The story of the crash of the airship Italia, a harrowing true tale of Arctic endurance and survival. In 1928 General Umberto Nobile, one of Italy’s premier aeronautical engineers returned to again cross the North Pole in a dirigible but disaster struck on the return home when the ship crashed down hundreds of miles from help. The survivors, including Nobile, were stranded on an unstable ice floe. Their disappearance inspired one of the most far-reaching rescue missions ever undertaken. Many of the searchers met with disaster themselves including Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen, a passenger on Nobile’s earlier Pole flight. Filled with intrigue, heroics and cruel twists of fate, this book recounts one of the most fascinating and bizarre polar tragedies.