Norway mission aims to find explorer Amundsen's plane

Norway's navy said it would launch an expedition to find the wreckage of a sea plane that disappeared 80 years ago while carrying Norwegian polar explorer Roald Amundsen and five other people.

"In August, a large-scale navy expedition will embark ... into the Barents Sea in search of Roald Amundsen's Latham 47 - the sea plane in which 80 years ago the legendary polar explorer disappeared forever," the navy said in a statement.

Roald Amundsen, the first man to ever reach the South Pole and to traverse the Northwest Passage through the Arctic Ocean, disappeared on June 18, 1928 while flying in the French plane with fellow Norwegian Leif Dietrichson and four French air force pilots as part of a mission to rescue Italian explorer Umberto Nobile in the Barents Sea.

The circumstances surrounding the accident remain a mystery.

Using a navy ship, a coast guard ship, an autonomous sonar system and a remotely operated dive robot, the navy expedition will scrutinise an area measuring about 67 square kilometres northwest of Bear Island in the Svalbard archipelago.

"If the plane wreck is in this area, we will find it," said navy ship captain Frode Loeseth.

Straddling Norwegian and international waters, the search area is based on calculations by the Norwegian Aviation Museum, which attempted five years ago to send out an expedition but had to call it off due to weather conditions.

"We hope to find the sea plane's engines or part of its fuselage," said Capt. Loeseth. It has yet to be determined what will happen with the wreckage if it is found. "It will be up to the Aviation Museum and to French authorities to determine whether it should be brought to the surface," Capt. Loeseth explained.

Umberto Nobile, one of Amundsen's fiercest rivals, was finally rescued along with most of his crew on the crashed Italia airship after drifting for weeks on an Arctic ice floe.