Ch 144F
Cold War Phase of the Vietnam Conflict
6/1/2011
Ice Station Moles
link to Greenland photo folder (40 photos)
The frozen phase of the Vietnam War has not often been reported on, perhaps because of the secrecy of the mission. Like Whack-A-Mole the enemy would have a hard time stomping us out of our glacial hideaways. I can now tell the story as my buddy Hank ,above has broken the code of silence and given me unprecedented access to the above private Greenland folder collection of slides. This shot is in his "weasel" camouflage is from a later assignment in Alaska (you can see Russia from there).
Hank's glacial special operations group used the Sikorsky H-34 Army Choctaw here, while it's sister ships, the Kingbees served at the same time for the covert Special Operations Group Vietnam Air Force's 219th Helicopter Squadron , the Marines Seahorses , and was originally the Navy's Seahorse used for submarine spotting. A 1961 crash killed 5 at Camp Century.
Hank was drafted into the Army in 1966 and while in basic training at Fort Gordon by pure luck received a letter assigning him to duty at the Cold Regions Research and Engineering Laboratory CRREL program at Hanover, New Hampshire instead of Hamburger Hill, Vietnam. Having a bachelor's degree in Geology he was just what they needed at that time. The letter apologizingly regretted that there were no military billets at CRREL and thus Hank would have to live in an apartment ! He should bring his skis and golf clubs as CRREL's directors also worked at Dartmouth College and he could use their facilities. Note that in the CRREL link, the historic completion of the drilling through the Greenland ice cap to ground level was achieved during Hank's tour. That 4550 feet core depth represented a profile of 130,000 years of snow accumulation. NOAA link
Hank had landed at Thule, overnighted at nearby Camp Tuto then air lifted via Choctaw Helicopter to Camp Century for a month and a halfs work. There he billeted in the above ice temporary/permanent shelters and worked in ice tunnels drilling cores of ice specimens for scientific analysis. This Ice Engineering included physical tests like compressive strength and chemical analysis for lead deposition correlating to industrialization, photospectric analysis, etc. The only others there were a handfull of civilian scientists and a handfull of support military personnel. They say there was a girl behind every tree, except there were not trees. The following year,1967, Camp Century was shut down due to shifting unexpected rapid flow and movement of the glacial ice crushing some of the structures, yikes. The nuke was removed in 1963.
After Thule, Hank was sent back to CRREL headquarters on an Air Force C-124 transport then up to Alaska for a couple half year stints working on various stream flow projects and visiting the big Permafrost tunnel: You can go into CRREL's tunnels 360 interactively here. Oil pipeline analysis was part of that study. The Greenland folder contains many other nice shots as these represent only the "tip of the iceberg" as it were. Examples: the under-ice Chapel near a project 22A Tuto ice tunnel and the co-worker taking cover inside an Alaskan weir [it measures stream flow].
Operation Blue Jay (documentary film 1953) was the Army's highly classified plan to build the Thule Air Base in the northwest corner of Greenland. Denmark had owned Greenland but when the Nazi's invaded Denmark in '41 an agreement with the US was made allowing us to defend Greenland and build an air base there. Surprisingly I have a 1953 Danish coin, the year Thule Air Base was completed. This inhospitable environment with temperatures to -50 degrees F and wind speeds to 150 MPH, and ice blocking shipping made construction a challenge. The Inuit natives somehow survive there. I had always been amazed at the resilience of the Inuit after watching the 1922 film Nanook of the North at some sort of a college anthropology presentation. Of course Nanook on Youtube , and the beautiful desolation of Thule today in 2010.
Camp Century (a priceless historic 30 min video) was the project phase completed in 1960 to build the nuclear powered military base under the ice cap but mostly closed by 1967.
In the early days scientists from the underground city of Camp Century boarded their snow vehicles that would traverse on top of the snow pack 150 miles from Camp Century back to the Camp Tuto and the Thule Air Base. Dutch website explanation.
The under snow portable nuclear power plant was pre designed and packaged at ALCO American Locomotive Company in Schenectady, just a few miles from my home. It was assembled by soldiers on site to deliver electrical power to the under snow city. Handling U-235 fuel rods by hand was de rigueur for these Army soldiers.
The drilling core derrick rig was located under the snow cap within one of the under-ice city tunnels. An electric railroad was supposed to connect the under ice Camp Century to Thule Air Base, but apparently never completed.
Project Iceworm , the secret plan to launch nuclear missiles from here under the ice was abandoned in 1966. Nike missiles were there from 59-65, however.The Cold War also included our operation Chrome Dome and a crashed B52 nearby with radioactive contamination from it's ruptured payload. Greenland was also part of the anti-Soviet DEWS Distant Early Warning System using pulse radar interconnected by Dale's tropospheric scatter communication.
Another soldier's story is documented here.
You can even purchase videos on ebay of these old CRREL projects.
Meltdown 1 hour audio Walter Cronkite narrates
Thule Forum many well developed stories