NOBILE (Umberto).
Le Pôle. Aventure de ma Vie.
Translated from the original Italian edition by Gabrielle Cabrini.
A presentation copy, inscribed on the title page ‘Al dottor Hans (illegible) con gratitudine Umberto Nobile 1974’.
Nobile was an aeronautical engineer and a particular expert on semi-rigid airships. He considered them ideally suited for his ambition to use them for Arctic exploration, and in 1926, with Roald Amundsen and Lincoln Ellsworth, piloting his own dirigible the ‘Norge’, he succeeded in flying over the North Pole from Spitsbergen to Alaska. On a subsequent flight he crashed, with the loss of 17 lives, Nobile and 7 others surviving. A huge multi national rescue effort was launched, and a rescue effected. Roald Amundsen had set out to find Nobile, but his aeroplane disappeared and he was never seen again.
Dust jacket slightly nicked and creased at the head of the spine.
