N-4 Down

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. During the Roaring Twenties, zeppelin travel embodied the exuberant spirit of the age. Germany's luxurious Graf Zeppelin ran passenger service from Germany to Brazil; Britain's Imperial Airship Scheme 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 new 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