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

Part I, The 1931 Polar Flight of the Graf Zeppelin. The impetus for the 1931 Graf Zeppelin polar flight came, as it had with Count Zeppelin's 1910 Spitsbergen trip, from Fridtjof Nansen. In 1926, Nansen founded an organization of explorers and geographers bearing the impressive name of International Association for Exploring the Arctic by Means of Airships, but known simply as "Aeroarctic" for short. Nansen had contacted Eckener regarding the possibility of using a Zeppelin airship for arctic exploration, but at the time such an undertaking did not seem feasible to Eckener and to that point Aeroarctic appears to have existed largely on paper.

Nansen died unexpectedly in 1929 and later the Board of Aeroarctic offered the presidency to Eckener. Eckener was reluctant to accept, assuming that his acceptance would involve committing the Graf Zeppelin to at least one arctic flight. Nevertheless, Eckener approached first the German government about sponsoring an arctic flight. Although the government reportedly was enthusiastic about the prestige of having a German airship make an arctic flight, no funding was forthcoming. Eckener then turned to William Randolph Hearst whose coverage by the Hearst newspapers had helped finance the 1929 around-the-world flight. The Hearst newspapers had profited handsomely from their coverage of the Italia disaster and Hearst declined to fund an arctic flight believing it not to be newsworthy enough after the Italia crash.

The opportunity to make a polar flight came from an unexpected source. In April of 1928, Australian arctic explorer Capt. George H. Wilkins and Alaskan pilot Carl Ben Eielson made a daring airplane flight in a Lockheed Vega from Pt. Barrow, Alaska to Green Harbour, Spitsbergen. Wilkins was knighted for his part in this flight to become Sir Hubert Wilkins. Later the same year (1928) Wilkins and Eielson became the first to fly in the Antarctic. In 1930, following his return from a second expedition to the Antarctic, Wilkins conceived a plan to travel under the polar ice pack by submarine and, boring through the ice, to surface at the North Pole. Wilkins convinced Lincoln Ellsworth, who had accompanied Roald Amundsen to 88ºN in 1925 and on the 1926 Norge flight, to take part as a "scientific advisor" and the plan became known as the Wilkins-Ellsworth Transpolar Submarine Expedition. Ellsworth, however, was quick to point out in his autobiography that, "I consented to attach my name to the submarine expedition as scientific adviser, though I had no intention of accompanying Wilkins on his voyage." (Ellsworth, p. 246).

Wilkins then presented to Eckener a plan for a rendezvous and exchange of mail and passengers at the North Pole between the Graf Zeppelin and Wilkins's submarine, the Nautilus. Eckener, one may assume, was a bit skeptical that such a meeting would ever take place, but at least then he had plans for a news-worthy flight with which to again approach Hearst. Hearst, too, may have been somewhat skeptical but nevertheless was agreeable, apparently sensing that the flight then would be news-worthy regardless of its outcome. Hearst's contract with Eckener may reveal his skepticism: for reporting rights onboard the airship, $150,000 if the airship and submarine meet at the North Pole and an exchange of mail and passengers were to take place; $100,000 if the airship and submarine simply met at the North Pole; and $30,000 if there was merely a meeting elsewhere in the Arctic. (Eckener, pp. 120-21) Even if the north pole rendezvous never took place, Eckener was assured of at least partial funding and could go ahead with preparations for the flight. The sale of philatelic items to be carried on the flight also helped in large measure to defray costs.

By early summer 1931, Wilkins, predictably perhaps, was encountering serious mechanical problems with his submarine [4], and meanwhile the time for favorable flying weather over the Arctic was fast coming to an end. Since a meeting between submarine and airship was not essential to the scientific pursuits, Eckener, therefore, decided to proceed with the flight. A Russian ice-breaker, the Malygin at Hooker Island in Franz Josef Land, was substituted for the exchange of mail.

The luxurious interior of the Graf Zeppelin was removed to provide a work environment more suitable for the scientific aspect of the flight. In addition to a crew of 31 under Eckener, there was a 15-man scientific team headed by the Russian scientist Professor R. L. Samoilovich of the Arctic Institute, Leningrad. A last-minute addition was Lincoln Ellsworth who had, wisely it appears, declined to accompany Sir Hubert on his submarine venture. [5]