In 1942 a Catalina crew of 210 Squadron, based at Sullom Voe in the Shetlands, was selected to carry out a series of highly secret operations, including a flight to the North Pole. The sorties were associated with a Norwegian expedition from Britain to Spitsbergen, to deny the use of the territory to the enemy. The flights made by the crew were frequently over twenty-four hours in length and reached the limits of human endurance, in conditions of extreme cold. Later, the squadron was detached to North Russia, to provide cover for the convoys taking vital supplies to the Allies on the Eastern Front. The navigator of the crew, Ernest Schofield, retained logs of most of these sorties. Together with other survivors of the crew, accounts from German sources and research carried out by Roy Conyers Nesbit, he recreated these little-known events, in detailed and accurate narrative that ends in tragedy.

In 1913, an expedition was sent to the Arctic, funded by the American Museum of Natural History, the American Geographical Society and the University of Illinois. Its purpose was twofold: to discover whether an archipelago called Crocker Land--reportedly spotted by an earlier explorer in 1906--actually existed; and to engage in scientific research in the Arctic. When explorers discovered that Crocker Land did not exist, they instead pursued their research, made a number of important discoveries and documented the region's indigenous inhabitants and natural habitat. Their return to America was delayed by the difficulty of engaging a relief ship, and by the danger of German submarines in Arctic waters during the World War I.

In response to Air Force needs for specifying and forecasting conditions of the Arctic ionosphere, AFCRL's Airborne Ionospheric Laboratory, a highly instrumented NKC 135 jet aircraft, was used in an extensive Arctic research program that started in 1967. To date, 69 flights were made and ionospheric and optical data covering major parts of the auroral oval, mainly the midday sector and the night sector, were collected. During the winter months of 1967, 1968, 1969, and 1970 special emphasis was put on the investigation of the day sector. These flights covered a rather unique and poorly investigated area of the auroral oval, and a detailed report on the observations is given here. A thorough analysis of the data collected in the day sector reveals the existence of a band of continuous particle precipitation south of the location of the discrete aurora. This precipitation hardens towards the south and results in E- and D-region ionization. These observations compare very well with measurements of precipitating particles done by satellite. The investigation of the evening and night sectors showed similar but less organized trends than on the day side. During several flights the continuity of the auroral oval was verified. The investigation indicates that, with additional measurements, it may be possible to develop a model of the Arctic ionosphere. With control measurements from a few ideally located ground stations, the dynamics of the Arctic ionosphere might then be utilized for forecasting propagation conditions in the Arctic. (Author).

A work of refreshing originality and vivid appeal, Red Arctic tells the story of Stalinist Russia's massive campaign to explore and develop its Northern territories during the 1930s. Author John McCannon recounts the dramatic stories of the polar expeditions--conducted by foot, ship, and plane--that were the pride of Stalinist Russia, in order to expose the reality behind them: chaotic blunders, bureaucratic competition, and the eventual rise of the Gulag as the dominant force in the North. Red Arctic also traces the development of the polar-based popular culture of the decade, making use of memoirs, films, radio broadcasts, children's books, and cultural ephemera ranging from placards to postage stamps to show how Russia's "Arctic Myth" became an integral part of the overall socialist-realist aesthetic that animated Stalinist culture throughout the 1930s.

Less tangible than melting polar glaciers or the changing social conditions in northern societies, the modern Arctic represented in writings, visual images and films has to a large extent been neglected in scholarship and policy-making. However, the modern Arctic is a not only a natural environment dramatically impacted by human activities. It is also an incongruous amalgamation of exoticized indigenous tradition and a mundane everyday. The chapters in this volume examine the modern Arctic from all these perspectives. They demonstrate to what extent the processes of modernization have changed the discursive signification of the Arctic. They also investigate the extent to which the traditions of heroic Arctic images – whether these traditions are affirmed, contested or repudiated – have continued to shape, influence and inform modern discourses. Sometimes the Arctic is seen as synonymous with modernity itself. Sometimes it appears as a utopian space signalling a different future. However, it still often represents the continued survival within modernity of the past as nostalgia, longing, dream and myth.

A collection of sketches, paintings and observations made in Finland, Norway, Siberia and Alaska. This book includes artwork and written accounts that were all made outdoors from life. It is a visual and written account of travels to experience the wildlife of northern and arctic regions in its many moods and atmospheres.

"GRIPPING. ... One of the greatest polar rescue efforts ever mounted." —Wall Street Journal The riveting true story of the largest polar rescue mission in history: the desperate race to find the survivors of the glamorous Arctic airship Italia, which crashed near the North Pole in 1928. Triumphantly returning from the North Pole on May 24, 1928, the world-famous exploring airship Italia—code-named N-4—was struck by a terrible storm and crashed somewhere over the Arctic ice, triggering the largest polar rescue mission in history. Helping lead the search was Roald Amundsen, the poles’ greatest explorer, who himself soon went missing in the frozen wastes. Amundsen’s body has never been found, the last victim of one of the Arctic’s most enduring mysteries . . . During the Roaring Twenties, zeppelin travel embodied the exuberant spirit of the age. Germany’s luxurious Graf Zeppelin would run passenger service from Germany to Brazil; Britain’s Imperial Airship was launched to connect an empire; in America, the iconic spire of the rising Empire State Building was designed as a docking tower for airships. But the novel mode of transport offered something else, too: a new frontier of exploration. Whereas previous Arctic and Antarctic explorers had subjected themselves to horrific—often deadly—conditions in their attempts to reach uncharted lands, airships held out the possibility of speedily soaring over the hazards. In 1926, the famed Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen—the first man to reach the South Pole—partnered with the Italian airship designer General Umberto Nobile to pioneer flight over the North Pole. As Mark Piesing uncovers in this masterful account, while that mission was thought of as a great success, it was in fact riddled with near disasters and political pitfalls. In May 1928, his relationship with Amundsen corroded beyond the point of collaboration, Nobile, his dog, and a crew of fourteen Italians, one Swede, and one Czech, set off on their own in the airship Italia to discover new lands in the Arctic Circle and to become the first airship to land men on the pole. But near the North Pole they hit a terrible storm and crashed onto the ice. Six crew members were never seen again; the injured (including Nobile) took refuge on ice flows,unprepared for the wretched conditions and with little hope for survival. Coincidentally, in Oslo a gathering of famous Arctic explorers had assembled for a celebration of the first successful flight from Alaska to Norway. Hearing of the accident, Amundsen set off on his own desperate attempt to find Nobile and his men. As the weeks passed and the largest international polar rescue expedition mobilized, the survivors engaged in a last-ditch struggle against weather, polar bears, and despair. When they were spotted at last, the search plane landed—but the pilot announced that there was room for only one passenger. . . . Braiding together the gripping accounts of the survivors and their heroic rescuers, N-4 Down tells the unforgettable true story of what happened when the glamour and restless daring of the zeppelin age collided with the harsh reality of earth’s extremes.