From Pole to Pole

by Garth James Cameron

“Surely there has never been a more merciful deliverance from the ice.”

  They went ashore and Ellsworth lay on a flat rock while the sun warmed his face. They had 30 L of petrol left, enough for about 30 min. of flight.

  Chapter Eight

  Svalbard

  May 21–June 18, 1925

  When the last sound of the Wal’s engines had faded, Schulte-Frohlinde walked out on to the ice of Kings Bay, inspected the tracks cut by the two flying boats and found that they had both broken through at the start of their take-off slides and left tracks 1,400 meters long. The tracks became fainter as the aircraft accelerated and the wings started to take the load. The onlookers searched the sky to the north for a few hours in case the aircraft returned and then started the wait for the return.

  At 09:30, on May 21, 1925, there was no sign of the aircraft returning, and the non-flying members of the expedition knew that the flying boats had landed somewhere between Kings Bay and the Pole. They had taken off with 16 hours, fuel in each machine and 09:30 was just over 16 hours after take-off. At first there was no concern and it was simply assumed that, in due course, the machines would return having landed on the ice for a time. Alternatively, one machine would appear with both crews aboard, having landed on the ice, transferred fuel, made scientific observations, and then taken off for the return. At Ny-Ålesund, the ground party, after six weeks’ hard work preparing for the take-off, had nothing to do except wait. The sun shone high in the light blue Arctic sky, the glaciers “scintillated with lovely colors.” They packed up Farm and Hobby ready to depart for Danes Island as planned. Acting on Amundsen’s instructions they cruised between Danes Island and Amsterdam Island in case there had been an early force landing but there is nothing for them to see except the “abundance of sea birds . . . filling the air with their screaming and chattering.” The ice edge was examined as far to the east and north as they could reach without entering the pack. To fill the Farm’s fresh water tanks they tied up to an ice berg and hacked off chunks which fell into the tanks. Sailors shot two seals for meat and brought them aboard.

  There is an element of danger in all sailing close to the ice in the Arctic, and at one point Farm anchored in ice-free water but became surrounded overnight. An iceberg drifted alongside and they could see a tongue of ice under the ship. The captain decided to shift into Virgo Harbor to avoid damage. The intense public interest in the flight was reflected in the pessimistic reports in the media when there was no sign of the adventurers after six days although Amundsen had instructed the ground party not to be concerned until 14 days had elapsed. James Berg had taken movie footage of the preparation and take-off, and sailed with the ground party in the hope of recording the return of the Wals. As they waited, some of the men found the continuous daylight and the absence of night difficult to deal with.

  On May 31, several members of the expedition sailed from Ny-Ålesund for the outside world in the ice breaker Pasvik. In early June the Norwegian Navy decided to send aircraft to assist in the search. Two Hansa-Brandenburg W33 floatplanes were shipped from the naval base at Horten, in Southern Norway, to Spitsbergen aboard a collier. Farm went to Advent Bay for coal and to meet the ship with the floatplanes. While the Farm was away, and the Hobby was again patrolling the edge of the ice to the north and east, the journalists spent some days at Pike’s House at Virgo Harbor. The house had been built by the Englishman Pike in the 1880s. While they were waiting the journalists searched through the many items left behind by Andrée and Wellman in 1896–1909. There was a monument to Andrée and his companions and timbers from the Balloon House built by Andrée in 1896 and the hangar built and rebuilt by Wellman in 1906–1909. The addresses were still visible on some of the packing cases and materials used in the generation of hydrogen gas were strewn about. On June 16, the collier with the float-planes arrived at Advent Bay and the naval patrol boat Heimdal was designated mother-ship for the aircraft. The two aircraft, F18 piloted by Lutzow-Holm, and F22 piloted by Styr, flew in from Advent Bay and moored at the buoys that had been prepared for them. Another naval officer involved was Bernt Balchen, who would be a major player in the use of aircraft in the Arctic and Antarctic. Later that day the Heimdal arrived to support the aircraft. The plan was for the Heimdal and the two aircraft were to be based at Lavoen on the western coast of North East Land. The floatplanes had a comparatively short radius of action and it made sense to base them as close as possible to the search area. The next day would be June 18, 1925, exactly four weeks since Amundsen, his five companions, and the two flying boats had departed for the North Pole. Most of the watchers now believed that the Wals had been damaged in landing on the ice and the explorers were now attempting walk out to Cape Columbia in Greenland. Amundsen’s instructions had included a time limit. The search was to be continued for six weeks and there were only two weeks left. The Heimdal, Hobby, the two float-planes, and their crews intended to search for the next two weeks.

  The Heimdal was alongside the Hobby at the pier at Ny-Ålesund with steam up on the morning of June 18, 1925 when Sjöliv, a small sealing vessel tied up and on its deck were the missing aviators. Amundsen, Ellsworth, Riiser-Larsen, Dietrichson, Omdal, and Feucht were dirty, bearded, gaunt from starvation, and darkened by the sun, but were back from the dead: happy and very much alive. The excitement at Ny-Ålesund was mirrored in the headlines in Norway and around the world.

  In 1925, there was intense interest in aviation and in exploration. The 1925 Polar Expedition had all the hallmarks of an activity in which public interest and adulation was inspired and maintained. A famous leader, leading edge technology (the flying boats), a brush with death, the tension and uncertainty of a month long wait without any news, and finally a last minute escape. Amundsen was a hero and a celebrity, and his survival, when many thought him dead and lost without trace, added just the right frisson to the story.

  Headlines from the New York Times from May 22–June 22, 1925 give some idea of the world wide interest in the story, the concern at his disappearance and the joy at his survival:

  AMUNDSEN PLANES HOP OFF ON FLIGHT TO THE NORTH POLE

  Leaves Kings Bay Spitsbergen At 5:15 p.m.

  LONDON EAGER FOR NEWS

  Great Interest Is Aroused Here By News That Amundsen Has Started Flight For North Pole

  AMUNDSEN MISSING 112 HOURS IN ARCTIC

  Our Navy May Act

  GUSTAV AMUNDSEN EXPRESSES NO FEAR

  Says His Brother Could Not Make The Trip To The Pole In Less Than Ten Days

  WASHINGTON NOT WORRIED

  Sees No Reason to Act On Appeal Made By Hammer

  NO WORD OF FLIERS ON TRIP TO THE POLE

  Ships Move North; Planes Of Amundsen Are Now Overdue

  SAYS AMUNDSEN ERRED IN TAKING TWO PLANES

  English Explorer Holds Doubled Chance Of Accident

  TRUST AMUNDSEN’S SKILL

  Philadelphia Scientists Say There Is No Reason To Fear For His Safety

  COOLIDGE FAVORS AMUNDSEN RELIEF SHOULD HE NEED IT

  President Would Approve Naval Plan

  NORWEGIAN PLANES TO HUNT AMUNDSEN

  Government Decides To Send Ship North With Two Aircraft to Search

  BELIEVES AMUNDSEN IS WALKING BACK

  Thinks The Explorers Airplanes Have Been Forced Down

  GIVES PLAN TO NAVY TO HUNT AMUNDSEN

  Captain Lansdowne Of The Shenandoah Would Use Spitsbergen As Base

  NORWEGIANS SAIL TO HUNT AMUNDSEN

  Seven Men With Two Seaplanes Leave Christianiafjord

  AMUNDSEN RELIEF SHIP REACHS ADVENT BAY

  Norwegian Fliers Prepare For First Flight To Kings Bay

  AMUNDSEN’S PERIL NOW FULLY SEEN

  Details Of Adventure Reveal A Terrible Fight To Return From Arctic

  AMUNDSEN IS FLOODED BY CONGRATULATIONS

  Prominent Norwegians Start Move To Raise Funds

  NORWAY PREPARES TO HAIL AMUNDSEN

  Oslo Will Give An Enthusiastic Welcome

  The
y had gone ashore on the morning of June 16 grateful to be on dry land, but uncertain of their location. A sight with the sextant had established that they were on the latitude of Svalbard, and they were waiting to take a further sight to provide a cut which would give them longitude as well as latitude when a small vessel motored into the bay. This was the sealer Sjöliv. The crew were preoccupied by the pursuit of a wounded walrus and did not see the flags the six men waved. They rowed out the N25, started the engines, and taxied after the ship. The vessel had finished its trip and was returning to Kings Bay.

  Dornier Wal N25 over Oslofjord on July 5, 1925. On board were; Amundsen, Riiser-Larsen, Ellsworth, Dietrichsen, Omdal, and Feucht. They were on their way to a hero’s welcome in Oslo.

  An attempt to tow the aircraft was thwarted by a head wind, so they beached it in a bay near North Cape and sailed for Kings Bay with the ship. On the way they learnt of the efforts made to find them including the Norwegian naval seaplanes and Soviet ice breakers further east. Back at Ny-Ålesund they shaved, bathed, dressed in fresh dungarees, ate, and slept. For three days they surfaced only to eat.

  Ellsworth heard that his father had died at Florence on June 2, 1925, not knowing that his son would survive. They received telegrams of congratulation on their survival from the Norwegian government and news that they had made the headlines in all the big newspapers around the world.

  They remained at Kings Bay for a week so that N25 could be recovered and then put her aboard the freighter Skollern for the trip to Horten naval base near the Norwegian capital Oslo. On July 5, 1925, the six men flew the flying boat to Oslo harbor for the official welcome. They were escorted up the fjord by flights of navy and army aeroplanes. In the harbor were many warships of several navies, and all were dressed all-over with flags, and the crews manned the sides to cheer them. Officials dressed in formal frock-coats greeted them, and they rode in open horse-drawn carriages through streets lined with cheering people. At the official reception Amundsen and Ellsworth were accompanied by Riiser-Larsen, Dietrichson, and Omdal who dressed in their dark blue naval uniforms with gold braid and their gold naval aviators’ wings on the right breast of their jackets. Feucht was with them to receive his share of the adulation. That night they were honoured by a formal dinner attended by King Haakon VII and his Queen, probably the greatest honor that Norway could offer.

  On July 7, 1925, Amundsen received this telegram from King George V, King of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and Emperor of India:

  “My heartiest congratulations upon your safe return from your flight to the Polar region. I trust that you and your companions have not suffered privations during your heroic flight.”

  George R.

  Ellsworth was awarded a gold medal by King Haakon for saving Dietrichson and Omdal when they fell through the ice. The King and Queen were present at a lecture given by Amundsen at Oslo on August 14, 1925. During the lecture Amundsen said:

  “. . . When Lincoln Ellsworth saved Dietrichson and Omdal from drowning, he saved the whole expedition; and I, therefore, deeply appreciate the King’s act in conferring on Ellsworth, without whose generosity the expedition would never have taken place, the gold medal for the saving of life.”

  The carefully preserved motion picture footage exposed during the ordeal on the ice was included in a documentary film produced to help pay the expedition’s outstanding bills. After each expedition Amundsen had to write up the expedition to profit from the publicity and interest in it. The 1925 Polar flight was no exception, and there was a deadline so that the book was on the shelves before the reading public had lost interest. The 1925 book was to be around 70,000 words long, and Amundsen, Dietrichson, Ellsworth, Riiser-Larsen, and Fredrik Ramm (who had been part of the ground party and had participated in the search) contributed to the book. The resulting book was 292 pages long and was published late in 1925. It included a meteorological section by an un-named author and, given that it was thrown together in only few months, is a fresh and interesting account of the expedition. There are details of the flight and navigational instruments, as well as the carefully chosen survival equipment and food. Amundsen’s attention to detail shines through in the details of the rations and packs, sledges and skis, collapsible boats, firearms and ammunition.

  The book is almost silent on the flight plan and navigational issues. They had survived to become heroes in the eyes of the world. They had nothing to gain by advertising the fact that the plan had flaws which almost had fatal consequences.

  Chapter Nine

  Oslo–Rome

  1925–1926

  As well as writing the book Amundsen, Ellsworth and others had to get down to organising the 1926 expedition which would use the Italian semi-rigid airship N1. Amundsen, Ellsworth, Riiser-Larsen, and Dietrichson had had a meeting at Ny-Ålesund just before the flight toward the Pole and agreed to return to Kings Bay in 1926 with an airship. They would fly to the Pole and then across the Polar Sea to North America. They would have used the airship in 1925, if it had been available at that time.

  The advantage of airships had over aeroplanes (in the mid-1920s) was range, endurance and safety. The overloaded Dornier Wals had an endurance of about 16 hours at about 80 kt., which gave them a range of just under 1,300 nm in still air with no reserve. If one engine failed on a Wal, it would have to descend as it could not maintain height on one engine while overloaded. The modified N1 would have an endurance of about 75 hours at about 40 kt. giving it a still air range of about 3,000 nm. If there was engine trouble on an airship the faulty engine could be shut down and worked on in flight. If the fault could not be fixed the airship would continue at a reduced speed. If all the engines failed (it had happened in other airships) the airship could made to free-balloon without power. Another safety feature of airships was that they could fly in cloud or fog safely (as long as the crew knew where they were and the altimeter was accurately set with the ambient pressure). An airship was stable in three dimensions but aeroplanes were not. In the mid 1920s blind flying instruments were experimental and pilots flying with no sight of the horizon would become disoriented and spin or spiral out of control to the ground. Airships had certain disadvantages. Their cruising speeds were low compared to with aeroplanes. A 100 kt. aeroplane flying into a 25 kt. headwind would still have a groundspeed of 75 kt. Its range would be reduced by 25 percent. A 50 kt. airship would have its groundspeed and range reduced by 50 percent in the same wind.

  Another limitation was that they needed well equipped facilities at each place they visited. It was not safe to simply tie the airship down. The minimum requirement was a mooring mast and large supplies of hydrogen, petrol, oil, and spare parts. The masts were topped by a metal cone which fitted neatly over the tip of the reinforced nose of the airship and was free to swivel around a complete 360° circle. When docked, the airship would weathercock around to face into wind, whatever direction the wind would come from. A very large hangar and a large number of men to control the airship when it was on the ground were highly desirable. The reason was that an airship was vulnerable to wind when on the ground. An airship displayed a large side area to any wind while on the ground, and one the size of the N1 could drag hundreds of men back and forwards as they tried to control it. The normal ground handling party at its base at Ciampino, near Rome, numbered about 200.

  When the airship was at the mast part of the crew had to remain on board and “fly” the ship. Ballast had to be dropped if the ship became heavy and gas-valved off if it was light. Airships were sometimes torn from their masts in squalls, and the crew would be expected to attempt control and repair it in flight and fly it back. The ideal set up was a mast and a hangar. If the airship landed when there was a strong wind across the axis of the hangar it was not safe to try and walk it into the shed. In that case it was good practice to dock the airship to its mast and wait until the wind had died away before returning it to its shed. The larger the airship, the greater was the vulnerability to wind when being handled on t
he ground. The German Army and Navy operated numbers of very large rigid airships during World War I. The problem of getting the airships in and out of the hangars in a cross wind was so great that several rotating hangars were built so that they could be aligned parallel to the wind.

  The flight to Kings Bay was in stages by way of Pulham in southeastern Britain, Oslo in southern Norway, Leningrad (now St Petersburg) in the West of the Soviet Union, and Vadsø in Northern Norway. The exploration flight was to be non-stop from Kings Bay the North Pole and on to Nome in Alaska. They also had to obtain the consent of the French government for the use of an airship base in northern France to be used if headwinds made a direct flight from Ciampino to Pulham marginal. Airship masts had to be built at Oslo, Vadsø and Kings Bay. A mast was also built at Rome so the crew could practise the docking procedure. They also had to build a hangar at Kings Bay to house the airship while they waited for good weather for the great flight. They could have by-passed Oslo, but the expedition was made with major support from Norway and a stop at Oslo would be politically desirable.

  They wanted to be at Kings Bay with the airship as soon as the summer melt of the southern part of the sea ice made it possible for ships to reach Spitsbergen. This meant that work on the masts at Oslo, Vadsø and Kings Bay, and the hangar at Kings Bay would have to start as soon as possible. For the construction work at Kings Bay to be ready in time the contractor, his workers, and the wood, steel, canvas, and concrete would have to be delivered there before the sea ice blocked navigation. More importantly, it meant that construction work would have to continue throughout the sub-zero temperatures, snow, ice, wind, and the days of permanent darkness experienced in mid-winter at this high latitude.

  Amundsen started the ball rolling for the 1926 flight by telegraphing Colonel Umberto Nobile to come to Oslo to meet with him and with the other Norwegians involved in planning what was to be a very complex and time consuming expedition. Nobile was an officer in the aviation branch of the Italian Army, a designer of advanced semi-rigid airships, and an experienced pilot who regularly flew the airships he designed. Nobile had graduated from the University of Naples with degrees in electrical and industrial engineering. After working for Italian State Railways on the electrification of the system he became interested in aviation, and in 1911 took a one-year course in aeronautics with the Italian Army. Italy was the first nation to make full use of military aircraft in a war and had used airships, kite balloons, and aeroplanes in combat in Libya during the Italo-Turkish war of 1911–12. Italy entered World War I on the allied side in 1915 and Nobile was commissioned in the air branch of the Army and worked on the production and improvement of airships for the rest of the war. He also worked on his own designs although none of them flew until after the war.