Talk:Umberto Nobile

Both the nautrality and the factual accuracy of this article should be corrected.

Among several factual errors, the most glaring is the puzzling claim that no italian rescue attempt was launched. As a fact, Cpt.Gennaro Sora (of the Italian Army "Alpini" ski detachment) did run an over-ice sled attempt from the Città di Milano support ship, while Matteoda and Albertini (of the SUGAi - the Universitary Section of the Italian Alpine Club) did the same from the italian-hired ship Braganza. Two hydroaplanes were also sent from Italy, a Dornier Wal piloted by Luigi Penzo and a SIAI-Marchetti S.55 piloted by Ten.Col.Umberto Maddalena (who was the first rescurer to find the "Red Tent" survivors on June 20th).

Also the claim that Nobile after WW2 was undeservedly "smeared as a communist on the basis of 5 years spent working in Russia" is higly debatable, as it is a fact that in 1946 he was elected in the list of the Italian Communist Party (and by the way, he was elected to the Constitutional Assembly, and not to the Parliament as stated in the article).

About neutrality, the article is clearly inspired by a very pro-Nobile undertone, almost as if's only source had been a book by Nobile himself. Just to quote two elements, Nobile is presented as a victim of jelous collegues and of a quite unconvincingly (and unfortunately not documented) conspiracy theory centered about a Fascist Regime hostility against an allegedly anti-Fascist Nobile. It is a bit odd that the supposedly "jelous collegue" was nobody less than Gaetano Crocco, one of the greatest names of the Italian aeronautical science (who certainly had nothing to be jelous about Nobile!), and that the supposedly anti-Fascist Nobile ordered the "Italia" grammophone to play the Fascist song "Giovinezza" when while overflowing North Pole!

A further point to be stressed is that Nobile was not accused of any crime or "blame for the disaster" by any Military Tribunal (that nevertheless the author of the article claims, again without any supporting evidence, to have been "patently rigged"!!!) Nobile himself required that an "Honour Court" be assembled to clear his name by any blemish for having accepted to be rescued first from the ices. As that is exacltly what happened, the Court was not simpathetic with his point of view, but limited its verdict to a simple "censure", i.e. a relatively mild verdict for what appeared to many of his fellow officers as a full-fledged desertion case.

With all due respect to the author, some adjustement to this article should be advisable.

Itobo (talk) 23:55, 6 January 2008 (UTC)With respect, it sounds like you have information which could have been added to the article itself, as I did. Instead of carping on the talk page, why not just edit the article?

The biggest concern I have is that the article lacks citations. It has a lot of work ahead. I've done what I can with the original material I have available.


 * "Cpt.Gennaro Sora (of the Italian Army "Alpini" ski detachment) did run an over-ice sled attempt from the Città di Milano support ship, while Matteoda and Albertini (of the SUGAi - the Universitary Section of the Italian Alpine Club) did the same from the italian-hired ship Braganza."

All the sources I have seen state that these attempts were made against the orders of the Italian commander of the Citta di Milano and the fascist authorities in Rome. I forget his name but he was also responsible for the lack of a 24 hour radio watch on the ship that might have picked up the initial distress signal from the Italia. Nobile was certainly a good self publicist and his memoirs and numerous interviews colour all attempts to write about him and the Italia crash, however there is no anti-Italian POV for stating he was subject to ill treatment at the hands of fascistsBenvenuto (talk) 06:23, 11 August 2009 (UTC)
 * I think this article has reached the stage where the neutrality and accuracy tags can be removed -does anyone else agree? Benvenuto (talk) 07:57, 13 August 2009 (UTC)

Pass for grammar and NPOV, June 2008
I've made one serious pass on this Nobile entry to correct its grammatical and content problems. I'm sure more work can be done. Unfortunately, for such a contentious piece of writing, this entry cites almost no direct sources (except for a 1929 Reader's Digest article), making the more problematic claims difficult to check. Historians seem to agree that Nobile had a contentious and troubled relationship with other aviation figures of his time as well as fascist officials, and that after the Italia disaster they more or less successfully purged him from the air force. I don't doubt he was the loser in a complex political fight, or even that he was wronged by bullies in the fascist apparatus, but I've tried to make that story less of a polemic: the article as I found it was not so much an account of his career as it was an apologia for it and a screed against his foes. Without being able to confirm or refute the more extreme claims, I've done my best to make the article as NPOV as is reasonable without primary research. All critiques and corrections are welcome. Shlimozzle (talk) 15:19, 28 June 2008 (UTC)

List of rescue teams
I have transfered this to the article on Italia, I believe it is now out of place here and will remove it unless someone objects? Benvenuto (talk) 09:57, 11 September 2009 (UTC)

Nobile's company
The information in the article is contradictory: On the one hand (based on Nobile's writings, and Post) it says the company was a private enterprise. A few paragraphs later it says it is state owned (as does Ventry and Kolesnick). Can anyone clarify this? Benvenuto (talk) 09:57, 11 September 2009 (UTC)

1) Category: Caproni People. Why? 2) What cause the accident? 3) The "ondina" radio issue.
Why is Nobile categorized as Caproni People? I see no mention in the article (and no reference)?

One more point: in the article no description is made on the cause of the Italia accident, but simply claiming it was due to a storm. Five years ago in a Norwegian museum I went through a permanent exposition of Nobile/Italia adventure and there was a precise description of the operations Nobile decided to free the airship Italia from a cap of ice covering its upper side. At the end of the operations, with changes in altitude (first up above the clouds to get direct sunshine and melt the ice, then down again), Italia was freed by ice but had much less gas in the involucre and became too heavy, thus hitting the pack. If admitted by Wikipedia rules, I could look for the pictures of the text of such written documents I took in that museum and use them as a reference to add info to this article.

Another point not mentioned in the article is the issue caused by the loss of the Italia airship main radio in the accident and the chance of using just the "ondina" emergency radio. Thus transmitting on an unusual radio frequency (an easy paring of the wire aerial would have fixed the frequency problem, but the radiooperator Biagi had not been drilled on this point) which was not checked by the rescuers in the first month after the accident. This is stated in the book "Biagi racconta" written by Mr Biagi, the radio operator. Could this be interesting in this Wiki article?

Just let me know. Thanks. DAL79.6.142.153 (talk) 17:01, 23 February 2014 (UTC)

Nobile's Company

"In July 1918, Nobile formed a partnership with the engineers Giuseppe Valle, Benedetto Croce and Celestino Usuelli,.."

Benedetto Croce?!?!?! Are you sure? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2001:760:2C00:8140:1A03:73FF:FEA8:F377 (talk) 11:27, 27 May 2016 (UTC)

On (1), I added mentions taken from the Enciclopedia Treccani article about him, which describe some collaboration with Caproni in 1922 (on the Ca.73) and sometime after 1936.

I will look into (2) and (3) when possible.

I removed the mention of Croce (at best it would be a case of someone having the same name of the philosopher) until I can find a source, more so since it's not clear what sort of partnership it was and who was involved. In particular, the previous text gave the impression it was a private enterprise, which I have doubts about, and mentions of other engineers are somewhat inconsistent (Crocco also worked on the Roma so he should be there as well?). - Daydreamers (talk) 07:19, 26 October 2022 (UTC)

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