Misplaced Pages

#810189

58-407: Umberto Nobile ( Italian pronunciation: [umˈbɛrto ˈnɔːbile] ; 21 January 1885 – 30 July 1978) was an Italian aviator, aeronautical engineer and Arctic explorer. Nobile was a developer and promoter of semi-rigid airships in the years between the two World Wars . He is primarily remembered for designing and piloting the airship Norge , which may have been the first aircraft to reach

116-588: A quarter meridian . So ⁠ 10,000,000 m / 90 × 60 ⁠ = 1,851.85 m ≈ 1,852 m became the metric length for a nautical mile. France made it legal for the French Navy in 1906, and many metric countries voted to sanction it for international use at the 1929 International Hydrographic Conference. Both the United States and the United Kingdom used an average arcminute—specifically,

174-496: A Rome- Rio de Janeiro flight, and held back support for polar expeditions. In late 1925 Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen sought out Nobile to collaborate on a flight to the North Pole – still at that time an unreached goal for aviators – using an airship. Amundsen had previously in early 1925 flown to within 150 nautical miles (280 km) of the North Pole, in a pair of Italian-built Dornier Wal flying boats along with

232-657: A civil servant, belonged to the cadet branch of an aristocratic family that had been stripped of its titles after the Italian unification over their continuing loyalty to the deposed Bourbons , and which had adopted the Nobile surname for that reason. After graduating from the University of Naples in 1908 with a degree in industrial engineering, Nobile was hired by the Italian state railways. In 1911 his interests turned to

290-406: A degree (5866 ⁠ 2 / 3 ⁠ feet per arcminute ). In 1633, William Oughtred suggested 349,800 feet to a degree (5830 feet per arcminute). Both Gunter and Oughtred put forward the notion of dividing a degree into 100 parts, but their proposal was generally ignored by navigators. The ratio of 60 miles, or 20 leagues, to a degree of latitude remained fixed while the length of the mile

348-474: A degree is a map by Nicolaus Germanus in a 1482 edition of Ptolemy 's Geography indicating one degree of longitude at the Equator contains " milaria 60 ". An earlier manuscript map by Nicolaus Germanus in a previous edition of Geography states " unul gradul log. et latitud sub equinortiali formet stadia 500 que fanut miliaria 62 ⁠ 1 / 2 ⁠ " ("one degree longitude and latitude under

406-627: A half hours later the ship flew over the Pole and landed two days later in Teller, Alaska ; strong winds had made the planned landing at Nome, Alaska, impossible. In retrospect, the Norge crew actually achieved their aim of being the first to overfly the Pole: Byrd's 9 May flight, acclaimed for decades as the prestigious first Polar flyover, has since been subjected to several credible challenges, including

464-491: A large permanent exhibition on his achievements. A museum in his hometown of Lauro collects his documents and memorabilia. Nobile was married to Carlotta Ferraiolo, daughter of a wealthy notary from Teano and ten years his senior, from 1916 until her death in 1934. Together they had a daughter, Maria. In 1959 he remarried with Gertrude Stolp, a German woman whom he had met in Spain in 1943 and who later became chief librarian at

522-723: A member of the Pontificial Academy of Sciences . For a few months he also worked on aviation projects with Caproni , including methods to recover from a spin and an aircraft that could carry a MAS (motorboat) or a tank . Due to the hostility of the Fascist government, Nobile moved to the United States in 1939 to teach at Lewis University (at the time called Lewis Holy Name School of Aeronautics due to its aviation-focused curriculum) in Romeoville and in Chicago . He

580-579: A minute of arc of a great circle of a sphere having the same surface area as the Clarke 1866 ellipsoid . The authalic (equal area) radius of the Clarke 1866 ellipsoid is 6,370,997.2 metres (20,902,222 ft). The resulting arcminute is 1,853.2480 metres (6,080.210 ft). The United States chose five significant digits for its nautical mile, 6,080.2 feet , whereas the United Kingdom chose four significant digits for its Admiralty mile, 6,080 feet. In 1929

638-482: A new expedition, this time fully under Italian control. Nobile's company managed to sell the N-3 airship to Japan; however, relations between Nobile and his competitors in the fascist government were hostile, and he and his staff were subjected to threats and intimidation. Nobile's popularity with the public meant he was, for the moment, safe from direct attack. When the plans for his next expedition were announced, Italo Balbo

SECTION 10

#1732781092811

696-474: A pontoon from the craft was later found, the bodies of Amundsen, the pilot René Guilbaud and the four others on board were not. After a month of privation for the Italia survivors, the first rescue plane, a Swedish Air Force Fokker C.V -E ski plane , piloted by Lieutenant Einar Lundborg and with Lieutenant Schyberg as observer landed near the crash site. Nobile had prepared a detailed evacuation plan, with

754-452: A radio transceiver, a tent which they later painted red for maximum visibility, and, critically, boxes of food and survival equipment which quick-witted engineer Ettore Arduino had managed to throw onto the ice before he and his five companions were carried off to their deaths by the wrecked but still airborne airship envelope and keel. As the days passed, the drifting sea ice took the survivors towards Foyn and Broch islands. A few days after

812-423: Is said to have commented, "Let him go, for he cannot possibly come back to bother us anymore." The Italia , nearly identical to the Norge , was slowly completed and equipped for Polar flight during 1927–28. Part of the difficulty was in raising private funding to cover the costs of the expedition, which finally was financed by the city of Milan; the Italian government limited its direct participation to providing

870-474: Is the Zeppelin NT . It comprises a single gas cell kept at a slight over-pressure, ballonets to maintain constant volume, and a triangular keel structure internal to the cell. Three of these will be American-based airships. CL160 "Cargolifter" was an unrealised design of the now liquidated German Cargolifter AG (1996–2003). Cargolifter Joey was a small semi-rigid experimental airship produced to test

928-675: The Italia crash, and not only reinstated him at his former rank as major general, but promoted him to lieutenant general and awarded him back pay dating to 1928. The following year he was elected to the Constituent Assembly as independent candidate in the lists of the Italian Communist Party . In that capacity he was part of the 75-member Committee that produced the main draft of the Italian Constitution . In 1948, Nobile returned to teaching at

986-670: The Luftschiffer-Bataillon Nr. 1 in Berlin, the experimental first ship flying in 1907. It had a rigid keel under the envelope. Four more military airships of this design were built, and often rebuilt, designated M I to M IV, up to 1914. The most advanced construction of semi-rigid airships between the two World Wars took place in Italy. There, the state-factory Stabilimento di Costruzioni Aeronautiche (SCA) constructed several. Umberto Nobile , later General and director,

1044-575: The North Pole , and which was indisputably the first to fly across the polar ice cap from Europe to America. Nobile also designed and flew the Italia , a second polar airship; this second expedition ended in a deadly crash and provoked an international rescue effort. Umberto Nobile was born in Lauro , in the southern Italian province of Avellino , into a family of small landowners. His father Vincenzo,

1102-399: The empennage (tail). The framework has the task of distributing the suspension loads of these attachments and the lifting gas loads evenly throughout the whole hull's surface and may also partially relieve stresses on the hull during manoeuvres. In early airships which relied on nets, fabric bands, or complicated systems of rope rigging to unite the lifting envelope with the other parts of

1160-465: The American millionaire-adventurer Lincoln Ellsworth and the pilot Hjalmar Riiser-Larsen , but their planes were forced to land near 88 degrees North, and the six men were trapped on the ice for 30 days. The Italian State Airship Factory, which had built Nobile's N-1, made it available for the expedition 29 March 1926. Amundsen insisted in the contract that Nobile should be the pilot and that five of

1218-637: The Military Factory's first projects in this direction was the T-34 , which was designed for a trans-Atlantic crossing. The United States Army purchased the airship in 1921 and commissioned it as the Roma . In February 1922 the hydrogen-fueled Roma crashed and exploded in Norfolk, Virginia , after hitting high-tension power lines, killing 34 in what was the worst aviation disaster in the United States at

SECTION 20

#1732781092811

1276-457: The Soviet icebreaker "Krasin" . However, there were persistent rumors that Malmgren was killed and cannibalized by Zappi and Mariano. A "highly imaginative, fictionalized version" of these events was made into the 1969 film The Red Tent . The film was an Italian/Soviet co-production and featured Peter Finch as Nobile, Sean Connery as Amundsen and Hardy Krüger as Lundborg. In the wake of

1334-597: The University of Naples, where he studied and taught aeronautical and astronautical subjects. He continued giving interviews and writing books and articles until his death, without managing to fully sway public opinion and some military experts of his version of the events of his polar expeditions. Nobile died in Rome on 30 July 1978, aged 93, shortly after the celebrations for the fiftieth anniversary of his two expeditions. The Italian Air Force Museum at Vigna di Valle has

1392-521: The airship and sending the aging steamer Città di Milano as a support vessel to Svalbard , under the command of Giuseppe Romagna . This time the airship used a German hangar at Stolp en route to Svalbard and the mast at Vadsø (Northern Norway). On 23 May 1928, after an outstanding 69-hour-long flight to the Siberian group of Arctic islands, the Italia commenced its flight to the North Pole with Nobile as both pilot and expedition leader. On 24 May,

1450-410: The arrival of Richard E. Byrd 's American expedition, which also aimed to reach the Pole. On 9 May, after Byrd and Floyd Bennett departed in their Fokker F-VII and returned less than 16 hours later claiming to have overflown the Pole, Amundsen was one of the first to congratulate them. The Norge crew pressed ahead with their flight. On 11 May 1926, the Norge expedition left Svalbard. Fifteen and

1508-556: The assembly of the N-3 airship, which had been sold to the Japanese Imperial Navy , and personally took part in several test flights. Nobile later claimed that during this time he faced professional hostility from some high-profile members of the Air Force establishment, including Italo Balbo , who had some of the best workers of the Military Factory dismissed on suspicion of being anti-fascists , obstructed plans for

1566-468: The crash the Swedish meteorologist Finn Malmgren and Nobile's second and third in command Mariano and Zappi decided to leave the immobile group and march towards land. Malmgren, who was injured, weakened and reportedly still depressed over his meteorological advice that he felt contributed to the crash, asked his two Italian companions to continue without him. These two were picked up several weeks later by

1624-514: The crash, a collection of nations, including the Soviet Union, Norway, Sweden, Finland, and Italy, launched the first polar air and sea rescue effort. Privately owned ships which had been chartered by polar scientists and explorers also participated. Even Roald Amundsen put aside his past differences with Nobile and boarded a French seaplane and headed for the rescue headquarters; this plane disappeared between Tromsø and Svalbard , and though

1682-467: The crew should be Italian; Amundsen named the airship Norge ( Norway ). On 14 April the airship left Italy for Leningrad in Russia with stops at Pulham (England) and Oslo. On its way towards its Arctic jumping-off point, Ny-Ålesund (Kings Bay) at Vestspitsbergen, Svalbard (belonging to Norway) it also made a stop at the airship mast at Vadsø (Northern Norway). On 29 April Amundsen was dismayed at

1740-508: The design. Nautical mile There is no single internationally agreed symbol, with several symbols in use. The word mile is from the Latin phrase for a thousand paces: mille passus . Navigation at sea was done by eye until around 1500 when navigational instruments were developed and cartographers began using a coordinate system with parallels of latitude and meridians of longitude . The earliest reference of 60 miles to

1798-507: The dictator by detailing his grievances at length. The official inquiry and the embarrassment over the crash gave Nobile's enemies the chance they were looking for: blame for the disaster was placed on his shoulders, and he was accused of abandoning his men on the ice – charges he would spend the rest of his life trying to dispel. In protest of the findings, General Nobile resigned from the air force in March 1929. In July 1931, Nobile took part in

Umberto Nobile - Misplaced Pages Continue

1856-424: The discovery of Byrd's flight diary, which showed that navigational data in his official report was fraudulent. Byrd's co-pilot Bennett is said later to have admitted that they faked their flight to the Pole. The Norge "Rome to Nome" flight was acclaimed as another great milestone in flight, but disagreement soon erupted between Nobile (designer and pilot), and Amundsen (expedition leader, observer and passenger) on

1914-504: The distance along a great circle was 60 miles per degree. However, these referred to the old English mile of 5000 feet and league of 15,000 feet, relying upon Ptolemy's underestimate of the Earth's circumference . In the early seventeenth century, English geographers started to acknowledge the discrepancy between the angular measurement of a degree of latitude and the linear measurement of miles. In 1624 Edmund Gunter suggested 352,000 feet to

1972-480: The equator forms 500 stadia , which make 62 ⁠ 1 / 2 ⁠ miles"). Whether a correction or convenience, the reason for the change from 62 ⁠ 1 / 2 ⁠ to 60 miles to a degree is not explained. Eventually, the ratio of 60 miles to a degree appeared in English in a 1555 translation of Pietro Martire d'Anghiera 's Decades: "[Ptolemy] assigned likewise to every degree three score miles." By

2030-680: The expedition of the Soviet icebreaker Malygin to Franz Josef Land and the northern Kara Sea . He moved to the Soviet Union in 1932, and lived there for nearly five years to work on the Soviet semi-rigid airship program . Few details of the program have been documented, but Nobile supervised the manufacturing of three airships, including SSSR-V6 OSOAVIAKhIM , and designed two others that were intended for military use. Nobile returned to Italy in December 1936, after he had been appointed as

2088-503: The field of aeronautical engineering and he enrolled into a course offered by the Italian Army's Engineers Corps. During World War I he served as a military engineer , working at the Military Factory for Aeronautical Construction and Experience ( Stabilimento Militare di Costruzioni ed Esperienze Aeronautiche ) in Rome. During this time he designed airships designed for anti-submarine reconnaissance, 15 of which would be built after

2146-496: The first decade of the twentieth century, semi-rigid airships were considered more suitable for military use because, unlike rigid airships , they could be deflated, stored and transported by land or by sea. Non-rigid airships had a limited lifting capacity due to the strength limitations of the envelope and rigging materials then in use. An early successful example is the Groß-Basenach design made by Major Hans Groß from

2204-488: The flight, as to who deserved greater credit for the expedition. The controversy was exacerbated by Mussolini's Fascist government, which trumpeted the genius of Italian engineering and exploration; Nobile was ordered to make a speaking tour of the U.S., further alienating Amundsen and the Norwegians. Despite the controversy, Nobile continued to maintain good relations with other polar scientists, and he started planning

2262-439: The gas inside and light framework at the nose and tail. Changes in volume of the lifting gas are balanced using ballonets (air-filled bags). Ballonets also may serve to provide pitch control . For small types the lifting gas is sometimes held in the hull itself, while larger types tend to use separate gas cells , mitigating the consequences of a single gas cell failure and helping to reduce the amount of overpressure needed. In

2320-429: The gondola; the fate of the six men was never resolved. One of the ten men on the ice, Pomella, died from the impact; Nobile suffered a broken arm, broken leg, broken rib and head injury; Cecioni suffered two badly broken legs; Malmgren suffered a severe shoulder injury and suspected injury to a kidney; and Zappi had several broken ribs. The crew managed to salvage several items from the crashed airship gondola, including

2378-532: The headquarters of the Food and Agriculture Organization in Rome. Semi-rigid airship A semi-rigid airship is an airship which has a stiff keel or truss supporting the main envelope along its length. The keel may be partially flexible or articulated and may be located inside or outside the main envelope. The outer shape of the airship is maintained by gas pressure, as with the non-rigid "blimp". Semi-rigid dirigibles were built in significant quantity from

Umberto Nobile - Misplaced Pages Continue

2436-572: The international nautical mile was defined by the First International Extraordinary Hydrographic Conference in Monaco as exactly 1,852 metres (which is 6,076.12 ft). The United States did not adopt the international nautical mile until 1954. Britain adopted it in 1970, but legal references to the obsolete unit are now converted to 1,853 metres (which is 6,079.40 ft). The metre

2494-679: The late 16th century English geographers and navigators knew that the ratio of distances at sea to degrees was constant along any great circle (such as the equator , or any meridian), assuming that Earth was a sphere. In 1574, William Bourne stated in A Regiment for the Sea the "rule to raise a degree" practised by navigators: "But as I take it, we in England should allowe 60 myles to one degrée: that is, after 3 miles to one of our Englishe leagues, wherefore 20 of oure English leagues shoulde answere to one degrée." Likewise, Robert Hues wrote in 1594 that

2552-423: The late 19th century but in the late 1930s they fell out of favour along with rigid airships . No more were constructed until the semi-rigid design was revived by the Zeppelin NT in 1997. Semi-rigid construction is lighter-weight than the outer framework of a rigid airship, while it allows greater loading than a non-rigid type . More or less integrally attached to the hull are the gondola, engines and sometimes

2610-430: The measurement based on this ( ⁠ 40,075.017 km / 360 × 60 ⁠ = 1,855.3 metres) is known as the geographical mile . Using the definition ⁠ 1 / 60 ⁠ of a degree of latitude on Mars , a Martian nautical mile equals to 983 m (1,075 yd). This is potentially useful for celestial navigation on a human mission to the planet , both as a shorthand and a quick way to roughly determine

2668-405: The most seriously wounded man (the heavy built mechanic Cecioni) at the top of the list and himself as number 4, with the navigator (Viglieri) and the radio operator (Biagi) as respectively no. 5 and 6. However, Lundborg refused to take anyone but Nobile. He argued that the plane could only take one survivor and the other seriously injured man was so heavy Lundborg was unsure he could take off. Nobile

2726-403: The poles and 1,843 metres at the Equator. France and other metric countries state that in principle a nautical mile is an arcminute of a meridian at a latitude of 45°, but that is a modern justification for a more mundane calculation that was developed a century earlier. By the mid-19th century, France had defined a nautical mile via the original 1791 definition of the metre , one ten-millionth of

2784-482: The search for the six crew who were swept away by the airship when it disintegrated, but he was ordered back to Rome with the others. Two hundred thousand cheering Italians met Nobile and his crew on arrival in Rome on 31 July. This show of popularity was unexpected by Nobile's detractors, who had been seeding the foreign and domestic press with accusations against him. An aggrieved Nobile was not shy about his complaints; in an interview with Benito Mussolini , he offended

2842-412: The ship reached the Pole and had already turned back toward Svalbard when it ran into a storm. On 25 May, the Italia crashed onto the pack ice less than 30 kilometres north of Nordaustlandet (Eastern part of Svalbard). Of the 16 men in the crew, ten were thrown onto the ice as the gondola was smashed; the remaining six crewmen were trapped in the buoyant superstructure as it ascended skyward due to loss of

2900-402: The ship, semi-rigid construction was able to achieve improvements in weight, aerodynamic, and structural performance. The boundary between semi-rigid and non-rigid airships is vague. Especially with small types, it is unclear whether the structure is merely an extended gondola or a proper structural keel. As in non-rigid airships, the hull's aerodynamic shape is maintained by an overpressure of

2958-625: The time. In the same year Nobile worked with Gianni Caproni on the design the first Italian all-metal aircraft, the Caproni Ca.73 , and traveled to the United States to work as a consultant for Goodyear in Akron, Ohio . In 1923 he began the design of a new airship, the N-1, which was built for the United States, Spain, Argentina and Japan. He would travel himself to Japan in January 1927 to supervise

SECTION 50

#1732781092811

3016-550: The war, and taught courses for aspiring officers. In 1918 he designed the first Italian-made parachute . He was director of the Factory from 1919 until 1927. He also lectured at the University of Naples, obtained his test pilot's license and wrote the textbook Elementi di Aerodinamica ( Elements of Aerodynamics ). During this time Nobile became convinced that medium-sized, semi-rigid airships would be superior to non-rigid and rigid designs, and focused on their design. One of

3074-497: Was airlifted to Søre Russøya , base camp of Swedish and Finnish air rescue efforts. When Lundborg returned alone to pick up a second survivor he crashed his plane on landing, and was trapped with the other five. Eventually, Nobile reached the Città di Milano , where, he later said, he was dismayed at the incompetence he found. His attempts to help co-ordinate the international rescue effort were blocked, and when he threatened to leave he

3132-530: Was its most well-known member, and he designed and flew several semi-rigid airships, including the Norge and Italia , for his overflights of the North Pole , and the W6 OSOAVIAKhIM , for the Soviet Union 's airship program . Pre-War and WWI 1920s and 1930s Nobile's company designed or built the following airships: As of 2008 , the only manned semi-rigid model of airship in active operation

3190-491: Was originally defined as 1 ⁄ 10,000,000 of the length of the meridian arc from the North pole to the equator (1% of a centesimal degree of latitude), thus one kilometre of distance corresponds to one centigrad (also known as centesimal arc minute) of latitude. The Earth's circumference is therefore approximately 40,000 km. The equatorial circumference is slightly longer than the polar circumference –

3248-496: Was permitted to remain in the US after Italy declared war on the United States, but declined the offer of US citizenship and opted to return to Europe in May, 1942. Following a brief stay in Rome he moved to Spain, where he remained until Mussolini was deposed, after which he made his definite return to his native country. In 1945, the Italian air force cleared Nobile of all charges related to

3306-564: Was placed under virtual arrest by Captain Romagna. His telegrams to the survivors still on the ice, as well as to various people involved in the rescue, were heavily censored. It was wrongly reported in Fascist Italian newspapers that his own evacuation was an obvious sign of cowardice. After 48 days on the ice floe, the last five men of his crew were rescued by the Soviet icebreaker Krasin . Nobile insisted that he wanted to continue

3364-453: Was revised with better estimates of the earth’s circumference. In 1637, Robert Norwood proposed a new measurement of 6120 feet for an arcminute of latitude, which was within 44 feet of the currently accepted value for a nautical mile. Since the Earth is not a perfect sphere but is an oblate spheroid with slightly flattened poles, a minute of latitude is not constant, but about 1,862 metres at

#810189