Umberto Nobile - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

Umberto Nobile was an Italian

Italy

Italy , officially the Italian Republic languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Italy's official name is as follows:;;;;;;;;), is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...

aeronautical engineer and Arctic explorer. Nobile was a developer and promoter of semi-rigid airship

Semi-rigid airship

Semi-rigid airships are airships with a partial framework. These often consist of a rigid, or occasionally, flexible, keel frame along the long axis under the aerodynamic hull envelope. The partial framework can also be located inside the hull...

s during the Golden Age of Aviation

Golden Age of Aviation

The Golden Age of Aviation was the period between World War I and World War II in which civil aviation, fueled by many daring and dramatic record-breaking feats, became popularized...

between the two World Wars. He is primarily remembered for designing and piloting the airship

Airship

An airship or dirigible is a type of aerostat or "lighter-than-air aircraft" that can be steered and propelled through the air using rudders and propellers or other thrust mechanisms...

Norge

Norge (airship)

The Norge was a semi-rigid Italian-built airship that carried out what many consider the first verified overflight of the North Pole on May 12, 1926. It was also the first aircraft to fly over the polar ice cap between Europe and America...

, which may have been the first aircraft to reach the North Pole

North Pole

The North Pole, also known as the Geographic North Pole or Terrestrial North Pole, is, subject to the caveats explained below, defined as the point in the northern hemisphere where the Earth's axis of rotation meets its surface...

, and which was indisputably the first to fly across the polar ice cap from Europe to America. Nobile also designed and flew the Italia
Airship Italia
Airship Italia was a semi-rigid airship used by Italian engineer Umberto Nobile in his second series of flights around the North Pole.-Design and specifications:...

, a second polar airship; this second expedition ended in a deadly crash and provoked an international rescue effort.

Early career

Born in Lauro

Lauro

Lauro is a town and comune in the province of Avellino, Campania, Italy....

, in the southern Italian province of Avellino

Province of Avellino

The Province of Avellino is a province in the Campania region of Italy. The area is typified by many small towns and villages scattered across the province; in fact only two towns have a population over 20,000; its capital city Avellino and Ariano Irpino....

, Nobile graduated from the University of Naples

University of Naples Federico II

The University of Naples Federico II is a university located in Naples, Italy. It was founded in 1224 and is organized into 13 faculties. It is the world's oldest state university and one of the oldest academic institutions in continuous operation...

with degrees in both electrical and industrial engineering. In 1906 he began working for the Italian state railways, where he worked on electrification of the rail system. In 1911 his interests turned to the field of aeronautical engineering, and he enrolled in a one-year course offered by the Italian Army. Nobile had always been fascinated by the work of airship pioneers such as Ferdinand von Zeppelin

Ferdinand von Zeppelin

Ferdinand Adolf Heinrich August Graf von Zeppelin was a German general and later aircraft manufacturer. He founded the Zeppelin Airship company...

. When Italy entered World War I

World War I

World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...

in 1915, the then 29-year-old attempted three times to enlist, but was rejected as physically unfit for service.

Commissioned in the Italian air force, Nobile spent the war overseeing airship construction and developing new designs. The Italian military had already used airships as early as 1912, during the Italo-Turkish War

Italo-Turkish War

The Italo-Turkish or Turco-Italian War was fought between the Ottoman Empire and the Kingdom of Italy from September 29, 1911 to October 18, 1912.As a result of this conflict, Italy was awarded the Ottoman provinces of Tripolitania, Fezzan, and...

, for bombing and reconnaissance. Italy built about 20 M-class semi-rigid airship

Semi-rigid airship

s with a bomb

Bomb

A bomb is any of a range of explosive weapons that only rely on the exothermic reaction of an explosive material to provide an extremely sudden and violent release of energy...

load of 1000 kg which it used for bombing and anti-shipping missions. The Italians also used other, smaller airships, some of them British-built. None of Nobile's designs flew until after the war.

In July 1918, Nobile formed a partnership with the engineers Giuseppe Valle, Benedetto Croce and Celestino Usuelli, which they called the Aeronautical Construction Factory. During this period he also lectured at the University of Naples, obtained his test pilot's license and wrote the textbook Elementi di Aerodinamica (Elements of Aerodynamics). He became convinced that medium sized, semi-rigid airship

Semi-rigid airship

s were superior to non-rigid

Non-rigid airship

A blimp, or non-rigid airship, is a floating airship without an internal supporting framework or keel. A non-rigid airship differs from a semi-rigid airship and a rigid airship in that it does not have any rigid structure, neither a complete framework nor a partial keel, to help the airbag...

and rigid

Rigid airship

A rigid airship is a type of airship in which the envelope retained its shape by the use of an internal structural framework rather than by being forced into shape by the pressure of the lifting gas within the envelope as used in blimps and semi-rigid airships.Rigid airships were produced and...

designs. The company's first project was the Airship T-34

Roma (airship)

- References :NotesBibliography* Tampa Times, February 22, 1922. Page 1.* New York Times, February 22, 1922. Page 1....

, which was designed for a trans-Atlantic crossing. When the British R34 crossed the Atlantic in 1919, Nobile and his partners sold the T-34 to the Italian military. Later the U.S. Army acquired the ship, and commissioned it as the Roma

Roma (airship)

- References :NotesBibliography* Tampa Times, February 22, 1922. Page 1.* New York Times, February 22, 1922. Page 1....

. The Roma ultimately crashed in Langley, Virginia

Langley, Virginia

Langley is an unincorporated community in the census-designated place of McLean in Fairfax County, Virginia, United States.The community was essentially absorbed into McLean many years ago, although there is still a Langley High School...

in 1922 after hittng high tension power lines, killing 34.

That same year, in the face of political instability and threats to nationalize his company, Nobile traveled to the U.S. to work as a consultant for Goodyear

Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company

The Goodyear Tire & Rubber Company was founded in 1898 by Frank Seiberling. Goodyear manufactures tires for automobiles, commercial trucks, light trucks, SUVs, race cars, airplanes, farm equipment and heavy earth-mover machinery....

in Akron, Ohio

Akron, Ohio

Akron , is the fifth largest city in the U.S. state of Ohio and the county seat of Summit County. It is located in the Great Lakes region approximately south of Lake Erie along the Little Cuyahoga River. As of the 2010 census, the city had a population of 199,110. The Akron Metropolitan...

. He returned to Italy in 1923 and began construction of a new airship, the N-1. According to his biography and numerous articles, he was also caught up in a web of political and professional intrigue with competitors and detractors. His principal antagonists seem to have been General Gaetano Arturo Crocco

Gaetano Arturo Crocco

Gaetano Arturo Crocco was an Italian scientist and aeronautics pioneer, the founder of the Italian Rocket Society, and went on to become Italy's leading space scientist. He was born in Naples....

, a competing airship manufacturer, and General Italo Balbo

Italo Balbo

Italo Balbo was an Italian Blackshirt leader who served as Italy's Marshal of the Air Force , Governor-General of Libya, Commander-in-Chief of Italian North Africa , and the "heir apparent" to Italian dictator Benito Mussolini.After serving in...

, chief of the air force general staff, who sought to develop Italy's air fleet with heavier-than-air craft rather than the airships Nobile designed.

Polar expeditions

Norge

In autumn 1925 Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen

Roald Amundsen

Roald Engelbregt Gravning Amundsen was a Norwegian explorer of polar regions. He led the first Antarctic expedition to reach the South Pole between 1910 and 1912 and he was the first person to reach both the North and South Poles. He is also known as the first to traverse the Northwest Passage....

sought out Nobile to collaborate on a flight to the North Pole - still at that time an unreached goal for aviators - using one of Nobile's craft. Amundsen had previously in spring 1925 flown to within 150 nautical mile

Nautical mile

The nautical mile is a unit of length that is about one minute of arc of latitude along any meridian, but is approximately one minute of arc of longitude only at the equator...

s (280 km) of the North Pole, in a pair of Italian-built Dornier Wal
Dornier Do J
The Dornier Do J Wal was a twin-engine German flying boat of the 1920s designed by Dornier Flugzeugwerke. The Do J was designated the Do 16 by the Reich Air Ministry under its aircraft designation system of 1933....

flying boats along with the American millionaire-adventurer Lincoln Ellsworth

Lincoln Ellsworth

Lincoln Ellsworth was an arctic explorer from the United States.-Birth:He was born on May 12, 1880 to James Ellsworth and Eva Frances Butler in Chicago, Illinois...

, the pilot Hjalmar Riiser-Larsen, but their planes were forced to land near 88 degrees North and the six men were trapped on the ice for 30 days.

The Italian State Airship Factory, which had built Nobile's N-1, made it available for the expedition March 29, 1926. Amundsen insisted in the contract that Nobile should be the pilot and that five of the crew should be Italian; Amundsen named the airship Norge

Norge (airship)

(Norway). On April 14 the airship left Italy for Leningrad (now renamed Saint Petersburg] in Russia with stops at Pulham

RNAS Pulham

RNAS Pulham was an Royal Navy Air Service airship station, south of Norwich, UK. Though land was purchased by the Navy in 1912 the site was not operational until 1915...

(England) and Oslo. On its way towards its Arctic jumping-off point, Ny-Ålesund

Ny-Ålesund

Ny-Ålesund is one of the four permanent settlements on the island of Spitsbergen in the Svalbard archipelago. It is located on the Brøgger peninsula at Kongsfjorden...

(Kings Bay) at Vestspitsbergen, Svalbard (belonging to Norway) it also made a stop at the airship mast at Vadsoe (Northern Norway).

On 29 April Amundsen was dismayed at the arrival of Richard E. Byrd's American expedition which also aimed to reach the Pole. On May 9, after Byrd and Floyd Bennett

Floyd Bennett

Floyd Bennett was an American aviator who piloted Richard E. Byrd on his attempt to reach the North Pole in 1926.-Biography:...

departed in their Fokker F-VII and returned less than 16 hours later claiming to have overflown the Pole, Amundsen was one of the first to congratulate them. The Norge crew pressed ahead with their flight. Byrd's co-pilot Bennett is said later to have admitted that they faked their flight to the Pole.

On May 11, 1926, the Norge expedition left Svalbard. Fifteen and a half hours later the ship flew over the Pole and landed two days later in Teller, Alaska

Teller, Alaska

Teller is a city in Nome Census Area, Alaska, United States. At the 2000 census the population was 268. According to a 2009 estimate, the population had increased by exactly one person....

; strong winds had made the planned landing at Nome, Alaska impossible. In retrospect, the Norge crew actually achieved their aim of being the first to overfly the Pole: Byrd's May 9 flight, acclaimed for decades as the prestigious first Polar flyover, has since been subjected to several credible challenges, including the discovery of Byrd's flight diary which showed that navigational data in his official report was fraudulent.

The Norge "Rome to Nome" flight was acclaimed as another great milestone in flight, but disagreement soon erupted between Nobile (designer and pilot), and Amundsen (expd. leader, observer and passenger) on the flight, as to who deserved greater credit for the expedition. The controversy was exacerbated by Mussolini's government, which trumpeted the genius of Italian engineering and ordered Nobile on a speaking tour of the U.S., further alienating Amundsen and the Norwegians.

Italia

Despite the controversy, Nobile continued to maintain good relations with other polar scientists, and he started planning a new expedition, this time fully under Italian control. Nobile's company managed to sell the N-3 airship to Japan

Japan

Japan is an island nation in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south...

; however, relations between Nobile and his competitors in the fascist government were hostile, and he and his staff were subjected to threats and intimidation. Nobile's popularity with the public meant he was, for the moment, safe from direct attack. When the plans for his next expedition were announced, Italo Balbo

Italo Balbo

is said to have commented, "Let him go, for he cannot possibly come back to bother us anymore."

The N-class airship Italia

Airship Italia

Airship Italia was a semi-rigid airship used by Italian engineer Umberto Nobile in his second series of flights around the North Pole.-Design and specifications:...

was slowly completed and equipped for Polar flight during 1927-28. Part of the difficulty was in raising private funding to cover the costs of the expedition, which finally was financed by the city of Milan; the Italian government limited its direct participation to providing the airship and sending the aging steamer Città di Milano as a support vessel to Svalbard

Svalbard

Svalbard is an archipelago in the Arctic, constituting the northernmost part of Norway. It is located north of mainland Europe, midway between mainland Norway and the North Pole. The group of islands range from 74° to 81° north latitude , and from 10° to 35° east longitude. Spitsbergen is the...

, under the command of Giuseppe Romagna.

This time the airship used a German hangar at Stolp en route to Svalbard and the mast at Vadsø

Vadsø

is a city and municipality in Finnmark county, Norway. The city is the administrative centre of the municipality and the county of Finnmark....

(Northern Norway). On May 23, 1928, after an outstanding 69 hour long flight to the Siberian group of Arctic islands, the Italia commenced its flight to the North Pole with Nobile as both pilot and expedition leader. On May 24, the ship reached the Pole and had already turned back toward Svalbard when it ran into a storm. On May 25, the Italia crashed onto the pack ice less than 30 kilometres north of Nordaustlandet (Eastern part of Svalbard). Of the 16 men in the crew, ten were thrown onto the ice; the remaining six crewmen were trapped as the lightened ship swept the intact gondola skyward; the ship might have then exploded later, but the fate of the six men was never resolved. One of the ten men on the ice, Pomella died from the impact; Nobile suffered a broken arm, broken leg, broken rib and head injury; Cecioni suffered two badly broken legs; Malmgren suffered a severe shoulder injury and suspected injury to a kidney; and Zappi had several broken ribs.

The crew managed to salvage several items from the crashed airship gondola, including a radio transceiver, a tent which they later painted red for maximum visibility, and, critically, packages of food and survival equipment which quick-witted engineer Ettore Arduino had managed to throw onto the ice before he and his five companions were carried off to their deaths by the wrecked but still airborne airship envelope and keel. As the days passed, the drifting sea ice took the survivors towards Foyn

Foyn Island

Foyn Island is the second largest island in the Possession Islands, East Antarctica, lying 4 miles southwest of Possession Island. The island was explored by a Norwegian expedition of 1894-95 led by Henrik Johan Bull. The island was named for Svend Foyn, primary sponsor of the expedition. An...

and Broch islands.

A few days after the crash the Swedish meteorologist Malmgren and Nobile's second and third in command Mariano and Zappi decided to leave the immobile group and march towards land. Malmgren, who was injured, weakened and reportedly still depressed over his meteorological advice that he felt contributed to the crash, asked his two Italian companions to continue without him. These two were picked up several weeks later by the Soviet icebreaker "Krasin". However there were persistent rumors that Malmgren was killed and cannibalized by Zappi and Mariano.

A "highly imaginative, fictionalized version" of these events was made into the 1969 film The Red Tent
The Red Tent (film)
The Red Tent is a joint Soviet/Italian 1969 film directed by Mikhail Kalatozov.The film is based on the story of the mission to rescue Umberto Nobile and the other survivors of the crash of the Airship Italia. It features Sean Connery as Roald Amundsen and Peter Finch as Nobile. The script was...

. The film was an Italian/Russian co-production and featured Peter Finch

Peter Finch

Peter Finch was a British-born Australian actor. He is best remembered for his role as "crazed" television anchorman Howard Beale in the film Network, which earned him a posthumous Academy Award for Best Actor, his fifth Best Actor award from the British Academy of Film and Television Arts, and a...

as Nobile, Sean Connery

Sean Connery

Sir Thomas Sean Connery , better known as Sean Connery, is a Scottish actor and producer who has won an Academy Award, two BAFTA Awards and three Golden Globes Sir Thomas Sean Connery (born 25 August 1930), better known as Sean Connery, is a Scottish actor and producer who has won an Academy...

as Amundsen and Hardy Krüger

Hardy Krüger

Hardy Krüger is a German actor. He is thought of as one of the greatest German actors of the 1960s. He was born in Wedding, Berlin, German Reich...

as Lundborg.

Controversial search and rescue

In the wake of the crash, a collection of nations, including Soviet Russia, Norway, Sweden, Finland, and Italy, launched the first polar air and sea rescue effort. Privately owned ships which had been chartered by polar scientists and explorers also participated. Even Roald Amundsen put aside his past differences with Nobile and boarded a French seaplane and headed for the rescue headquarters; this plane disappeared between Tromsø

Tromsø

Tromsø is a city and municipality in Troms county, Norway. The administrative centre of the municipality is the city of Tromsø.Tromsø city is the ninth largest urban area in Norway by population, and the seventh largest city in Norway by population...

and Svalbard

Svalbard

, and though a pontoon from the craft was later found, the bodies of Amundsen, the pilot René Guilbaud

René Guilbaud

René Guilbaud was an early-20th-century French military aviator.-Long-distance flights:Guilbaud was celebrated mainly for long-range flights, by flying boat across Africa in 1926 and 1927, first in a Lioré et Olivier LeO H-190 and then in CAMS 37.-Disappearance:Guilbaud disappeared in the Barents...

and the four others on board were not.

After a month of privation for the Italia survivors, the first rescue plane, a Swedish

Sweden

Sweden , officially the Kingdom of Sweden , is a Nordic country on the Scandinavian Peninsula in Northern Europe. Sweden borders with Norway and Finland and is connected to Denmark by a bridge-tunnel across the Öresund....

airforce Fokker

Fokker

Fokker was a Dutch aircraft manufacturer named after its founder, Anthony Fokker. The company operated under several different names, starting out in 1912 in Schwerin, Germany, moving to the Netherlands in 1919....

ski plane, piloted by Lieutenant Einar Lundborg

Einar Lundborg

Einar Lundborg was a Swedish aviator.Lundborg became famous in 1928 in connection with his rescue of Umberto Nobile after Nobile's airship crash on the ice north of Spitsbergen...

and with Lieutenant Schyberg as observer landed near the crash site. Nobile had prepared a detailed evacuation plan, with the most seriously wounded man (the heavy built mechanic Cecioni) at the top of the list and himself as number 4, with the navigator (Viglieri) and the radio operator (Biagi) as respectively no. 5 and 6. However Lundborg refused to take anyone but Nobile. He argued that the plane could only take one survivor and the other seriously injured man was so heavy Lundborg was unsure he could take off. Nobile was airlifted to Ryss Island, base camp of Swedish and Finnish air rescue efforts. When Lundborg returned alone to pick up a second survivor he crashed his plane on landing, and was trapped with the other five.

Eventually, Nobile reached the Città di Milano where, he later said, he was dismayed at the incompetence he found. His attempts to help co-ordinate the international rescue effort were blocked, and when he threatened to leave he was placed under virtual arrest by Captain Romagna. His telegrams to the survivors still on the ice, as well as to various people involved in the rescue, were heavily censored. It was wrongly reported in Fascist Italian newspapers that his own evacuation was an obvious sign of cowardice. After 48 days on the ice floe, the last five men of his crew were rescued by the Soviet icebreaker

Icebreaker

An icebreaker is a special-purpose ship or boat designed to move and navigate through ice-covered waters. Although the term usually refers to ice-breaking ships, it may also refer to smaller vessels .For a ship to be considered an icebreaker, it requires three traits most...

Krasin

Krasin (1916 icebreaker)

The first icebreaker Krasin was built for the Imperial Russian Navy as Svyatogor. She had a long, distinguished career in rescue operations, as well as a pathfinder and explorer of the Northern Sea Route...

. Nobile insisted that he wanted to continue the search for the six crew who were swept away by the airship when it disintegrated, but he was ordered back to Rome with the others.
Two hundred thousand cheering Italians met Nobile and his crew on arrival in Rome on July, 31st. This show of popularity was unexpected by Nobile's detractors, who had been seeding the foreign and domestic press with accusations against him. An aggrieved Nobile was not shy about his complaints; in an interview with Benito Mussolini

Benito Mussolini

Benito Amilcare Andrea Mussolini was an Italian politician who led the National Fascist Party and is credited with being one of the key figures in the creation of Fascism....

, he offended the dictator by detailing his grievances at length. The official inquiry and the embarrassment over the crash gave Nobile's enemies the chance they were looking for: blame for the disaster was placed on his shoulders, and he was accused of abandoning his men on the ice - charges he would spend the rest of his life trying to dispel. In protest of the findings, general Nobile resigned from the air force in March 1929. He faced a further trial with the death of his wife Carlotta in July 1934.

Later career

In 1931, Nobile left Italy to work for the next four years in the Soviet Union

Soviet Union

The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....

, where he helped with the Soviet semi-rigid airship programme. Details of the Soviet Airship Program

Russian airships

This article outlines some of the rigid and semi-rigid airships used in or built in Russia and the Soviet Union.In 1812, desiring to attack Napolean's army during the French invasion of Russia, Alexander I commissioned the German engineer Leppig to build a large fish-shaped airship propelled by...

remain obscure, but there is an obvious Nobile influence in the design of the airships USSR-V5, and SSSR-V6 OSOAVIAKhIM. He was allowed to return to Italy to teach in December 1936, before going to the United States

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

in 1939 to teach aeronautics at Lewis University

Lewis University

Lewis University is a private Roman Catholic and Lasallian university located in Romeoville, Illinois, United States . The enrollment is currently around 6,800 students...

in Lockport

Lockport, Illinois

Lockport is a city in Will County, Illinois, United States, that incorporated in 1853. Lockport is located in northeastern Illinois, 30 miles southwest of Chicago, and north of Joliet, at locks connecting Chicago Sanitary and Ship Canal with the Des Plaines River via the Lockport...

, Illinois

Illinois

Illinois is the fifth-most populous state of the United States of America, and is often noted for being a microcosm of the entire country. With Chicago in the northeast, small industrial cities and great agricultural productivity in central and northern Illinois, and natural resources like coal,...

. When Italy went to war with the United States, he was permitted to remain in the US, but declined the offer of US citizenship and instead returned to Rome in May 1942. After a brief stay, he moved to Spain where he stayed until Italy surrendered to Allied forces in July 1943. At that time, he returned to Rome to see to the safety of his only child Maria (born ca. 1921).

In 1945 the Italian air force cleared Nobile of all charges related to the Italia crash, and not only reinstalled him in his former rank as major general, but promoted him to lieutenant general and paid him back-pay dating to 1928. He ran for the Constituent Assembly as independent candidate in the lists of the PCI

Italian Communist Party

The Italian Communist Party was a communist political party in Italy.The PCI was founded as Communist Party of Italy on 21 January 1921 in Livorno, by seceding from the Italian Socialist Party . Amadeo Bordiga and Antonio Gramsci led the split. Outlawed during the Fascist regime, the party played...

. . He returned to his beloved University of Naples where he taught, and wrote of his adventures, until his retirement. He also married again, and this time to Gertrude Stolp, a German woman he had met in Spain (she later became chief librarian at the FAO organisation

Food and Agriculture Organization

The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations is a specialised agency of the United Nations that leads international efforts to defeat hunger. Serving both developed and developing countries, FAO acts as a neutral forum where all nations meet as equals to negotiate agreements and...

in Rome).

He died in Rome on July 30, 1978 after having celebrated the 50th anniversary of his two polar expeditions. The Italian Air Force Museum at Vigna di Valle

Italian Air Force Museum

The Italian Air Force Museum is an aircraft museum at Vigna di Valle, on the Lake Bracciano , central Italy. It is operated by the Aeronautica Militare.- Propeller aircraft :* Ansaldo AC.2* Ansaldo SVA 5* Blériot XI* Caproni Ca.3* Caproni Ca.100...

(just outside Rome) has a large permanent exhibition on his achievements.

Early career

Polar expeditions

Norge

Italia

Controversial search and rescue

Later career

See also

Further reading