First edition. ‘This book explores Amundsen’s enthusiasm for flight from the moment he read about Bleriot’s flight across the English Channel in an aeroplane on 25 July 1909. From that moment onwards he saw the potential of aircraft as vehicles to explore portions of the globe that remained unexplored in the first quarter of the 20th century. The man-lifting kites built by Einar Sem-Jacobsen took the life of his second in command, Ole Engelstad and were carried, but not used, during his 1910-1912 expedition to the South Pole. He saw aeroplanes flying in America and Germany in 1913 and in 1914 he was taught to fly by Sem-Jacobsen. He passed his flight test on a Farman Longhorn biplane on 1 June 1914 and in mid-1915 was issued with the Fédération Aéronautique Internationale (Norge) aeroplane pilot’s certificate number one. He bought a Farman biplane to take with him on an expedition to the North Polar Sea but the outbreak of the Great War stopped the Expedition and Amundsen gave his Farman to the Norwegian government. After the war he acquired a Curtiss Oriole biplane and two Junkers F13s then in 1925 he embarked on a flight, which he barely survived, to the North Pole in two Dornier Wal flying boats. 1926 brought long delayed success when the Norge flew to the Pole and on to Alaska. On 18 June 1928 he and five companions took off from Tromso on a search and rescue flight for the missing airship Italia and were never seen again’ (dustwrapper blurb).¶¶¶

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