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

Part II, The 1931 Polar Flight of the Graf Zeppelin. The Graf Zeppelin departed its home-base at Friedrichshafen on July 24, 1931 and flew first to Berlin's Staaken airbase. The airship departed Berlin at approximately 4:00 am the following morning bound for Leningrad (St. Petersburg) and arrived shortly after 6:00 pm. At about 9:00 am on the morning of the 26th, the Graf Zeppelin departed Leningrad bound for the Arctic. The route of flight took them over Archangel, across the White Sea, and toward Franz Josef Land and Hooker Island where the meeting and exchange of mail with the ice-breaker Malygin was to take place. The Graf Zeppelin descended into the Tikhaya Bay of Hooker Island, then the site of the world's northernmost weather station, and dropped its sea anchors close to the Malygin. There a sentimental reunion of sorts took place. As Lincoln Ellsworth described it,

"We had a sack of mail for the Maligin and they sent over a boat for it. In the stern sheets was a vaguely familiar figure waving a greeting to me. When he came aboard the Graf Zeppelin and shook hands, I had to look twice to recognize him. It was Umberto Nobile, whom I had not seen since our Norge flight of 1926. He had aged visibly since then. The Italia disaster had made a different man of him. As he left in the bobbing boat of the Maligin, which was still looking for Italia survivors--waving good-by as he stood unsteadily in the stern--the scene held an element of pathos that I can never forget." (Ellsworth, p. 248).

The "sack of mail" that Ellsworth referred to was actually about 650 pounds of mail consisting of philatelic items, the sale of which helped in large measure to finance the 1931 flight. In return, they received roughly 270 pounds of mail from the Malygin. In all, there were approximately 50,000 pieces of mail associated with the 1931 polar flight. (Eckener, p. 121). Today, they are highly prized and highly collectible.

An example of a highly collectible cover from the 1931 polar flight.	The distinctive "Polarfahrt" cachet	The Malygin cancellation

Once the formalities of the exchange of mail were dispensed with, the flight could continue with its scientific pursuits. The Graf Zeppelin turned east and flew along the 81st parallel bound for ice-locked Severnaya Zemlya. Flying along the coast, the scientists on board made the first of many interesting discoveries: Severnaya Zemlya was not one island as indicated on maps, but two land masses separated by a narrow strait. Although it was later determined that Severnaya Zemlya actually is an archipelago of four main islands, the flight produced many such corrections and additions to existing maps of the Russian Arctic.

From there they returned to Franz Josef to carry out one of the main objectives of the flight, the aerial survey and mapping of the island groups. It was there that they reached the northernmost point of the trip, Rudolf Island, roughly 500 miles from the North Pole. (From this point, the Graf Zeppelin had the capability to continue on to the North Pole and back, but it has been speculated that the likely reason for not doing so was a matter of insurance). Now turning south, the Graf Zeppelin flew over the Taimyr Peninsula, past Dikson Island and across Novaya Zemlya to complete a first-ever program of air-mapping of the Russian Arctic. Eckener then set a course for Archangel, Leningrad, a brief stop in Berlin, then home.

The Graf Zeppelin arrived back in Friedrichshafen at 4:00 am on the morning of July 31, 1931 after completing an eight day, 8,142-mile voyage. The scientific results of the flight, however, took several years to compile.