ITALIA HEADS NORTH TO POLE.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 18465, 17 May 1928, Page 10

ITALIA HEADS NORTH TO POLE.

LAUNCHED ON GREAT ARCTIC WILDERNESS. (United Press Assn.—By Electric Telegraph.—Copyright.) LONDON, May 16. Copyright. Major-General Nobile wirelessed on Tuesday night: “We have been sailing a steady 500 feet, beneath a thick bank of fog. extending many miles overhead. We passed the North Cape of. Spitzbergen and launched on the great. Polar wilderness. Fairly strong head winds are causing the Italia to pitch slightly as she heads towards the Franz-Josef Archipelago. “ It was glorious before we. encountered the fog, speeding aloft in the wonderful azure of this northernmost sky, especially after the alarms of the last Jwo days, when the Italia was nearly overwhelmed and crushed in one of the worst snowstorms in my experience. Our anxious experience proved the axiom that an airship is always safer aloft than on land.”— United Service. NO TRACE OF LAND IN UNEXPLORED AREA. FOME, May 16. Major-General Nobile, sending a radio message at nine yesterday, says that the Italia has been flying for several hours beneath the fog northwards in order to penetrate more deeply the unexplored zone between Spitzbergen and Franz-Josef Land. There is visibility for ten miles. A head wind curtailed speed to thirty miles an hour and fog deposited abundant ice on the Italia’s envelope. Otherwise all is well. There is no trace of land yet. The ice pack seems more compact and more favourable for landing than Cape N ort.h. A fureher message said : “ Sighted Franz-Josef Land at 2.30. Visibility has improved to twenty miles.”-*—Aus-tralian Press Association—United Service.