test as, due to its light weight and high drag, the Farman’s glide angle was steep, and a steep approach is easier to judge than a flat one. Amundsen would have pointed the nose of the Farman at the mark and let gravity do most of the flying. When he flattened out from the glide the speed would wash off rapidly and the aeroplane would have no tendency to float, it would sit down and stop in a short distance.

  On the day of the flight test Sem-Jacobsen was giving Amundsen some last minute dual instruction when the Farman suffered severe damage in an accident. The sources disagree on the cause of the accident. An engine failure may have occurred, or some kind of structural failure, or there may have been a handling error. A photo of the wrecked machine shows damage consistent with a heavy landing. This damage could have been caused by flattening out too late, or by flattening out too high and stalling on to the ground. Whatever caused the accident, Amundsen was not put off flying and later that day he took his test in another Farman. He passed the test and became the first Norwegian civilian to qualify as an aviator in Norway. He received a telegram from King Haakon VII congratulating him. On September 18, 1915, he received Fédération Aéronautique Internationale (Norge) aviator’s certificate number one. In the future journalists would sometimes write, or imply that Amundsen would be flying the aeroplanes he bought for his expeditions, but this was not the case. It is probable that the flight test was the only time he flew solo, and he certainly was not interested in acquiring more flying time and skill. He would be an aviation enthusiast for the rest of his life, but this enthusiasm was for aircraft as vehicles rather than sporting equipment. To put his achievement in perspective, his total flying time was about 20 hours, some of it away from the airfield, but not far away. He passed no written exams, never took a passenger flying with him, and had never flown at night, in bad weather, or over long distances. An aviators certificate meant, in 1914, that the recipient had demonstrated the most basic of handling skills and would then have to teach himself the rest of the skills required for applied flying such as cross country flying and air navigation.

  At about this time an extraordinary situation arose in Russia, and it would provide the opportunity for that nation to be the first country to use aeroplanes in the Arctic. In 1913 three separate expeditions were missing in the Russian Arctic. Georgiy Yakovlevich Sedov was making an attempt to reach the North Pole. His ship Svyatoy Foka and crew had last been reported in June 1913 when they were iced in for the winter on the northwestern coast of Novaya Zemlya and had run out of coal and had limited supplies of food and winter clothing. Geogiy L’vovich Brusilov and his ship Svyataya Anna had intended to sail through the North East Passage from the Atlantic to the Pacific and had last been seen on September 16, 1912. Vladimir Aleksandrovich Rusanov, with his ship the Gerkules, did some important geological field-work on Svalbard and then set off along the North East Passage. On August 31, 1912, he called at a settlement on Novaya Zemlya, reported that he was heading around the northern tip of the island to the Kara Sea, and had not been heard of since.

  It was not until the spring of 1914 that public pressure forced the government to purchase two ships, charter two more, and send them to look for the three missing ships and their crews. One of the expeditions was equipped with an aeroplane, a pilot, and a mechanic to aid the searches. Yan Iosifovich Nagurskiy was a 26-year-old Polish (then part of Russia) army officer and had qualified as a military pilot in early 1913. He kept up his flying privately and studied naval engineering, qualifying in July 1913. He went to Paris to purchase and test fly a Maurice Farman with a 70 hp Renault air-cooled motor, a cruising speed of around 40 kt., and fuel for five to six hour’s flight. It would be transported in a disassembled state. It was fitted with floats for the search flights. After test flying it 18 times it was shipped to Kristiania where Nansen and Amundsen had been consulted by the Russians about how to go about searching for the three lost expeditions. The Farman, its pilot, and Yevgeniy Kuznetsov, a naval aviation mechanic, were aboard Pechora and were tasked with an aerial search of part of the coast of Novaya Zemlya. Andromeda had already found a cairn with a note from Sedov dated August 21, 1913. The Farman, which had been painted red to make it more conspicuous if it was forced down, was assembled on the beach at Krestovaya Guba with help from the crew of Pechora. At 03:00 Nagurskiy test flew the floatplane. After refueling and loading survival equipment and food, he took off with Kuznetsov aboard and flew north following the coast. The weather was clear for a start and they flew at about 2,500 ft. with the thermometer reading 23°F. The weather started to deteriorate, only the mountains were visible above the fog, and the compass failed. A boat compass was carried as back-up, and the pilot stayed on course until the fog started to clear. On the way back south a planned landing to refuel at a cache left by Andromeda could not be made because of a lack of open water and no level area of ice. They kept on flying south until at 08:50 they found open water near Mys Borisova and made a perfect landing. This was the first flight in the Arctic and had covered about 240 nm in 4 hrs. 20 min. Taxiing to the shore a float was holed by a rock but the water was shallow and they waded along and got the aeroplane to shore. It was 36 hours since they had slept, so they built a fire, had a quick meal and a cup of tea, and went to sleep on the shore by the beached aircraft.

  When the men awoke they repaired the float with some tin and a rubber patch. A polar bear showed a close interest in them and had to be shot. Andromeda appeared and landed fuel and oil. Captain Pospelov marked the first flight with a bottle of cognac and requested an ice reconnaissance around Ostrov Zayach’iy
, where he had been instructed to leave an emergency food depot. On August 22, the aviators flew north up the coast in clear weather and noted a number of errors in the chart and that the coasts and straits were still ice covered. After 1 hr. 45 min., they spotted a hut and landed safely on a level strip of snow covered ice. They slept in sleeping bags until late in the evening Andromeda appeared at the ice edge. The hut turned out to have no sign of Sedov’s expedition. A storm threatened to tear the Farman from its tie-downs and Kuznetsov was sick until August 25. On that day the Farman made a flight which showed that the ice had been cleared by the storm. They landed in the open water and pulled the machine onto a sheltered spot. Captain Popov was passenger that evening when the engine failed causing a forced landing within sight of the ship. Repairs and a wait for fine weather meant they did not fly for the next two weeks. A note was found saying that Sedov had died on an attempt to reach the North Pole. A flight was made on September 12 out over the sea to the west-northwest, about 60 nm from land, looking for the Svyatoy Foka. On landing he reported that the ice was drifting south, and both Andromeda and Hertha weighed anchor and headed south. On September 13, the airmen made a flight of 3 hrs. 30 min. over low cloud. A westerly wind drifted the aeroplane over the glacier covered interior of Novaya Zemlya, and they could clearly see the Kara Sea to the east of the island. They returned to Krestovaya Guba to find Pechora anchored there. The Farman was dismantled and loaded aboard the ship.

  Svyatoy Foka arrived at the port of Rynda on September 4, 1914, so although Sedov had perished, his ship and crew had survived. No trace of Rusanov or the crew of Gerkules was ever found. Geogiy L’vovich Brusilov and his ship Svyataya Anna was frozen in the Arctic Ocean in 1913–1914. A party of men left the ship and two survived a gruesome march to land. The captain and the rest of crew perished with the ship some time in 1914–1915. No trace of the ship was found until 2010 on Franz Joseph Land.

  While Nagurskiy was making his successful flights, another Farman was at sea on the ice-breaker Tamyr operating out of Vladivostok at the eastern end of the Northeast Passage. It was damaged badly on its brief first flight. A sled was made and the engine and propeller turned into a successful aerosled which could and did slide over the snow pulling a sledge at up to 22kt.

  Nagurskiy had made five major flights totaling 10 hrs. 40 min., and was said to have flown more than 570 nm although, given a cruising speed of about 42 kt., it cannot have flown more than 450 nm. The first aeroplane flights in the Arctic had been a major success and Nagurskiy was decorated with the Order of Sv. Anna, third class, after the Tsar read the Naval Minister’s final report.

  Nagurskiy had succeeded because of his training and attention to detail. Amundsen could have supplied the attention to detail, but his training had been of the most elementary kind and he would have been stretched to acquire the rest of the skills while on expedition in the Arctic.

  By the time the Russian search ships returned most of the European powers were at war. Norway remained neutral but Amundsen was obliged to cancel his plans for the Polar Drift expedition, and on August 9, 1914, he wrote to the government offering his Farman for use by the Norwegian military. His offer was accepted, so he was again without an aeroplane.

  Amundsen remained convinced that aircraft had potential as tools for Arctic exploration, but it would be more than a decade before he put the theory into successful practice.

  Chapter Five

  A Flight to the North Pole?

  New York–Seattle–Wainwright–New York, 1922–1924

  The outbreak of war in August 1914 created a shipping boom. Neutral countries like Norway found their ships in great demand and freight rates high, although it was a dangerous business and many neutral seamen were killed or wounded by German U-boats, surface raiders, and mines. Norway lost 50 percent of its fleet of merchant ships and 1,892 Norwegian seamen were killed. Amundsen accepted that seamen would die, but did not accept that Germany was entitled to sink merchant ships with no attempt to safeguard the lives of the passengers and crew. He felt so strongly about the Norwegian seamen killed after Germany embarked on its second campaign of unrestricted submarine warfare in February 1917 that he returned his German medals to the German ambassador to Norway. He is quoted in Flight for November 1, 1917 as writing:

  “As a Norwegian sailor I beg to return my German decorations as a personal protest against the German murders of peaceful Norwegian seamen in the North Sea on October 17, 1917.”

  The incident referred to was a raid on a convoy by two German cruisers. Two Royal Navy escorts were sunk (this was a legitimate act of war). Nine neutral merchant ships were sunk without any opportunity to abandon ship first, and many Scandinavian seamen were killed. Amundsen invested heavily in shipping and made a large profit. He may have doubled his money, and the profits enabled him to order a ship designed to survive years locked in the ice. He planned to set out on his polar drift expedition as soon as the political situation allowed. In 1903–1907 he had had to settle for a small vessel not designed for Arctic voyaging. In 1910–1912 he had to go cap in hand to obtain use of Fram. He had planned to use the Fram for his projected 1918–1920 voyage. The ship was famous for having been used on three major voyages in polar regions; Nansen’s of 1893–1896, Otto Sverdrup’s of 1898–1902, and Amundsen’s of 1910–1912. It turned out that the Fram was suffering from deterioration in its wooden hull, possibly as a result of a lengthy stay in tropical waters after the 1910–12 expedition and sheer old age as the ship was over 20 years old and had seen much use amongst the Arctic and Antarctic ice. Now he could afford to build a ship he would own and he would be free to use it as he saw fit. Amundsen ordered a new ship to be named the Maude in honor of the Norwegian Queen. Maude had a hull which had a pronounced curve both in cross section and fore and aft. This meant that the ship would be forced upwards when locked in the pack ice rather than being crushed as a ship of conventional shape would. Its hull was almost three feet thick for the same reason. The Maude was launched on July 1, 1917, and was then fitted out and equipped for a long drift locked in the pack ice of the Polar Sea. Amundsen was still keen to use aircraft for exploration and the December 28, 1916 issue of the journal Flight noted that he would be taking an aeroplane with him on his next expedition. The same report said that he would be taking an American type that was under construction for him. When Amundsen departed Tromsø on June 15, 1918, there was no aeroplane on board. America came into the war in April 1917, and it is possible that this occurrence prevented the export of a machine for a civil expedition by a citizen of neutral Norway. Amundsen’s intention was to sail northeast along the northern coast of Russia and allow the Maude to be frozen in the pack ice of the Polar Sea. Earlier expeditions had done this, but they had drifted around the North Pole rather than across it as Amundsen hoped to do. Peary’s claim to have reached the North Pole in 1909 meant there was no distinction to be gained by simply going there, but a prolonged drift through unexplored parts of Arctic would produce scientific data including meteorological information important to weather forecasting, and there was always the possibility that new lands would be found. Amundsen was taking a chance because he departed when World War I was still being waged, and the Imperial German Navy operated U-boats were still in the White Sea which Amundsen had to traverse on his way to the top of the Eurasian landmass. The Maude failed to drift north as hoped, although he completed a transit of the North East Passage in 1918–1920, and by the spring of 1921 Maude arrived in Seattle for repairs and a refit before re-entering the ice for another try. The ship’s voyage from Tromsø to Seattle by way of the north coast of Russia was only the third transit of the North East Passage. The voyage of the Gjøa through the Northwest Passage in 1903–1907 added to the voyage of the Maude in 1918–1920 meant that he had circumnavigated the globe above the Arctic Circle and was the first man to do it. It is a striking fact that surface expeditions in the Arctic were measured in years while aerial expeditions in the same areas are measured in hours
. The ability of aircraft to cover ground quickly and provide a view of a wide swath of previously unexplored territory accounts for Amundsen’s enthusiasm for aviation and his willingness to take risks with a technology that was improving rapidly but was not yet mature.

  Amundsen had the use of an aeroplane for the next stage of the Maude expedition. The aeroplane was a Curtiss Oriole biplane, which had two open cockpits and a water-cooled motor of 160 hp. The Curtiss was had a distinctive appearance as the fuselage had a rounded and streamlined appearance and the radiator was placed vertically on top of the fuselage just in front of the top wing. The Oriole was on loan from the Curtiss Company and normally retailed for $3,000. Aeroplanes like the Oriole were hard to sell in the early 1920s because of the glut of cheap war surplus aeroplanes like the Curtiss JN-4 ‘Jenny’ which were available new out of the crate at a few hundred dollars. Amundsen took delivery of the Oriole on April 6, 1922, at Mineola, Long Island, New York. There was a handover ceremony which included a young woman breaking a bottle of champagne over the prop boss. Photos of the event show Amundsen dressed in flying clothing and the name Kristine painted on the fuselage in large letters in honour of Amundsen’s friend Kristine Elisabeth Bennet. The machine carried the Norwegian colors of red, white, and blue stripes on the wings and rudder. The Curtiss was to be carried aboard the Maude and used for short range flights from the ship and back again to check on ice conditions.