As a general in the Italian air force and a professor of aeronautical engineering at the University of Naples in 1928, Nobile began a new series of flights over unexplored Arctic regions with a craft similar to the Norge. On the third flight the airship crashed on the ice north-northeast of Spitsbergen. Though Nobile and 7 companions were rescued, 17 lives were lost. When an Italian commission of inquiry found him responsible for the disaster, he resigned his commission. In 1931 he took part in a Soviet voyage to the Arctic. After World War II the commission's report was discredited, and he was reinstated in the air force. He resumed teaching at Naples and was a deputy in the Italian Constituent Assembly (1946). Nobile's own account of his Arctic adventures is given in Gli italiani al Polo Nord (1959; My Polar Flights).