The Forgotten Arctic Disaster

Writing a book or a movie? Want to instantly communicate that your story takes place in an alternate reality? Just add zeppelins! More than any other form of transportation, rigid dirigible airships or zeppelins are emblematic of a bygone era of technology - and of a romantic, optimistic future that never was. From the flights of the first zeppelins at the turn of the 20th century, airships held the promise of long-distance air travel in comfort, style, and luxury unmatched by any conventional aircraft. But as we have already covered in our previous videos The Largely Forgotten Airship Disaster That Helped Kill the Cruise Ships of the Sky and The Real-Life Marvel-esque Flying Aircraft Carriers, this vision was not to be, as a series of tragic disasters culminating in the fiery 1937 demise of the Hindenburg revealed just how dangerous airships really were. The future of air travel belonged to the aeroplane. But passenger transport was not the only role envisioned for the airship. Naval planners wanted to use them as the eyes of the fleet, while explorers saw them as an ideal means of reaching far-flung, uncharted corners of the globe. But once again, a series of disasters plagued these undertakings; and few were more headline-grabbing at the time - or forgotten today - as a 1928 Italian attempt to reach the North Pole by air. This is the story of the ill-fated voyage of the airship Italia.

The lure of the mysterious Arctic has called to explorers for centuries, but it was not until April 6, 1909 that a team led by U.S. Navy commander Robert E. Peary finally succeeded in reaching the North Pole by foot and dogsled. But such expeditions barely scratched the surface of the Arctic; some 15.5 million square kilometres of frozen wasteland - nearly twice the area of the continental United States - remained unexplored. Speculation abounded as to what lay within that uncharted expanse. Peary claimed to have spotted an island among the pack ice, which he named Crocker Land after one of his patrons; perhaps an entire continent lay undiscovered just beyond the Arctic Circle. But covering such vast areas by foot or ship was painfully slow and potentially deadly; the Arctic, it was soon realized, was best explored from the air. But the primitive heavier-than-air craft of the 1910s had nowhere near the endurance and range to reach the Pole. Balloons and airships, however, just might.

It had been tried before - with disastrous results. In 1897, Swedish engineer Salomon Andrée, along with engineer Knut Fraenkel and photographer Nils Strindberg, attempted to reach the Pole in a free hydrogen balloon called the Örnen or “Eagle.” Lifting off on July 11, 1897 from Danes Island in the Svalbard Archipelago, the trio drifted off northwards and were never heard from again. It was not until 1930 that the remains of the expedition were discovered on Svalbard’s Kvitøya or White Island. According

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Видео The Forgotten Arctic Disaster канала Fact Quickie