From Pole to Pole

Roald Amundsen's Journey in Flight

Garth James Cameron

• Publisher: Skyhorse
• Year: 2014
• Print ISBN: 9781629146997
• eBook ISBN: 9781629149608
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Historical Geography
• Index: History

Roald Amundsen was the most successful polar explorer of his era using sledges, dogs, skis, and ships. He is mainly remembered for being the first man to reach the South Pole on December 14, 1911. What is less often remembered is that he was also the first man to reach the North Pole on May 12, 1926 as the leader of the Amundsen-Ellsworth-Nobile expedition in the airship Norge. His involvement in aviation from his experiments with man-lifting kites in 1909 to his death in 1928 while flying from Norway to Spitsbergen has not been the subject of a detailed study until now.

From Pole to Pole explores Amundsen’s enthusiasm for flight from the moment he read about Bleriot’s flight across the English Channel in an airplane. In June 1928 Amundsen and five companions took off in a search and rescue flight for the missing airship Italia and were never seen again. The only traces of the men and their aircraft were a tip float and an empty fuel tank which washed up on the coast of Northern Norway several months later. Searches of the seabed near Bear Island for the remains of the Latham 47 flying boat he was flying in took place in 2004 and 2009 and interest in the mystery of his disappearance remains high.

Skyhorse Publishing, as well as our Arcade imprint, are proud to publish a broad range of books for readers interested in history--books about World War II, the Third Reich, Hitler and his henchmen, the JFK assassination, conspiracies, the American Civil War, the American Revolution, gladiators, Vikings, ancient Rome, medieval times, the old West, and much more. While not every title we publish becomes a New York Times bestseller or a national bestseller, we are committed to books on subjects that are sometimes overlooked and to authors whose work might not otherwise find a home.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Dedication
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Introduction
• Chapter 1 The Past is a Foreign Country
• Chapter 2 Before Amundsen (Part One): Salomon August Andrée
• Chapter 3 Before Amundsen (Part Two): Walter Wellman
• Chapter 4 A Sailor Struck by Lightning
• Chapter 5 A Flight to the North Pole?
• Chapter 6 Toward the North Pole
• Chapter 7 A Merciful Deliverance from the Ice
• Chapter 8 Svalbard
• Chapter 9 Oslo–Rome
• Chapter 10 Learning to Fly: Ciampino
• Chapter 11 Positioning Flight
• Chapter 12 Hour of Gold
• Chapter 13 Enough Credit for Everyone
• Chapter 14 Our Names Would be Linked One More Time
• Chapter 15 Gardens of Stone and an AUV
• Epilogue
• A Note on Sources
• Annotated Bibliography
• Appendix 1 Glossary of 1920s Aviation Terms
• Appendix 2 Dornier Wal (Whale) Flying Boat
• Appendix 3 Airship Norge