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and became known as "Iceberg" Smith. For the next decade, Smith engaged in the scientific study of iceberg formation at Harvard University and on board cutters, such as the Marion, on which he performed a 1928 survey of the most important iceberg-producing regions in West Greenland. In recognition of his scientific studies, Harvard awarded him a master's degree in 1924 and a Ph.D. in geologic and oceanographic physics in 1930. He was the first Coast Guardsman to receive a doctoral degree and was considered an international authority on Arctic ice. Iceberg Smith's contemporaries in the field included American Lincoln Ellsworth and Norwegian Fridtjof Nansen. Son of a wealthy American coal magnate, Ellsworth devoted much of his life to Arctic and Antarctic exploration. In 1888, Nansen became the first man to successfully cross Greenland, skiing across the ice cap in forty-one days. In 1893, he set off on a daring expedition to reach the North Pole using the arctic schooner Fram. After three years of journeying by ship, on foot and in a kayak, Nansen returned home and was hailed as one of the pre-eminent Arctic explorers, having reached the nearest to the North Pole (86° 14´ N) of any explorer up to that time. All three of these Arctic experts played a role in a zeppelin expedition that took shape in pre-World War I Germany. The 1931 the Graf Zeppelin Expedition was part of a decades-long "aeroarctic" trend. Since the 1600s, explorers had tried to conquer the Arctic and many had died a slow lingering death in its desolate frozen moonscapes. The development of lighter-than-air craft coincided with an interest in conquering the dangerous polar frontiers with balloon technology. In 1897, the trend began with an attempt to reach the North Pole by hot- air balloon. That expedition failed, but interest in reaching the pole from the sky grew stronger. Count Ferdinand von Zeppelin introduced his new airship in 1900 and, by 1908 Zeppelin began planning for polar flight in one of his new zeppelins. By 1912, Zeppelin had built an airship hangar on the island of Spitsbergen for his first polar expedition; however, tensions leading up to World War I cancelled any peaceful plans for the zeppelins and the idea of a polar expedition was shelved until the 1920s. After the war, the icy Poles remained one of the last frontiers where technology and know-how could triumph over impossible conditions. With the development of fixed- wing aircraft, Smith's contemporaries Lincoln Ellsworth and Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen attempted to fly to the North Pole in 1925. They failed to do so with the airplane, but a year later the two explorers teamed up with Italian engineer Umberto Nobile and succeeded in reaching the North Pole using the Italian airship Norge. It was the first validated visit to the North Pole. Meanwhile, Fridtjof Nansen struck on a plan for an Arctic research program based on airship expeditions. In 1926, Nansen became president of the newly formed Aeroarctic Society and championed arctic airship expeditions during the late 1920s. Even so, the program foundered amid the high costs of construction and support for such an airship program. With the death of Nansen in May of 1930, it seemed the project would never leave the ground. However, Count Zeppelin's successor in the zeppelin business, Dr. Hugo Eckener, also succeeded Nansen as president of the Aeroarctic Society and arranged for a brief zeppelin expedition in 1931 with a larger Arctic flight to follow a year later. For Smith, the Graf Zeppelin Expedition proved a combination of Arctic exploration and Indiana Jones-style adventure. On one hand, the zeppelin served as a platform to support Germany's state-of-the-art scientific equipment, including a geomagnetic laboratory, a nine-lens panoramic mapping camera, and a small balloon operated weather-sensing probe. On the other hand, members of the German Foreign Office saw the expedition as a way to strengthen German-Soviet ties and to claim previously uncharted lands as German territory to show the world that Germany had not renounced its acquisitive aspirations. Smith must have marveled at the airship's technology and appointments. It boasted a navigation station equal to any contemporary sea-going vessel and meteorological equipment for predicting local pressure systems three times per day. Lt. Cmdr. Smith would be passing over some of the most forbidding lands on the planet from the comfort of an electrically heated cabin with picture windows to view the Arctic landscape below. offcial service photograph of Lt. Cmdr. edward "iceberg" Smith taken before the historic 1931 Graf Zeppelin arctic expedition. U.S. Coast guard Photo oPPoSiTe Page LeFT: Graf Zeppelin hovering over a crowd at Berlin, germany. U.S. Coast guard Photo Issue 3 • 2014 � RESERVIST 39