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Naval mission fails to find polar explorer's missing plane

OSLO - A Norwegian navy mission returned home empty handed from a Barents Sea mission to find the missing plane used by legendary polar explorer Roald Amundsen 81 years ago, a participant said Saturday.
"We didn't find anything unfortunately," Lena Kamprolf, a journalist who took part in the mission, told AFP. "The conclusion is the plane wasn't in the area, that's 100 percent sure."
The Norwegian navy vessel KNM Tyr, equipped with two underwater robots, and the coast guard ship the KNM Harstad had set sail on August 24 to scour a 36 square nautical miles area in search of the twin-engine Latham 47.

The KNM Tyr had to abort its mission after five days, however, due to a technical problem, Kamprolf said. It transferred its research instruments to the coast guard ship.
The search area was close to the island of Bjoernoeya, around 500 kilometers (310 miles) from the northern tip of Norway.
Amundsen was the first explorer to navigate the Northwest Passage that connects the Atlantic and Pacific oceans in 1903-1906 and the first to reach the North Pole in 1911 after an epic duel with Englishman Robert Scott.
The explorer's plane disappeared on June 18, 1928, with another Norwegian and four Frenchmen aboard after taking off from Tromsoe in northern Norway.
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Sunday, September 6th 2009

AFP