Jetrader - Spring 2014 - 31

Roald Amundsen's ship Maud was built to explore the Arctic and carry an aircraft that could fly to
the North Pole. It was unable to get close enough to the pole to make the attempt. The ship later
delivered a crated JL-6 aircraft to Amundsen at Wainwright, Alaska, for aerial exploration in 1922 and
1923. (Photo by Oswald Jacobsen via the Perspektivet Museum, Tromsø, Norway.)

man to navigate both passages. But the
North Pole remained untouched.

Amundsen's 1922-1923
Attempt by Air
Amundsen continued to search for
ways to reach the North Pole by air, with
the main objective being to search for
any still-undiscovered lands between
Alaska and the North Pole. In 1922, his
focus turned to the Junkers Larsen JL-6
aircraft, a type that had succeeded in

several long-distance flights, including
one from New York to Los Angeles in 1920.
The JL-6 was actually the Junkers F.13
model built under license in the United
States by John Larsen Aircraft. About 300
F.13s were manufactured between 1919
and 1932. In May 1922, Amundsen acquired
a JL-6, taking delivery in New York. He and
Oscar Omdal decided to ferry it to Seattle
as a shake-down flight before taking it
north to Alaska aboard the Maud. They
would make fundraising stops along the

A Junkers-Larsen JL-6 on floats. Roald Amundsen used a similar JL-6 fitted with skis on his failed
attempt in 1923 to reach the North Pole. (Photo by Joseph Eaton, U.S. Navy [Public domain], via
Wikimedia Commons.)

way to Seattle. Over western Pennsylvania,
the engine failed, and the aircraft was
wrecked in the crash landing.
Undaunted, Amundsen bought another
JL-6, but this time it was delivered to
Seattle in boxes. A smaller American Curtiss
Oriole was also donated by Glenn Curtiss
to be used for reconnaissance, and both
aircraft were taken on board the Maud in
Seattle, and the JL-6 was dropped off in
Wainwright, Alaska, about 100 miles southwest of Point Barrow.
The summer and autumn of 1922 in
Wainwright saw miserable weather with
storms and strong winds making flights
impossible. With typical Norwegian
patience, Amundsen and Omdal hunkered
down, built a house and waited for spring
when they hoped to fly from Point Barrow
via the North Pole to Spitsbergen.
In May 1923, the JL-6 was assembled
and fitted with skis. On its first test flight,
the engine misbehaved, then one ski disintegrated on landing, and the aircraft was
badly damaged. It was patched up and
flown again in June with the same result,
so the whole plan was aborted. Luckily,
the crashes occurred in Alaska, not out
on the polar sea. Junkers offered to provide another new aircraft, but by then,
Amundsen had had enough.

Amundsen's Plans for a
1924 Attempt
By January 1924, Amundsen was, as
usual, short of money, but he went ahead
and ordered three newly designed DornierWal (whale) flying boats to be delivered in
June. These were twin-engined, open-cockpit aircraft with two Rolls-Royce motors
in a tandem overhead nacelle-the front
engine pulling and the other one in the
back pushing. He was drawn to the Dorniers
because, unlike the Junkers of the failed
1923 project, the Dornier flying boats had
no landing gear to cause problems. They
could land on snow, water or ice.
The plan was to fly the three aircraft
from Spitsbergen to the North Pole and
land somewhere nearby. One of the aircraft,
loaded with extra fuel, would be abandoned
after its fuel had been pumped into the
other two, and those two would continue
onward to Alaska. Unfortunately, not having raised enough money, Amundsen could
not take delivery of the aircraft in June, so
the expedition was suspended.
Jetrader * Spring 2014 31

Jetrader - Spring 2014

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