POLARFLIGHT
RESEARCH GROUP
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THE 1931 POLAR FLIGHT OF THE AIRSHIP GRAF ZEPPELIN
An Historical Perspective

The Zeppelin Expedition to Spitsbergen flying tethered balloons from the ice pack, 1910

A Spitsbergen Trip. [2] Once the Zeppelin rigid airship design had proved to be sound, Count Zeppelin next turned to considering scientific uses for his airships. The Norwegian polar explorer and statesman Fridtjof Nansen who no doubt had followed closely the accounts of the Andrée and Wellman flights, is said to have suggested to Count Zeppelin the idea that Zeppelin airships might be useful for polar exploration. Thus, in 1910 Count Zeppelin, Professors Hugo Hergesell and Adolf Miethe, and Crown Prince Henry of Prussia led what they termed a "study-trip" to Spitsbergen to explore the use of airships in the polar regions. The group traveled aboard the steamship Mainz and arrived on the west coast of Spitsbergen in mid-July.

While investigating the heavily indented west coast of Spitsbergen, Zeppelin and Hergesell discovered a spot in Cross Bay [3] that they thought would be suitable for an airship base. The party then traveled to the northwest coast of Spitsbergen where they flew tethered balloons from the pack ice. After stops at Andrée's and Wellman's old bases at Danes Island and at Kings Bay, the party returned to Germany. The consensus at the time appeared to be that airship technology had not yet reached the point that polar travel was feasible. It would be another twenty years before a Zeppelin airship was used for polar exploration and the task of realizing Zeppelin's vision would fall to his successor, Dr. Hugo Eckener.

The airship Norge at the mast, Kings Bay, Spitsbergen, 1926

The Pole by Air. The outbreak of World War I in Europe put a stop for a time to polar exploration. But following the war, aviation technology had advanced to the point that polar exploration by air became realizable. After making some brief exploratory flights by airplane from the northern coast of Alaska in 1922/23, in 1925 the Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen teamed with American adventurer Lincoln Ellsworth to fly in two Dornier Wal flying boats from Kings Bay, Spitsbergen to nearly 88ºN, little more than 120 nautical miles from the North Pole. In May, 1926, two flights were preparing to depart from Kings Bay for the North Pole. On May 9, American Richard Byrd made the questionable claim of having flown to the North Pole and back in the Fokker tri-motor, the Josephine Ford. Five days later the Amundsen-Ellsworth-Nobile expedition in the airship Norge flew from Kings Bay to Teller Alaska by way of the North Pole. Following the flight, a bitter dispute broke out between Amundsen and Nobile over who should receive credit for leading the expedition.

As a result, in 1928, Nobile returned to Kings Bay as sole leader of his own expedition in the airship Italia. The Italia crashed on the ice north of Spitsbergen on the return from a claimed attainment of the North Pole and sparked a massive international air-sea rescue operation to which ultimately six countries sent airplanes and pilots. In a controversial move that would have later repercussions, the Swedish pilot Einar Lundborg landed on the ice floe on which the Italia survivors were stranded and first removed Nobile to the mainland. Lundborg's plane was damaged on the return for more survivors and he himself had to be rescued. Ultimately the Russian ice-breaker the Krassin reached the ice floe and rescued the remaining survivors. Tragically, Roald Amundsen lost his life in a plane crash flying from Norway to Spitsbergen to aid in the rescue operations. In the aftermath of the Italia disaster the Italian government stripped Nobile of all the honors he had received following the 1926 Norge flight. The Italia flight was the last well-publicized polar flight to depart from Spitsbergen.