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(More customer reviews)The Airship Italia disaster of 1928 has unfortunately been nearly forgotten today, but in its time captivated the world. I've read a number of books on the incident and this one ranks with the best (I even have an aviation text from that same year that was published after the accident, but before the rescue. The readers were left hanging!). While attempting to fly to the North Pole under the command of Italian Gen Umberto Nobile, land on the ice, and return, the airship Italia crashes on the pack ice hundreds of miles from civilization. The survivors are hurled to the ice and can only watch as 6 other survivors float off to their doom on the derelict airship. Legendary Norwegian artic explorer Roald Amundsen, flies off in a seaplane to attempt a rescue, and is never heard from again. The castaways confront sudden cracks in the ice, broken bones, polar bear attacks, and almost staggering incompetence from their base ship back in harbor, which didn't even bother to monitor the radio most of the time. 3 of the party set off in a desperate bid to reach land and lead back a rescue party. The Norwegian Dr. Malmgren is soon too exhausted to continue, and after stoically help dig his own ice grave, bids the other two, Zappi and Mariano, on after giving them his food. The duo trudges on, clearly seeing land on the horizon, while the drift of the pack ice cancels out all their efforts. 43 days after they started, the last 12 without food, the snow blinded Zappi and Mariano sit down to await their fate. But the Russian Icebreaker Krassen miraculously rescues them just hours from death. 48 days after the crash, and against all odds, all the survivors are finally rescued. First published in 1960, this book has the advantage that the author had personal one-on-one interviews with nearly every survivor. Ironically, after coming so close to death, each survivor lived to comfortable old age, while the majority of their rescuers met early deaths, either by accident, or in the case of the Russians, in Stalin's purges. Instead of receiving a hero's welcome, Nobile was slandered by Mussolini's fascist government, who perceived him as a threat. He only received the credit due shortly before his death. This story is just begging for big screen, big budget treatment (it was the subject to a not-well-known, but good, Sean Connery movie, The Red Tent, though). Hopefully, they wont take the U571 route and change the principle characters from Italian, Czech, or Norwegian to Americans!
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