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The John Batchelor Show

3/4: N-4 Down: The Hunt for the Arctic Airship Italia, by Mark Piesing

The John Batchelor Show

John Batchelor

News, Arts, Books, Society & Culture

4.52.8K Ratings

🗓️ 17 January 2023

⏱️ 14 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

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1911
@Batchelorshow

3/4: N-4 Down: The Hunt for the Arctic Airship Italia, by Mark Piesing

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 .

Transcript

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0:00.0

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0:05.9

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0:11.1

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0:27.0

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0:57.0

It's no longer sharing with Norway. Mark, what is important about the design of the

1:04.2

Italian for the Arctic?

1:21.2

That's the interface.

1:23.7

That's the landscape interface, we have a bigger latency, we have access to a multi-organized

1:39.7

infrastructure and interaction with the public with models.

1:42.2

landed in Alaska, he decided to go back, which is not surprising in a way, because an awful

1:49.3

success is amazing affecting people. I mean, we're going to have to self-advertise to search

1:53.4

my book and I just want to go back. I mean, it follows into your soul in some strange way.

1:59.3

So he had this obsession, but his idea was to go back in a much bigger airship,

2:04.5

much more like the ones that his rival, uh, Agna, uh, Hugo Agna was building.

2:11.0

That was an ex-Zephyl and airships of Joe Agna, had inherited Zeppelin's fleet, yes.

2:17.7

Yeah, absolutely. So he wanted to have a much bigger airship, so it'd be more stable.

2:22.6

You'd better carry out more scientific research. And these things always have science as

2:26.5

there, as a kind of figley for all the other disc, and you could argue how valuable any of the science

2:31.7

was, but he made it and the session was going to originally fly from Rome to Bonesaera's or Rio,

2:41.4

to kind of do a similar trip, just to build up Italian propaganda for Mussolini,

...

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