Zahlen, bitte! 5400 kilometers over the Pole – first Arctic flyover turns 100

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16 men and one dog – that was the crew of the airship that flew over the geographic North Pole for the first time in history. Exactly 100 years ago this flight took place, which, as the New York Times headlined in 1926, was "making Arctic history".

Zahlen, bitte!

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The expedition over the North Pole was led by the Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen. Also on board: the Italian airship constructor Umberto Nobile with his Fox terrier mix Titina and the American polar explorer Lincoln Ellsworth. The latter supported the undertaking with 100,000 US dollars. Nowadays, the flight is often called the "Amundsen-Ellsworth-Nobile Expedition" because of this.

The "Norge" started on May 11, 1926, from Ny-Ålesund in Svalbard, Norway. The airship was en route for 72 hours over the more than 5400-kilometer route, until it landed in Alaska on May 14. The explorers had bought it from the Italian government shortly before and renamed it from "N-1" to "Norge" (Norwegian for "Norway").

The "Norge" flew over the pole on May 12, 1926, at 2:25 AM Central European Time. There, the crew placed a total of three flags, as they had announced in a radio message that the New York Times published at the time at the time: "Roald Amundsen first lowered the Norwegian flag. Then Ellsworth the Stars and Stripes; finally Nobile the Italian flag."

On the onward journey to Teller, Alaska, the crew wanted to discover "land which we believe to exist somewhere in the unexplored part of the Arctic Ocean," as Roald Amundsen revealed in an interview before the expedition. However, dense fog and damage to the airship's hull, which had to be hastily repaired by the crew, made this impossible.

There were also other attempts

Despite the successful outcome, the Amundsen-Ellsworth-Nobile Expedition has a tragic backstory. As early as 1925, one year before the "Norge" flyover, Amundsen had attempted to cross the North Pole with the two seaplanes N24 and N25 of the Dornier Do J Wal type.

However, during a routine landing, the crew was forced to leave the aircraft on the Arctic ice due to significant damage to the N24. For 25 days the men remained there until they managed to take off again with the N25 and fly back to Norway. They did not reach the North Pole.

Polar explorer Richard Evelyn Byrd is also said to have flown over the North Pole with pilot Floyd Bennett three days before the "Norge" – at least that's what the two Americans claimed. However, that they ever reached the North Pole is unproven and was strongly doubted even at the time.

As early as 1909, the North Pole is said to have been reached for the first time on foot by the also American explorer Robert Edwin Peary, according to his claims. Researcher Frederick Cook accused him of lying and claimed to have reached the North Pole himself as early as 1908, 18 years before the "Norge" flight. Today, there are strong doubts that either of them reached the North Pole. The Amundsen-Ellsworth-Nobile Expedition of 1926 is thus considered the first confirmed attainment of the geographic North Pole.

First person at the North and South Pole

In 1928, two years after the expedition, Roald Amundsen disappeared without a trace. Under his motto, quoted by the New York Times: "Speedy help is double help," he wanted to save Umberto Nobile. Nobile had previously crashed with his airship "Italia" on a drifting ice floe in the Arctic. Nobile and large parts of the "Italia" crew were rescued. However, only some wreckage of Amundsen's plane could be recovered. It is suspected that he crashed and died during the rescue attempt of Nobile.

Among others, a museum in his former home in Uranienborg, Norway, is dedicated to the eventful life of the explorer Roald Amundsen.

According to this, Amundsen, born in 1872, had already developed a strong interest in polar exploration at a very early age. Between 1903 and 1906, during the Gjøa expedition, he was the first person to cross the Northwest Passage by ship. The sea route leads through Canada's Arctic Archipelago to Alaska. It connects the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, thus offering an important trade route and today also an ideal route for transcontinental submarine cables.

In 1911, Amundsen and his Fram expedition also reached the South Pole as the first person. He narrowly won the race to the pole against the British Terra Nova expedition, whose members only found the Norwegian flag and some tents at the South Pole and died on the way back. Amundsen and his long-time crew member Oscar Wisting were thus the first people in the world at the North and South Poles.

The route is still used today

After flying over the North Pole in 1926, Amundsen declared that the expedition had yielded both scientific and commercial insights. "I am sure that in a comparatively short time airships will be making the flight regularly, carrying passengers, freight and mail," said the explorer. Contrary to his expectations, however, after Nobile's "Italia" crashed and Amundsen's death, no more North Pole overflights took place for the time being, apart from some attempts by the Soviet Union.

It was not until after World War II that the question of commercial flights over the polar route was raised again. Starting in 1954, Scandinavian Airlines (SAS) finally offered commercial flights over the route. Initially only between Europe and North America, later also towards Asia. It was the first airline worldwide to offer scheduled flights over the polar route.

With the end of the Cold War, the flight route over the North Pole lost importance. From then on, it was possible to take the direct route via Russian airspace with a stopover in Siberia. Since the beginning of the Ukraine war, however, the polar route is being used more frequently again, as Russian airspace is closed to most Western airlines.

But the polar route is not without danger, as the Federal Office for Radiation Protection explains. Depending on the altitude, flight distance, route, and solar activity, aircraft passengers are always exposed to a certain amount of cosmic radiation. The Earth's magnetic field normally acts as a natural shield against radiation. However, at the North and South Poles, this shielding is particularly weak. Passengers on the polar route are therefore exposed to particularly high radiation exposure.

(mho)