‘None of Us Had Ever Seen the Midnight Sun Before’: History of the First Swedish Air Force Mission in the Arctic (1928)

In the days following the crash of the airship Italia in Northeast of the Svalbard archipelago in May 1928, several nations took action to organize air, sea, and land missions to rescue the castaways. Often associated exclusively with the figure of Einar Lundborg and the flight to the Red Tent of the Fokker S6 no. 31, the Swedish rescue mission was indeed a much larger operation that employed seven aircraft, three ships, and a thirty-man squadron. The article, using primary sources found mainly in Stockholm, Rome, Oslo and Tromsø, offers a first transnational history (between lights and shadows) of the first Swedish Air Force mission in the Arctic.