Umberto Nobile - Later Career

Later Career

In 1931, Nobile left Italy to work for the next four years in the Soviet Union, where he helped with the Soviet semi-rigid airship programme. Details of the Soviet Airship Program remain obscure, but there is an obvious Nobile influence in the design of the airships USSR-V5, and SSSR-V6 OSOAVIAKhIM. He was allowed to return to Italy to teach in December 1936, before going to the United States in 1939 to teach aeronautics at Lewis University in Lockport, Illinois. When Italy went to war with the United States, he was permitted to remain in the US, but declined the offer of US citizenship and instead returned to Rome in May 1942. After a brief stay, he moved to Spain where he stayed until Italy surrendered to Allied forces in July 1943. At that time, he returned to Rome to see to the safety of his only child Maria (born ca. 1921).

In 1945 the Italian air force cleared Nobile of all charges related to the Italia crash, and not only reinstalled him in his former rank as major general, but promoted him to lieutenant general and paid him back-pay dating to 1928. He ran for the Constituent Assembly as independent candidate in the lists of the PCI.. He returned to his beloved University of Naples where he taught, and wrote of his adventures, until his retirement. He also married again, and this time to Gertrude Stolp, a German woman he had met in Spain (she later became chief librarian at the FAO organisation in Rome).

Nobile died in Rome on July 30, 1978 after having celebrated the 50th anniversary of his two polar expeditions. The Italian Air Force Museum at Vigna di Valle (just outside Rome) has a large permanent exhibition on his achievements.