Late in the evening on June 3, 1928, a young Soviet farmer was monitoring broadcasts from remote parts of the world on a wireless radio set in his cottage on the northwest coast of Russia when he heard something unusual. It was a distress call, rendered weak and faltering by the vast distances of the Far North, and the words he jotted down initially seemed to make little sense: “Ital … Nobile … SOS … SOS … SOS …”
Although the farmer had no way of knowing it when he passed the message to others, that garbled plea for help would set in motion an international manhunt that swiftly grew to include a pair of seaplanes and a contingent of ski troops from Italy, a second pair of flying boats from Germany, a squadron of air-force pilots from Sweden, and the most powerful icebreaker in the world from the Soviet Union—all part of the largest search-and-rescue operation ever attempted in the Arctic.
