Umberto Nobile

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Umberto Nobile (1926)
Nobile (right) with Arthur Berson (1929)

Umberto Nobile (born January 21, 1885 in Lauro near Naples , † July 30, 1978 in Rome ) was an Italian airship pioneer and general . He was particularly famous for his polar journeys with his two semi-rigid airships .

Live and act

Career

Umberto Nobile graduated from the University of Naples with degrees in both electrical engineering and engineering “ cum laude ”. After five years with the state railway, where he worked on the development of power lines, he entered the then still young, unexplored field of aviation for the first time in 1911.

In 1915, when Italy entered World War I, the 29-year-old little skinny Nobile was turned down three times by the military because he was considered physically unfit. Nevertheless, thanks to his technical skills, he managed to enter the service of the military. He got the rank of lieutenant colonel . Construction of the first airships began as early as the First World War, but they were no longer used because the war had ended earlier.

Nobile also had an airship license, which qualified him as a test pilot for piloting airships. In addition, he worked as an instructor and taught aerodynamics at the University of Naples. Umberto Nobile was involved in the creation of the keel airship Roma , which was sold to the USA by the Italian government. It was destroyed in an air accident on February 21, 1922 in Hampton, Virginia . 34 crew members perished.

North Pole Expeditions

Umberto Nobile looks at Ny-Ålesund from his airship Norge

On May 11, 1926, Nobile set off from Ny-Ålesund in Norway with his airship on his first polar journey. He drove on May 12, 1926 in the airship Norge together with Roald Amundsen and the sponsor of the expedition, the American Lincoln Ellsworth , across the North Pole . This made them the first people to reach the North Pole beyond any doubt.

At the time, it was believed that Robert Peary was the first to reach the Pole in 1909. From the beginning there were doubts about his information. Today there is little doubt that Peary failed to achieve his goal. The information provided by the American Richard Byrd , who claims to have flown over the Pole in an airplane three days before Amundsen and Nobile, was also doubted from the start. In the absence of evidence and testimony, it can be assumed that Byrd missed the pole by up to several hundred kilometers.

The Italia , 1928

On a second trip to the North Pole, this time without Amundsen, Nobile took off on May 23, 1928 with the airship Italia near Ny-Ålesund on the island of Spitsbergen and reached the pole on May 24. One day later, the Italia and her 16 crew members crashed on the return flight from the North Pole not far from the island of Foynøya in the northeastern part of the Svalbard archipelago . Ten crew members including Nobile were thrown onto the ice, one expedition member was killed and the others were seriously injured. The unloaded airship quickly rose again with the six remaining men on board. One never found a trace of them. Shortly before take-off, Nobile had deposited a small shortwave radio device for the 30 to 50 m wavelength range in the airship. With the help of this device and the necessary accessories, the on-board radio operator of the Italia , Giuseppe Biagi, succeeded in making emergency calls that went unheard for days.

On June 2, 1928, the Russian radio amateur Nikolai Reinholdowitsch Schmidt received an SOS call from the Nobile North Pole Expedition in Wochma . An international rescue operation took place, but Mussolini did not want Amundsen to participate. Therefore, he started his own rescue flight with the help of a French loan, a Latham-47 seaplane. After a short stop in Bergen , we went on to Tromsø . On June 18, Amundsen and the pilot Leif Dietrichson got on here . After a few attempts to take off, the machine flew towards Spitzbergen, but never got there. A swimmer was later found who undoubtedly came from the Latham 47, as could be determined from repairs that had been carried out in Bergen before the start. After the damage, it could be assumed that the machine had hit the water hard. Finally a gas tank could be recovered. Someone had tried to plug a leak in the tank with a wooden plug.

The Nobile, immobilized by broken bones, was brought to safety by the Swedish pilot Einar Lundborg , the other survivors were rescued on July 12 by the Soviet icebreaker Krassin . International cooperation, in particular the participation of the Soviet Union, generated a strong public response. One year after the rescue operation, German radio dedicated a radio play to the topic with the title SOS… rao rao… Foyn - “Krassin” saves “Italia” . In this rescue operation, the actual homeland of the expedition, Italy under Mussolini, could not be persuaded to take part, even due to the broad indignation of the local population. It got on relatively late after international pressure with two small aircraft.

emigration

Nobile was later strongly attacked by the public because he was accused of being responsible for the crash of the airship and that he was the first to save as an expedition leader. He defended himself by saying that the Swedish pilot had strict orders to rescue him first, but they did not believe him and wanted nothing more to do with him in Italy. Therefore, he resigned as a general (according to some sources he was demoted and released from the army) and was a guest of the Soviet Union from 1931 to 1936 to support the airship construction there.

At times, at the end of the 1930s, Nobile was in a relationship with the German archaeologist Hermine Speier . Born as a Jew, Speier was arrested in 1938 before Adolf Hitler's visit to Italy and freed by Nobile a day later.

Later Nobile moved to the USA and finally to Spain. In the United States, he was a lecturer at the Lewis Holy Name School of Aeronautics in Lockport, Illinois from 1939 to 1943. In 1945 he was rehabilitated in Italy.

reception

On November 5, 1929, the Berliner Funkstunde broadcast the 64-minute radio play SOS… rao rao… Foyn - “Krassin” saves “Italia” by Friedrich Wolf . It is considered to be the oldest completely preserved radio play production in Germany.

Christmas 1967 the ZDF broadcast the German feature film "Seven Weeks on the Ice". The subject was the survivors' march across the pack ice in search of help. Fritz Umgelter directed.

In 1969 the story of the rescue operation for the North Pole expedition was filmed in a Soviet-Italian production with Sean Connery , Hardy Krüger , Peter Finch , Claudia Cardinale and Mario Adorf under the title Krasnaja palatka (German title: The Red Tent ).

The lunar crater Nobile was named after him by the IAU in 1994 . He has been the namesake of the Nobile Glacier in Antarctica since 1960 .

On May 27, 1995, a racing cutter was christened Nobile in honor of Umberto Nobile in Wolgast . The owner of the Nobile is the city of Wolgast, and the ship is operated by the non-profit "Förderverein old Traditionssegler eV".

Teresina Moscatiello and Simone Orlandini plan to re-film the material under the title North Pole .

Publications

  • Elementi di Aerodinamica (textbook for aerodynamics)

See also

literature

  • Wilbur Cross: Tragedy at the Pole. Schneekluth Verlag, Munich 2001.
  • Ovidio Ferrante: Umberto Nobile , 23 volumes. Monograph Aeronautiche Italiane, Rome 1985 (Italian).
  • Fergus Fleming: Ninety degrees north. ISBN 3-8077-0172-9
  • Rudolf Lasarewitsch Samoilowitsch : SOS IN THE ARCTIC, the rescue expedition of the Krassin. Union Deutsche Verlagsgesellschaft, 1929.
  • Umberto Nobile: Flights over the Pole. FA Brockhaus Verlag, Leipzig 1980. (Original edition: Ali sul Polo. Ugo Mursia, Milan 1975.)
  • Franz Behounek: Seven weeks on the ice floe. FA Brockhaus, Leipzig 1929.
  • André Simone: Nine men in the ice. Documents of a polar tragedy. Aufbau-Verlag, Berlin 1950.

Web links

Commons : Umberto Nobile  - collection of images
personal data
SURNAME Nobile, Umberto
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Italian airship pioneer
DATE OF BIRTH January 21, 1885
PLACE OF BIRTH Lauro, Naples
DATE OF DEATH July 30, 1978
Place of death Rome