Tryggve Gran

Tryggve Gran, 1923

Jens Tryggve Herman Gran [ … tʀygɘ… gɾaːn ] (born  January 20, 1888 in Bergen , Norway , †  January 8, 1980 in Grimstad , Norway) was a Norwegian aviation pioneer , polar explorer and author . He was a member of Robert Falcon Scott's second South Pole expedition (1911-1913) and in 1914 made the first crossing of the North Sea by plane.

Life

Tryggve Gran, 1892 (center)

Tryggve Gran was born as the son of the wealthy master shipbuilder Jens Gran (1828-1894) and his wife Karoline Sofie Olberg (1848-1928). He completed his school days in Bergen , Lausanne and Lillehammer . During his one-year school stay in Switzerland in 1900, he acquired basic knowledge of German and French. In 1903 he met the German Kaiser Wilhelm II , who occasionally stayed with a family friend. After this encounter, Gran felt the desire to become a naval officer . Following his school education, he therefore attended the cadet institute of the Norwegian Navy from 1907 , but left without having achieved a degree. In 1910 Gran graduated as a so-called privateist with a Magister Artium . For several years he was also a member of the Nygaards Battalion, a youth organization known as the Bue Corps with formal military training.

Gran was an avid footballer and played for the Mercantile Fotballklubb, Oslo, founded in 1903 (merged with Nordstrand Idrettsforening, Oslo since 2006). In 1908 he was called up for the first international game in the Norwegian national team. The game against Sweden in Gothenburg Gran's team lost 3:11.

Terra Nova Expedition to Antarctica

Tryggve Gran 1911 in Antarctica

→ Main article: Terra Nova expedition

Gran's scientific interest, his thirst for discovery and, last but not least, his skiing skills led Fridtjof Nansen to recommend him to the polar explorer Robert Falcon Scott in 1910 . He was impressed by Gran's skills and took him on his Terra Nova Expedition to Antarctica in 1911 , where Gran instructed the team on how to use skis. He expressly regretted the competition triggered by his compatriot Amundsen to reach the South Pole for the first time , but was not taken into account by Scott when selecting the participants in Scott's pole expedition. After Scott and 15 companions set out from base camp at Cape Evans to the South Pole in October 1911 , Gran accompanied Thomas Griffith Taylor (1880–1963), Frank Debenham (1884–1965) and Robert Forde (1875–1959) on a geological expedition to the field of Antarctic dry valleys (see Second geological expedition (November 1911-February 1912) ). When Scott, Wilson , Oates , Bowers and Evans had still not returned from their Pole expedition to base camp in March 1912, Tryggve Gran joined the search and rescue team led by Edward Atkinson (1881–1929) six months later found the bodies of Scott, Wilson and Bowers in a tent and buried them. Scott's diary also provided information about the fate of Oates and Evans. In front of the grave, Gran set up his skis in a cross and rode back on Scott's skis - at least that's how Scott's skis had completed the journey, Gran is supposed to have said. Gran was awarded the Polar Medal by King George V for this.

In December 1912, Gran, together with Raymond Priestley , Frederick Hooper (1891–1955) and George Abbott (1880–1923), and Frank Debenham and Harry Dickason (1885–1943) as a support group, climbed the Antarctic volcano Mount Erebus ( first ascent in March 1908 ), during which a sudden eruption triggered a dangerous rain of stones.

On his way back from Antarctica, Gran met Irish pilot Robert Lorrain and has been enthusiastic about flying ever since. Gran obtained his license to fly at Louis Blériot 's pilot school in Paris . His flying masterpiece, the first North Sea overflight in 1914 (see first flight over the North Sea ), initially received little attention because of the First World War .

First World War

Gran was already Premierløytnant (first lieutenant ) in the Norwegian Air Force at that time . At the beginning of the war he volunteered for the British Royal Air Force , where he was rejected as a Norwegian because of their neutrality . He applied again under a false identity as a Canadian captain named "Teddy Grant" and was accepted. He served in London , the Western Front and Arkhangelsk and was promoted to major during the war and awarded the Military Cross . After Gran after the war, Hermann Goering met and their logbooks were compared, he claimed that Goering on 8 or 9 September 1917 in a dogfight to have shot down.

After the war, Gran gave lectures on aviation and his trips to the polar regions. In 1928 he headed a search team to rescue Roald Amundsen when he was missing on a rescue expedition for Umberto Nobile in the Arctic . Amundsen has not yet been found.

Second World War

During the Second World War Tryggve Gran was a member of the Norwegian fascist party Nasjonal Samling (NS) under Vidkun Quisling , which used his popularity as an aviation pioneer for war propaganda - in 1944 a Norwegian postage stamp appeared on the 30th anniversary of Gran's North Sea crossing. Quisling was installed as prime minister by the German occupation administration and remained in power until his arrest in May 1945; shortly thereafter, Quisling was executed for high treason . Gran was sentenced to 18 months in prison in 1948, also for high treason.

There are various assumptions about Gran's motives for joining the Norwegian National Socialist regime during the German occupation : Gran was friends with Göring and was also bitter that the Norwegian Armed Forces had not offered him a post in the Air Force. Gran also feared repression because of his missions for the British Air Force during the First World War.

After 1945

In 1971, Gran unveiled a memorial for his North Sea overflight in Cruden Bay , which the teacher Bill Currie of Robert Gordon's College in Aberdeen made with his students.

Tryggve Gran was married three times. The marriage with the actress Lilly St. John (actually Lilian Clara Johnson) lasted from 1918 to 1921. He also divorced his second wife Ingeborg Meinich (1902-1997). With Margaret Benedicte Sofie Fredrikke Borgen Schønheyder (1916–?), A well-known portrait painter , whom he married in 1941, he had a son, Hermann Gran (* approx. 1944). Tryggve Gran died in his hometown of Grimstad on January 8, 1980. In his honor, Mount Gran and the Gran Glacier in Victoria Land and the headland Tryggve Point on Ross Island are named in his honor.

First flight over the North Sea

Route of the first flight crossing of the North Sea on July 30, 1914

In 1914, Tryggve Gran was preparing for his pioneering act: the first crossing of the North Sea from Great Britain to Scandinavia by plane. The company's particular difficulty lay in finding a compromise between large quantities of fuel and low weight, because the aircraft of that time only had short ranges.

Blériot XI-2 in the Musée de l'Air et de l'Espace at Le Bourget Airport near Paris , Adolphe Pégoud's plane

Gran's machine was a two-seat, open monoplane of the type Blériot XI-2 and was equipped with a 70 hp Gnome et Rhône engine: top speed: 106 km / h, flight time (without reserve): max. 3.5 hours (= 371 km range without wind). With a forerunner of this type, its manufacturer, Louis Blériot, set the long-term flight record at the time (37 minutes) in 1909 and completed the first overflight of the English Channel  - Blériot was ahead of Gran, who had set himself the same goal up until then. Blériot gave Gran the Ça Fleet baptized machine at half price (13,000  ₣ ); the parts were taken to Scotland by truck and assembled there.

In order to increase the payload for fuel, Gran installed larger tanks and removed various parts of the aircraft, did without a jacket, overpants and boots himself and only navigated with a magnetic compass , which was later said to have cost only five crowns .

At the end of July 1914, Gran was ready to take off, but he was waiting for better weather conditions: no fog and above all westerly winds. Because of the expected war, it was announced that British airspace would be closed to private flights from July 30th at 6 p.m. When the weather finally seemed favorable at 8 a.m. that day, Tryggve Gran set off from Cruden Bay , Scotland (near Aberdeen ) in front of a handful of spectators. A paved area next to a laundry building served as a runway; he ran the risk of touching the overhead contact line of an electric conveyor. During the flight, Gran got into a fog bank, which he could not avoid because of the extremely scarce fuel. The engine stopped shortly afterwards, but Gran was able to start it again. After 4½ hours it landed in Jæren , Norway (near Stavanger ); he had covered about 475 km and had hardly any fuel left. In view of the political situation in Europe, his performance received little attention - five days later Great Britain declared war on Germany .

Ça Flotte , later renamed Nordsjøen ( Norw. North Sea ) by Gran, is now in the Norsk Teknisk Museum in Oslo .

Trivia

“I heard a noise ... like a pistol shot. It was Scott's arm that broke when they tried to get his diary out from under his body. "

- Tryggve Gran : from his report on the search expedition for Robert Falcon Scott

Works

• Hvor sydlyset flammer . 1915; Where the southern light flames . 1928 (German by Adrian Mohr)
• Under britisk flag: krigen 1914-18 . 1919
• Triumvirate . 1921
• En helt: Captain Scotts siste færd . 1924
• Mellom sky and jord . 1927
• Heia - La Villa . 1932
• Stormen on Mont Blanc . 1933
• La Villa i kamp . 1934
• Slik var det: Fra kryp til flyger . 1945
• Slik var det: Gjennom livets passat . 1952
• Kampen om South Poland . 1961
• Første fly over Nordstemmen: Et femtiårsminne . 1964
• Fra tjuagutt til sydpolfarer . 1974
• Mitt liv mellom sky and jord . 1979

literature

• Leonard Huxley (Ed.): Scott's Last Expedition, Vol. II . Smith, Elder & Co., London 1913 (accessed November 14, 2010).

Web links

• Tryggve Gran , Photo Collection of the Technical Museum Oslo (Norwegian)
• Tryggve Gran , detailed, illustrated biography in the Norwegian medical newspaper (tiedskriftet.no, Norwegian)
• Tryggve Gran , short biography on the homepage of the Norwegian radio (nrk.no, Norwegian)
• Tryggve Gran , short biography on norwaysforgottenexplorer.org (English)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Bergen ministerialbok no. B 7 (1888-1903), Fødte og døpte 1888, side 15 no 106
2. ↑ Bergen ministerialbok no. C 6 (1898-1915), confirmed 1904, side 48 nr 2
3. ↑ ^{a b c} Tryggve Gran , biographical entry in Norsk biografisk leksikon (in Norwegian, accessed on October 20, 2010)
4. ^ ^{A b c d} C. S. Albretsen: [Tryggve Gran - the first Norwegian heroic pilot]. In: Tidsskrift for den Norske lægeforening: tidsskrift for Praktisk medicin, ny række. Volume 120, Number 17, June 2000, pp. 1974-1979, ISSN  0029-2001 . PMID 11008528 .
5. ↑ ^{a b c d} Archives Hub
6. ^ International Federation of Football History & Statistics (accessed October 20, 2010).
7. ↑ ^{a b} www.crudenbay.org.uk ( Memento from March 14, 2007 in the Internet Archive )
8. ^ Raymond Priestley in Scott's Last Expedition, Vol. II , pp. 356-358.
9. ↑ ^{a b c d} Those magnificent Scots and their flying machines ( Memento from December 10, 2008 in the Internet Archive )
10. ^ Married , Flight, May 2, 1918, accessed November 23, 2013
11. ↑ Aftenbladet on July 31, 2004 ( Memento from September 30, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) Article on the 90th anniversary of the North Sea overflight, committed at the historic landing site in the presence of Hermann Grans
12. ↑ "Frost 79 ° 40 '" Published in cover culture magazine on April 30, 2004, accessed on July 31, 2018.

This version was added to the list of articles worth reading on March 28, 2007 .