Mark Piesing

The generalities of the story of Umberto Nobile and the loss of the "Italia" I've been aware of for years, but it was a pleasure to get a deep dive into the man's life, and how he became involved with the Norwegian polar explorer Roald Amundsen. This is very much a tale of the Golden Age of Aviation, as there was almost as lively a competition to fly over the North Pole as there was to be the first to cross the Atlantic, with great stress between Amundsen and Nobile to claim the maximum prestige for their respective countries via the flight of the "Norge;" the first of Nobile's airships to be used for polar exploration. This is with Amundsen trying to denigrate Nobile as a mere hired hand, while most people outside of Norway noticed that Nobile designed, built, and flew the airship in question.

So, the next expedition by Nobile was even more problematic as, for whatever reasons, he was on the general outs with the Fascist government, though he was permitted to undertake a second expedition that had issues from the start, and which did come to grief. The bizarre development being that Amundsen volunteered to help rescue Nobile and his crew, despite all the bad blood from their previous partnership; Piesing has the suspicion that this was a case of Amundsen having a desire for one last "death or glory" adventure at the end of his life. The result being that Amundsen and the crew of his plane were the ones who lost their lives, while Nobile was rescued under sketchy circumstances that remain somewhat controversial to this day. With the biggest irony that Nobile lived long enough to enjoy all the virtues of being a martyr and national hero without losing his own life.

There is very little that I'd mark this book down for, except I do wonder if Piesing is spreading the aura of violent Fascist politics on a little too thick. Again, Nobile seems to have been a lousy "joiner" and this was always going to be held against him, regardless of the political regime.… (meer)