"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. "A meticulously researched and utterly gripping account of adventure, airships and adversity, Mark Piesing's N-4 Down is a brilliant book. Packed with a cast of vivid characters, magnificent flying machines, political machinations and tales of survival against all imaginable odds, it depicts one of the most extraordinary stories of not just aviation and exploration, but the twentieth century as a whole. You will never forget General Nobile, the airship and the endless ice they faced." - Michael Bhaskar, author of Human Frontiers: The Future of Big Ideas in an Age of Small Thinking "On May 24, 1928, the famed exploration airship Italia—code-named “N-4”—crashed in a terrible storm somewhere near the North Pole, triggering a massive search that enlisted the great explorer Roald Amundsen. Alas, he lost his life in that search, his body never found, but that is only one of the dramatic strands in this compelling tale of what happened when the romance of the zeppelin age clashed with bad weather." - AirMail "A century ago, men came north equipped with aircraft and radio, thinking the Arctic would finally be easy. It wasn’t. “N-4 Down” is the unforgettable story of why.” - David James, Anchorage Daily News "For readers who enjoy a compelling story of man against the elements and himself, and for those who want insights about the limits of any new technology when pushed to the edge, N-4 Down provides both. The author does a masterful job of weaving a story that combines the race to be the first man to successfully fly and land on the North Pole, 1920s aviation technologies, and the geopolitical situation in Europe following WWI. The lessons learned from N-4 Down may provide important insights for another generation of men and women pushing the boundaries of new space technology.” - COL Jayson A. A