When was the first arctic expedition?
Arctic exploration
The crew of the airship Norge (including Roald Amundsen and the American sponsor Lincoln Ellsworth) flew over the Pole on May 12, 1926. This is the first undisputed sighting of the Pole. Norge was designed and piloted by the Italian Umberto Nobile, who overflew the Pole a second time on May 24, 1928. Nobile’s second trip was in the airship Italia that ran into a storm on the return trip and crashed on the ice. Survivors were eventually recovered. Amundsen disappeared, with the crew of his sea plane, during the rescue operations.