2/4:THE UNMAPPED POLE RACE, 100 YEARS AGO: N-4 Down: The Hunt for the Arctic Airship Italia, by Mark Piesing @PorterSqBooks. Hardcover – August 31, 2021
The John Batchelor Show
John Batchelor
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🗓️ 19 June 2023
⏱️ 11 minutes
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2/4:THE UNMAPPED POLE RACE, 100 YEARS AGO: N-4 Down: The Hunt for the Arctic Airship Italia, by Mark Piesing @PorterSqBooks. Hardcover – August 31, 2021
https://www.amazon.com/N-4-Down-Arctic-Airship-Italia/dp/0062851527
Triumphantly returning from the North Pole on May 24, 1928, the world-famous exploring airship Italia—code-named N-4—was struck by a terrible storm and crashed somewhere over the Arctic ice, triggering the largest polar rescue mission in history. Helping lead the search was the famed Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen, the poles’ greatest explorer, who himself soon went missing in the frozen wastes. Amundsen’s body has never been found, the last victim of one of the Arctic’s most enduring mysteries . . .
During the Roaring Twenties, zeppelin travel embodied the exuberant spirit of the age. Germany’s luxurious Graf Zeppelin would run passenger service from Germany to Brazil; Britain’s Imperial Airship was launched to connect an empire; in America, the iconic spire of the rising Empire State Building was designed as a docking tower for airships.
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| 0:30.6 | This is CBS, I'm John Batswith, Mark Pysig, the author of the new book, N4 Down, the |
| 0:45.0 | hunt for the Arctic airship Italia. |
| 0:47.4 | But not yet. |
| 0:49.3 | All great failures, expeditions have predicates that set up the failure. |
| 0:54.9 | And this is a success, sort of. |
| 0:57.3 | It is 1926. |
| 0:59.8 | And in a place called Kings Bay, they've constructed a hangar by hand and it's weathered the winter. |
| 1:07.8 | And in March of 1926, approaching the northern tip of Norway for the launch to the North Pole |
| 1:16.6 | is N1, which has been specially rebuilt from a luxury craft for cruising the Mediterranean, |
| 1:22.2 | a lighter than aircraft, to an Arctic explorer. |
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