Leif Dietrichson

Leif Ragnar Dietrichson (born September 1, 1890 in Hønefoss , Norway , † June 18, 1928 at Bear Island ) was a Norwegian naval aviator . In 1925 he flew one of the two flying boats with which the polar explorers Roald Amundsen and Lincoln Ellsworth tried in vain to reach the North Pole by air. He died in 1928 with Amundsen and four other men while trying to bring help to Umberto Nobile's unsuccessful expedition with the airship Italia .

Life

Participants in the Amundsen-Ellsworth Expedition in 1925 at the reception in Oslo: From left to right: Feucht, Omdal, Riiser-Larsen, Dietrichson and Amundsen

Memorial to Leif Dietrichson in Hønefoss

Leif Dietrichson was born in 1890 as the fourth of five children of the doctor Kristian Adolph Gustav Emil Dietrichson (1858-1896) and his wife Birgitte Lynum (1860-1940). His uncle was Oluf Christian Dietrichson (1856–1942), who had accompanied Fridtjof Nansen in 1888 when he first crossed Greenland . After the early death of his father, Leif Dietrichson's mother had to work as a music teacher in order to be able to look after the children. After attending the Naval Academy, he completed an internship as a helmsman with Det Bergenske Dampskibsselskab before starting his career in the Norwegian Navy . In 1915 he reported to the newly formed naval aviation forces. From 1918 until his death, the flying boat base in Kristiansand was under his control . He survived a crash of his plane in Portør havn in southern Norway without serious injuries.

In 1923 Dietrichson met Roald Amundsen through mutual acquaintances. The polar explorer planned to reach the North Pole by plane, but only found a partner in the American Lincoln Ellsworth at the end of 1924 who had the necessary financial means. Amundsen bought two Dornier Wal flying boats , called the N 24 and N 25 , and put together a six-person expedition team, which, alongside himself and his deputy Ellsworth, included the Norwegian military pilots Leif Dietrichson, Hjalmar Riiser-Larsen and Oskar Omdal, and the German mechanic Karl Feucht belonged to the Dornier works . On 21 May 1925, the two aircraft took off Ny-Ålesund on Spitsbergen to their polar flight. Dietrichson flew the N 24 with Ellsworth as navigator and Omdal as mechanic, Riiser-Larsen the N 25 . The N 24 already got a leak at takeoff, but Dietrichson decided to continue the flight. When the rear engine of the N 25 failed, the two planes landed at 87 ° 43 'north latitude and 10 ° 20' 1 "west longitude, the northernmost point reached by an aircraft up to that point. On the way to the N 25 , Dietrichson and Omdal collapsed in the ice and were rescued by Ellsworth. It turned out to be impossible to get both planes afloat again. The six men needed more than three weeks to build a runway for the N 25 on their own . Everything that could be dispensed with was left on the ice when they all embarked on their return flight on a plane. Dietrichson navigated the machine flown by Riiser-Larsen safely back to Spitzbergen. For Amundsen's book The Hunt for the North Pole. Later he wrote a chapter with the plane to the 88th parallel . The book was dedicated to Gunvor Dietrichson (1902–1997) and Kirsten Riiser-Larsen (1889–1978), the pilots' wives.

Amundsens wanted to take Dietrichson with him on his transpolar flight with the airship Norge in 1926 , but the latter canceled for family reasons. In 1928 Dietrichson had the opportunity to take part in Richard Byrd's expedition to Antarctica . But when Amundsen asked him to help him find Umberto Nobile's missing airship Italia , he canceled Byrd. So it was finally Dietrichson's cousin Bernt Balchen who piloted the plane with which Byrd was the first to fly over the South Pole . Dietrichson, on the other hand, flew with Amundsen and a four-man French crew on board a Latham 47 from Tromsø towards Spitsbergen. The machine disappeared near Bear Island.

Dietrichson's only son Gustav (1921–1945) became a military aviator like his father and lost his life in the final weeks of World War II as a Royal Air Force pilot in the bombing of Germany.

On May 17, 1949, Riiser-Larsen unveiled a memorial to Leif Dietrichson in the south park of Hønefoss. The Dietrichsonbukta bay on the island of Nordostland in the Svalbard Archipelago, near the point to which he had navigated the N 25 , is named after him today.

Individual evidence

1. ^ Dietrichsonbukta . In: The Place Names of Svalbard (first edition 1942). Norsk Polarinstitutt , Oslo 2001, ISBN 82-90307-82-9 (English, Norwegian).

Web links

Commons : Leif Dietrichson  - collection of images, videos and audio files

• Susan Barr: Leif Dietrichson . In: Norsk biografisk leksikon (Norwegian)
• Torolf Rein: Leif Ragnar Dietrichson . In: Store norske leksikon (Norwegian)