Last Kon-Tiki crew member dies at age 92

Sat Dec 26, 12:16 pm ET
OSLO – A museum official says Knut Magne Haugland, the last of six crew members who crossed the Pacific Ocean on board the balsa wood raft Kon-Tiki, has died. He was 92.
Kon-Tiki Museum Director Maja Bauge said Saturday that the former Norwegian resistance fighter and explorer died of natural causes in an Oslo hospital on Friday.
Haugland, decorated by the British in World War II for helping prevent the German nuclear program from getting heavy water to make weapons, joined Norwegian anthropologist Thor Heyerdahl's expedition in 1947 as a radio operator.
The Kon-Tiki team sailed the raft with basic equipment 4,900 miles (8,000 kilometers) from Peru to Polynesia in 101 days to prove Heyerdahl's theory that ancient mariners may have migrated across ocean stretches.

FILE - This is a Sept. 29, 1947 file photo of the Kon-Tiki expedition crew waves from the homemade balsa wood and bamboo raft upon arrival in San Francisco, Ca., from the South Pacific. From left are, Thor Heyerdahl, leader of expedition; Bengt Danielson; Erik Hesselberg; Torstein Raaby; Herman Watzinger, second in command and designer of the raft; and Knut Magne Haugland. A museum official says Knut Magne Haugland, the last of six crew members who crossed the Pacific Ocean on board the balsa wood raft Kon-Tiki, has died. He was 92. Kon-Tiki Museum Director Maja Bauge said Saturday Dec. 26, 2009 that the former Norwegian resistance fighter and explorer died of natural causes in an Oslo hospital on Friday. (AP Photo, File)

thanks for posting this, will mow put on the dvd of the voyage in memorium

I know what I'm watching today. Interesting fellow.

From Kon Tiki by Thor Hyerdahl:

"...I met Knut for the first time in England in 1944. He'd been decorated by the British for having taken part in the parachute action that held up the Greman efforts to get the atomic bomb; he was the radio operator, you know, in the heavy water sabotage at Rjukan. When I met him, he had just come back from another job in Norway; the Gestapo had caught him with a secret radio set inside a chimney in the Maternity Clinic in Oslo. The Nazis had located him by D/F, and the whole building was surrounded by German soldiers with machine-gun posts in front of every single door. Fehmer, the head of the Gestapo, was standing in the courtyard himself waiting for Knut to be carried down. But it was his own men who were carried down. Knut fought his way with his pistol from the attic down to the cellar, and from there out into the backyard, where he disappeared over the hospital wall with a hail of bullets after him."

The crew of the Kon Tiki were an extraordinary group of men.

THANKS for the post Lake Surfer!

Thortiki

Thanks for posting about this, Lake Surfer. Truly the Greatest Generation.

Thanks so much for posting this. They were amazing men. Just reading Kon Tiki was just mind boggling...how they had the nerve to make the trip, when basically everyone said it was suicidal. With all our GPS and modern technology, it's hard to imagine those guys making that trip, and doing it sucessfully.

What full lives those guys lived!!! Awesome!

:drink:
Tacky

You're all quite welcome.

An adventure of a lifetime.

Received a first edition issue of Kon-Tiki as a present last week and very much enjoyed describing the story to my three kids. Here's to the spirit of adventure! Cheers!

A deep kowtow from La Verandah in memory of one of the great adventurers of the 20th century. I've been working on an article on the wave of things named for the Kon Tiki that followed publication of the book -- dishware patterns, nightclubs, etc.

I would love to see the article....I've been noticing how the voyage made an impact on pop culture of the day. Apparently it was big news back in the day, and Kon Tiki tie-ins were everywhere. Everyone wanted to cash in on the Kon Tiki fame. It helped spread the poly-pop fire and immortalized the men on the voyage.

You could turn it into a book...get enough peeps with Kon Tiki collectables and you are on a roll!!

Viva Kon Tiki!!

:drink:
Tacky