PEOPLE

We are seeking inspiration on people that have never surrendered to the impossible. Artic explorers for instance have overcome difficulties without losing enthusiasm. Like them we want to pursue the impossible, explore new ideas and challenge our limits.

This attitude is what we would like to apply in our everyday life. This helps making sense of what we are and what we do. There is also a moral issue in this attitude, the awareness of a moral gratification of helping those who have put their trust on us and the pride of being their little heroes.

EINAR LUNDBORG

Einar Lundborg (April 5, 1896 – January 27, 1931)  was a Swedish aviator. In 1928 he rescued Umberto Nobile after Nobile’s airship crash on the ice north of Spitsbergen. He was later promoted to captain in the Swedish Air Force. Before joining the airforce, Lundborg participated in the Finnish Civil War in 1918 and in the Estonian War of Independence in 1919–1920. Lundborg was killed during a test flight of the Jaktfalken airplane at Malmslätt in 1931. He was survived by his wife Margareta, née Malmberg (1900–1981). He is buried in Linköping, Sweden.

UMBERTO NOBILE

Umberto Nobile (21 January 1885 – 30 July 1978) was an Italian aviator, aeronautical engineer and Arctic explorer. Nobile was a developer and promoter of semi-rigid airships during the period between the two World Wars. He is primarily remembered for designing and piloting the airship Norge, which may have been the first aircraft to reach the North Pole, and which was indisputably the first to fly across the polar ice cap from Europe to America. Nobile also designed and flew the Italia, a second polar airship; this second expedition ended in a deadly crash and provoked an international rescue effort.

BERYL MARKHAM

Beryl Markham (26 October 1902 – 3 August 1986) was a British-born Kenyan aviator (one of the first bush pilots), adventurer, racehorse trainer and author. She was the first person to fly solo, non-stop across the Atlantic from east to west. She wrote about her adventures in her memoir, West with the Night. Adventurous, independent thinking, and beautiful, Markham was admired and described as a noted non-conformist, even in a colony known for its colourful eccentrics. Markham is best known for her solo flight across the Atlantic, from east to west. When Markham decided to take on the Atlantic crossing, no female pilot had yet flown non-stop from Europe to New York, and no woman had made the westward flight solo, though several had died trying. Markham hoped to claim both records. She became the first person to make it from England to North America non-stop from east to west. She was celebrated as an aviation pioneer. Markham chronicled her many adventures in her memoir, West with the Night, published in 1942.

ROALD ENGELBREGT GRAVNING AMUNDSEN

Roald Engelbregt Gravning Amundsen (16 July 1872 – c. 18 June 1928) was a Norwegian explorer of polar regions. As the leader of the Antarctic expedition of 1910–12, which was the first to reach the South Pole, on 14 December 1911, he was a key figure of the Heroic Age of Antarctic Exploration. In 1926, he was the first leader for the air expedition to the North Pole, making him the first person, without dispute, to reach both poles. He is also known as having the first expedition to traverse the Northwest Passage (1903–06) in the Arctic. Amundsen disappeared with five crew on 18 June 1928 while flying on a rescue mission in the Arctic. His team included Norwegian pilot Leif Dietrichson, French pilot René Guilbaud, and three more Frenchmen. They were seeking missing members of Nobile’s crew, whose new airship Italia had crashed while returning from the North Pole.

AMELIA EARHART

Amelia Earhart was an American aviator, author and women’s rights activist. She was the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic. In December 1920, Earhart attended an air show in Long Beach, Calif. Just six months after she began flying lessons, she purchased her first plane, a bright yellow, second-hand biplane that she named The Canary. She soon achieved the world altitude record for women pilots — 14,000 feet — in October 1922. In April 1928, Earhart received an unexpected phone call asking if she would like to be the first woman to fly across the Atlantic. Earhart immediately accepted the offer. She was listed as a co-pilot, but ultimately was not allowed to fly. For some time, Earhart and Putnam worked secretly on plans for Earhart to make a solo flight across the Atlantic. This would be the first woman and second solo person to make the flight. On May 20, 1932, five years to the day after Lindbergh’s famous flight, she took off from Harbor Grace, Newfoundland, heading to Paris. Almost immediately, the flight was plagued by poor weather, thick clouds and ice on the wings. Earhart knew she wouldn’t make it to Paris. For her 15-hour flight, Earhart received many honors and became an international hero. Between 1930 and 1935, she set seven women’s speed and distance aviation records. Her disappearance in 1937 during an attempt to fly around the world is a mystery that continues to intrigue people worldwide.

KATYA BUDANOVA

Yekaterina Vasylievna Budanova, nicknamed Katya (Катя), (6 December 1916 – 19 July 1943), was a fighter pilot in the Soviet Air Force during World War II. With five air victories, along with Lydia Litvyak, she was one of the world’s two female fighter aces. She was shot down by either Luftwaffe ace Georg Schwientek of JG 52 or ace Emil Bitsch, of JG 3. At the age of thirteen her mother sent her to join her sister in Moscow, where she began working as a carpenter in an aircraft factory. It was there that she began an interest in aviation, and she joined an aeroclub’s parachutist section, obtaining her flying license in 1934 and graduating to flight instructor in 1937. She took part in several air parades, flying the single-seater Yakovlev UT-1. After the German attack on the USSR in June 1941, she enlisted in military aviation. This unit consisted entirely of female pilots and was equipped with Yak-1. Initially, all women pilots were placed into three all-women units. He soon became known for his aggressiveness in combat and for his ability to pilot the commands of the Yakovlev Yak-1 fighter. On 19 July 1943 Katya took off for a escort mission. Near the city of Antracit, in Lugansk Oblast, he was involved in a violent air combat.

SOPHIE BLANCHARD

Sophie Blanchard, born Marie Madeleine Sophie Armant (Trois-Canons, 24 March 1778 – Paris, 6 July 1819), was the first woman to work as a professional balloonist, and after her husband’s death she continued ballooning, making more than 60 ascents. Known throughout Europe for her ballooning exploits, Blanchard entertained Napoleon Bonaparte, who promoted her to the role of “Aeronaut of the Official Festivals”, replacing André-Jacques Garnerin. On the restoration of the monarchy in 1814 she performed for Louis XVIII, who named her “Official Aeronaut of the Restoration”. Ballooning was a risky business for the pioneers. Blanchard lost consciousness on a few occasions, endured freezing temperatures and almost drowned when her balloon crashed in a marsh. In 1819, she became the first woman to be killed in an aviation accident when, during an exhibition in the Tivoli Gardens in Paris, she launched fireworks that ignited the gas in her balloon. Her craft crashed on the roof of a house and she fell to her death.

ANTONELLA CELLETTI

Antonella Celletti, becomes the first woman pilot of Alitalia, and August 17 baptizes his sky aboard then a very modern MD-80 jet. When she takes off, Antonella is only twenty-nine; that it was a passion for her before a trade is easy to guess: “They gave me a notebook, my parents. On the cover there were military planes. I was enchanted “. At the age of nine she remembers that her parents took her to see the tricolor arrows, and at fourteen she enrolled at the nearest aeronautical technical institute, that of Forlì. It is there that he takes the patent for private flight, but while the males at that point can opt for the career of cadet or officer in the Air Force, she is the employee, even the watch to pay for the hours of flight needed for the patent course for professional pilot. Which he succeeds in obtaining in 1983. Since then he has sent two letters a year to Alitalia, and his candidacy to Transavio, Meridiana etc … Until when he will be hired in Alitalia.

BARBARA ALEX TOY

Barbara Alex Toy FRGS (11 August 1908 – 18 July 2001) was an Australian-British travel writer, theatrical director, playwright, and screenplay writer. She is most famous for the series of books she wrote about her pioneering and solitary travels around the world in a Land Rover, undertaken in the 1950s and 1960s. Toy was drawn to deserts, and so the majority of her journeys were in the arid lands of Northern Africa and the Middle East. Toy’s first solo journey took place almost five years before the perhaps more celebrated six-man team Oxford and Cambridge Far Eastern Expedition, a London to Singapore overland trip between September 1955 and March 1956 that was also undertaken in Land Rovers. In London Toy became involved in the theatrical world. After an unsuccessful stint as an actress, from 1939 she worked behind the scenes at the Richmond Theatre in the London Borough of Richmond upon Thames as assistant stage manager and then stage director. In her earlier years she had visited Thailand, Iceland, Europe including Yugoslavia and Greece, and Lebanon, and she had been made a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society in recognition of these travels. However, her life changed to one of solo overland expeditions and adventure in 1950, as a result of a bet made in a pub. Toy has been recognised as a pioneer of long distance overland expeditions: not only was she one of the first people to undertake such expeditions (only a Colonel Leblanc had made such a journey before her, in 1949), she was the first woman to do so. Many of the expeditions that followed were team efforts, whereas Toy travelled alone and without support or backup. Pollyanna was Toy’s first Land Rover, in which she undertook the journeys described in her first four books. Thanks to the publicity generated by her books about her travels, Toy entered into a sponsorship deal with Rover, the makers of Land Rovers. In 1989 Toy was able to buy Pollyanna from his estate for £3,500, paying five times what she had originally paid for it. A passage in Toy’s book In Search of Sheba: Across the Sahara to Ethiopia (1961) describes her feelings on being forced to trade in her beloved Pollyanna for a newer, unwanted model—and one which she considered to be less reliable.

KRASIN

The first icebreaker Krasin was built for the Imperial Russian Navy as Svyatogor.  It was built, by order of the then Minister of the Imperial Navy, by the British shipyard Armstrong Whitworth. It had a long, distinguished career in rescue operations, taking part in military operations, scientific expeditions but also to what – according to some – would have been the first international rescue operation, namely the recovery of some of the survivors of the crew of the airship Italy, crashed on the polar ice pack during the return from the expedition to the North Pole led by Umberto Nobile. In 1933 Krasin became the first vessel to reach the inaccessible northern shores of Novaya Zemlya in the history of navigation. It was one of the most famous ships of the Russian fleet. During the Second World War, Krasin transported strategic supplies, weapons and ammunition for the Soviet Union, to the northern ports. Many allied ships and cargo ships failed to reach their destination, but Krasin was lucky enough to survive. It has been fully restored to operating condition and is now a museum ship in Saint Petersburg.

ENDURANCE

Endurance was the three-masted barquentine in which Sir Ernest Shackleton sailed for the Antarctic on the 1914 Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition. She was launched in 1912 from Sandefjord in Norway and was crushed by ice, causing her to sink three years later in the Weddell Sea off Antarctica. Designed by Ole Aanderud Larsen, Endurance was built at the Framnæs shipyard in Sandefjord, Norway and fully completed on 17 December 1912. She was designed for polar conditions with a very sturdy construction. By the time of launch on 17 December 1912, Endurance was perhaps the strongest wooden ship ever built. Endurance was designed with great inherent strength in her hull to resist collision with ice floes and to break through pack ice by ramming and crushing. However she was not intended to be frozen into heavy pack ice, and so was not designed to rise out of a crush. The gale now increased in intensity and kept blowing for another six days from a northerly direction towards land. By 24 January, the wind had completely compressed the ice in the whole Weddell Sea against the land. Endurance was icebound. All that could be done was to wait for a southerly gale that would start pushing, decompressing and opening the ice in the other direction. Instead, the days passed and the pack remained unchanged. Endurance drifted for months beset in the ice in the Weddell Sea. The changing conditions of the Antarctic spring brought such pressure that broke the hull of Endurance over the period from 27 October 1915, causing flooding of interior spaces. On the morning of 21 November 1915, Endurance’s