Eight thirty eight, Here fifty five KRCD Talk Station. Been a very happy Monday to you. I am pleased to welcome to the fifty five KRC Morning Show Buddy Levey, author of more than ten books, including A Labyrinth of Ice, The Triumphant and Tragic Greeley Polar Expedition, and Empire of Ice and Stone, The Disastrous and Heroic Voyage of the Karl Luke. His book have been published in eight languages, won numerous awards. You may have also seen him on
the History Channel. He was on History's Greatest Mysteries hosted by Lawrence Fishburn, and also The Unexplained with William Shatner hosting Today, We've got a new book to talk about. Realm of Ice and Sky, triumph Tragedy, and History's Greatest Arctic Rescue. Welcome to the fifty five KRC Morning Show, Buddy Lovey. It's a pleasure to have you on.
Today, Sir Ryan, great to be with you.
Answer me this, This has been puzzling me for a lot of years, and make like, okay, you got more you need You get too much time in your hands. But I've seen a number of documentaries about polar travel North Pole, South Pole and the period in time when these these adventures were made, these daring trips into frozen wastelands. What in the hell prompted people to want to seek the polls and put their literally their lives in peril to do it. Did they have that bad home life or something.
That's a great question. Well it was multi pronged really. I mean, part of it was initially discovery, trying to find out what was there, because early expeditions, we still didn't know what was at the top and bottom of the world. Certainly, these were added to fame, fortune and immortality because if you if you were the ones who could discover make these discoveries, then there were lucrative book tours and lecture tours, and you would also often you know,
become fetit in your own country. And so there was also a nationalistic pride to I mean, many countries were buying for the polls. So there was a lot of different reasons. But I mean, I agree, man, these were such daunting expeditions that it's hard to imagine now putting yourself in such.
Peril, it really is. That's what's always puzzled me, is I said, these guys had to have hated their wives or something. I mean, this is just backcraft crazy. Anyway, it was widely reported. At least I think you've solved the mystery on this. Who got there first? Doctor Frederick Cook claimed to have made it to the North Pole in nineteen o eight, and then a year later, as I understand, Robert Perry made the claim that he had
seen the North Pole first. But what did you uncover in Realm of Ice and Sky, the book you've just released.
Well, you know, there's been arguments about this ongoing since the early nineteen hundreds when Cook and Perry first made the claims, but subsequently their records were found to be either altered or fabricated. And so when Roll Dominson the Norwegian went over the Pole in an airship in nineteen twenty six with the Italian Umberto Noble, he made what is now considered and at least I find this to be true, the first confirmed reaching of the North Pole.
And so, you know, like I said, there was fame and immortality were involved, and egos were involved, and so there were lots of there was fabrication, and so you know, it ended up being this kind of ongoing argument and counterclaims and it was national and international news for years and years.
Well, these were these folks that you talk about in the book Roland Amindson and a Walter Wellman. They flew to the North Pole in a blimp, right airship.
That's correct. And Wellman, interestingly was an American from Ohio who was the first to try and it was really I liken it to the first astronauts. I mean these guys were called aeronauts. And Wellman was trying this in
craft that were untested. In fact, nineteen oh seven, nineteen oh eight, he went up there to Spallbar, this archipelago north of Norway, halfway between Norway and North Pole, and gets in one hundred and eighty five foot hydrogen filled dirigible or blimp we call him now, and with a you know, a pretty small motor on it and tries to fly a thousand miles to the North Pole. And what could possibly go wrong? You know?
Right?
And so yeah, these guys were you know, Wellman was really really brave and he and only a couple of other guys were getting into these craft which had, like I said, never before even been tested. I mean there were they had been tested in uh, in France and tested in other places, but not in the Arctic. So it was really a pioneering and courageous effort that you just have to marvel at the courage of these men. And you know some claimed at the time courage uh and suicidal tendency.
Yes, really, it's the first thing that went through my mind. Untested aircraft and and and and going into frozen wastelins. And I presume at times the wind had to kick up pretty dramatically. So if you just got a little tiny motor and you're floating around and basically what is a balloon? I mean, how do you keep yourself on course? Would be a question I would have before I went up in the thing.
Right, So you're you're hoping for the winds to be in your favor, and there were, you know, lots of study about what the winds were doing in that part of the world at these times. But you're absolutely right. Wellman and his crew were buffeted or around and blown
in circles. And they had a number of devices that they had used Wellman device to try to keep them on course, including these long cables that had hooks on the ends and weights, and there were you know, being they were a five hundred feet long, they could help keep them tethered to the ice. But again this was all rather rudimentary, and for context, you know, the Wright brothers in nineteen oh three had only recently been testing
the airplane. So one of the things I found really intriguing about this story was that while Wellman was trying this, the airplane and the airship were both buying for supremacy of the skies, and so no one really quite knew whether the airship dirigible blimp whatever you want to call it, was going to defeat the airplane, and so it was a really open question. That part is quite compelling.
Well, in any of these various airship of dirigible blimp trips, did they land once they got to what would be known as the actual North Pole or do they just take photographs from above?
Well, that's a really great question. Sometimes they land in unintentionally,
which is called crashing. But when by the time all Amansen and Nobule get into the fray, it's about sixteen years after Wellman, and they are able to definitively photograph above the North Pole and photograph, I mean, they fly all the way from Spalbard north of Norway to across the polar see across the North Pole to Teller, Alaska and make a kind of dramatic crash landing there though they all survive, and so yeah, it's a good question.
The plan had been in a number of these expeditions to try this is a great question, to try to land, to try to lower people down, either from the hovering craft or kind of like landing on the Moon, or to land tether there and then get out and do some scientific study on the ice. But conditions up there were never really conducive to making intentional landings, and so you do have a lot of drama in this story about crash landings.
Yeah, well it was I wanted to gravitate over to a specific illustration that what is described as the disaster of the Italia.
Right. Yeah, So after Amusen and Nobela, this Italian airship designer make a somewhat successful flight in twenty six for National Pride. Nobila decides to do it with an almost exclusively Italian crew and he makes it to the North Pole, but on the way back it's incredibly like a kind of hurricane and wins and so they end up crashing on the ice and a number of people perish. It's very dramatic. The dirigible, you know, the control car sheers
away from the bottom of this dirigible. Many men are left on the ice and the others float away above them and are gone into the mist. And then Nobulay and these nine other men are left on a floating ice flow for about six weeks with no one knowing exactly where they are. And it's really it's one of the most dramatic rescues in archic history, and it's just incredible.
How in the hell were they found? I mean, I presume, maybe you can correct me if I'm wrong, that they had no way of communicating. They didn't have like two way radios with the mainland or whatever, did they ah.
But they did so one of the men had the good sense to so this is also at the time that Marconi's wireless radio has been developed, and so one of the men had the wherewithal to leap from the crashing dirigible with a short wave two way and they are, after a great deal of travail and innovation, are able to get communication with first of all, with some farmer
in Russia, of all things. Here's their SOS communications and contacts the Italian government, which sets in motion this incredible rescue operation that involves it's a multi national rescue operation that involves Sweden, Norway, Finland, the United States, it's Italy, and all these different countries are vying to be the ones to find Nola and his men, including dramatically, Rolled Aminson, the greatest polar explorer of all time, who has retired
at this time, comes out of retirement hopson an airplane to go sweep in and save his arch nemesis nobul a uh, and then he ends up. It's a great, really Hollywood ending. I mean, what ends up happening with Nobla or with Aminson? I won't give that away, don't give it. Flies He flies off, you know, with a number of men in this prototype airplane, and it's just wild what happens?
Well, read all about it. I guess today, Buddy Lovey, author of Realm of Ice and Sky, Triumph Tragedy and History's Greatest Arctic Rescue, Before we part company, really qu it's been fascinating, buddy. How is it you got involved in Arctic exploration? What drew you to it as a topic.
Oh, that's a great question. I ended up going to Greenland. When I was doing a bunch of journalism in the early two thousand and I met a Norwegian woman who gave me a book called The First Crossing of Greenland by this man named free Joff Nonsen, who was a kind of protege of Amunsen's. And once I started reading, well, first of all, once I went to Greenland, I was so struck by the landscape, the people, that the uh you know, the topography, and it was just a very
dangerous and foreboding place. And then I thought, oh, man, I got into the started reading about these Arctic explorers and I was just hooked. I couldn't stop. So there's my third book about the subject.
Yeah, exactly, well and obviously a very successful author, you are. I'm sure my listener's going to go to get one, to get a copy of rom of Ice and Sky, which we've made it easy for them to do, Buddy. It's on my blog page fifty five cares dot com a link to click on to buy a copy of the book and enjoy it. These people were absolutely crazy, buddy, that's all I can conclude. Absolutely crazy. But man, would a like agree you left man, Buddy, real fun. It
was fun talking to you. Thanks for spending the time, listeners of meme for putting this all down on paper. Hey, my pleasure. Brian really appreciate it, My pleasure. Indeed, have a great week. It's eight fifty one, fifty five KRC. The talk stations stick around me right back after these brief work fifty five KRC Steve Air with us