January 1968

H-Bomb Armed B-52 Crash Cleanup in Greenland: "Crested Ice" 1968 USAF Strategic Air Command

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• published: 18 May 2016
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Nuclear weapons playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL4CD7F0970A5F16AB "STRATEGIC AIR COMMAND SEMIANNUAL FILM REPORT... CRESTED ICE PROJECT..." From US Air Force Strategic Air Command Film Report FR-818 Public domain film from the US National Archives, slightly cropped to remove uneven edges, with the aspect ratio corrected, and one-pass brightness-contrast-color correction & mild video noise reduction applied. The soundtrack was also processed with volume normalization, noise reduction, clipping reduction, and/or equalization (the resulting sound, though not perfect, is far less noisy than the original). http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1968_Thule_Air_Base_B-52_crash On 21 January 1968, an aircraft accident (sometimes known as the Thule affair or Thule accident (/ˈtuːli/); Danish: Thuleulykken) involving a United States Air Force (USAF) B-52 bomber occurred near Thule Air Base in the Danish territory of Greenland. The aircraft was carrying four hydrogen bombs on a Cold War "Chrome Dome" alert mission over Baffin Bay when a cabin fire forced the crew to abandon the aircraft before they could carry out an emergency landing at Thule Air Base. Six crew members ejected safely, but one who did not have an ejection seat was killed while trying to bail out. The bomber crashed onto sea ice in North Star Bay, Greenland, causing the conventional explosives aboard to detonate and the nuclear payload to rupture and disperse, which resulted in radioactive contamination. The United States and Denmark launched an intensive clean-up and recovery operation, but the secondary stage of one of the nuclear weapons could not be accounted for after the operation completed. USAF Strategic Air Command "Chrome Dome" operations were discontinued immediately after the accident, which highlighted the safety and political risks of the missions. Safety procedures were reviewed and more stable explosives were developed for use in nuclear weapons. ...Workers involved in the clean-up program have been campaigning for compensation for radiation-related illnesses they experienced in the years after the accident... In 1960, the USAF Strategic Air Command (SAC) began Operation Chrome Dome, a Cold War airborne alert program devised by General Thomas S. Power to fly nuclear-armed B-52 Stratofortresses to the borders of the Soviet Union. The flights were scheduled to ensure that twelve bombers were aloft at all times... Beginning in 1961, B-52 bombers also flew secret "Hard Head" missions (or "Thule Monitor Missions") over Thule Air Base with the purpose of maintaining visual surveillance of the base's strategically important Ballistic Missile Early Warning System (BMEWS)... On 21 January 1968, a B-52G Stratofortress, serial number 58-0188, with the callsign "HOBO 28" from the 380th Strategic Bomb Wing at Plattsburgh Air Force Base, New York was assigned the "Hard Head" mission over Thule and nearby Baffin Bay... At 15:22 EST, about six hours into the flight and 90 miles (140 km) south of Thule Air Base, Haug declared an emergency. He told Thule air traffic control that he had a fire on board... ...the captain realized he would not be able to land the aircraft... and when he confirmed that the aircraft was directly over the lights of Thule Air Base, the... crewmen ejected... The pilotless aircraft initially continued north, then turned left through 180° and crashed onto sea ice in North Star Bay at a relatively shallow angle of 20 degrees—about 7.5 miles (12.1 km) west of Thule Air Base—at 15:39 EST. The conventional high explosive (HE) components of four 1.1 megaton B28FI model hydrogen bombs detonated on impact, spreading radioactive material over a large area in a manner similar to a dirty bomb. "Weak links" in the weapon design ensured that a nuclear explosion was not triggered. The extreme heat generated by the burning of 225,000 pounds (102 t) of jet fuel during the five to six hours after the crash melted the ice sheet, causing wreckage and munitions to sink to the ocean floor... The accident was designated a "Broken Arrow"—a United States military term that describes an accident involving a nuclear weapon... Project Crested Ice South of the impact area, a 400-foot (120 m) by 2,200-foot (670 m) blackened patch was visible where fuel from the aircraft had burned—this area was highly contaminated with JP-4 aviation fuel and radioactive elements that included plutonium, uranium, americium and tritium. Plutonium levels as high as 380 mg/m2 were registered in the area... By the time the operation concluded, 700 specialized personnel from both countries and more than 70 United States government agencies had worked for nine months to clean up the site, often without adequate protective clothing or decontamination measures... Project Crested Ice ended on 13 September 1968...