HIGH RISK MOON RACE, 1928: 2/4: N-4 Down: The Hunt for the Arctic Airship Italia, by Mark Piesing @PorterSqBooks.
The John Batchelor Show
John Batchelor
4.5 • 2.8K Ratings
🗓️ 24 December 2023
⏱️ 11 minutes
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Summary
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.
1909 GERMANY GRAF ZEPPELIN
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hey guys, it's Kate here. Now from nursery drop-offs to after-school clubs, there is always |
| 0:07.9 | something going on in the Ferdinand House, and that's why I love the gorgeous new |
| 0:12.4 | F&F Active collection. |
| 0:14.0 | It's super comfy and supportive and makes me feel really great when I'm on the move. |
| 0:19.0 | Check it out next time you're in Tesco. |
| 0:21.0 | I hope you'll love it as much as I do. |
| 0:23.0 | If and if active makes fashion sense, available in the world. I'm John Bachelor with Mark Pising, the author of the new book |
| 0:39.8 | En4 Down, the hunt for the Arctic Airship It Italian, but not yet. |
| 0:45.4 | All great failures expeditions have predicates that set up the failure. |
| 0:51.0 | And this is a success, sort of. It is 1926. And in a place called Kings Bay, |
| 0:59.1 | they've constructed a hangar by hand and it's weathered the winter and in March of |
| 1:04.8 | 1926 approaching Norway approaching the northern tip of Norway for the |
| 1:11.0 | launch to the North Pole is N1 which has been especially |
| 1:15.1 | rebuilt from a luxury craft for cruising the Mediterranean, a lighter than |
| 1:19.3 | aircraft, to an Arctic Explorer and Nobelay's done it. Mark what do we what do we know about |
| 1:25.8 | Nobelay's change of N1 into into the Norga? What's he done to it? |
| 1:30.1 | Well one of the key things is well basically the key thing is make it lighter so you can carry |
| 1:38.1 | carry more fuel so that means getting rid of the gondola as it was, as you said it was this kind of luxury |
| 1:44.5 | for the king and his entourage to kind of fly around the Italian and Mediterranean processions. |
| 1:51.0 | So that was stripped out, made a lot lighter. I mean, although the phone was kept. |
| 1:59.6 | Perhaps I imagine nobody has some idea coming back to Italy and the King riding in his airship again. |
| 2:05.6 | And it was things like the valve inlets to the envelope, trying to protect things from the ice, you know, because you know everyone |
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