Broken Arrow - 01-21-68 - Thule, Greenland Accident #30 - Summary

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HOBO 28, a B—52 from Platsburgh AFB, NY, on a routine 24 hour airborne alert mission over the Atlantic Ocean and carrying four B28 nuclear bombs, had completed it's first air refueling and was about five hours into it's mission when the pilot ordered a back-up pilot into the co-pilot's seat. The crew complained that the temperature in the plane was too cold. The pilot ordered the co pilot to raise the temperature rheostat. This was done, but soon lowered to its original position. The crew then reported smelling smoke and the pilot ordered a search of the plane. When nothing was discovered, he ordered the search repeated. At that time, a fire in the navigator's compartment was discovered. An emergency rubber raft had been placed too close to one of the heat registers had caught fire. An attempt to extinguish the blase was not successful with the two available fire extinguishers. The pilot turned toward the nearest Air Base, Thule AFB, Greenland. The crew was ordered to eject four miles south of the runway. The original copilot was seated in the extra seat which did not have ejection capability. He bailed out through the navigator's compartment which was the area of the fire, but did not survive the ordeal. He was the only fatality. The other six crew members survived, but with some injuries and problems from the cold. The temperature was -24 Degrees F, and a 7 knot wind gave that a wind chill factor of -53 Degrees F. One crew member was not rescued for The abandoned aircraft, which had been headed inland made a 180 Degree turn and headed out over the sea ice. It crashed at 4:39 PM, 7.5 miles west of the Air Base on the sea ice of North Star Bay. The crash site was between the mainland and Saunders Island on Bylot Sound. The sea ice at that point was about 6 feet thick, and the water was near 800 feet deep, one of the two narrow channels of North Star Bay. To further complicate matters, there was a foot of snow on the ice and it was the time of perpetual darkness. The sun was not to rise in that area until the 14th of February, so there was only four hours of twilight each day. According to witnesses and a reconstruction of the crash data, the plane struck the sea ice intact in a steep left bank and disintegrated from impact, explosion and fire. The Air Base reported the accident to the Pentagon and dispatched search teams in helicopters and in dog sleds with native drivers and a Danish Civil Servant interpreter. Two of the crew walked into hangers at the base, three others were found and rescued by searchers, and the body of a sixth recovered. The seventh crew member was rescued the next day. Few pieces of debris over three feet in length were found at the crash site, with most the size of a package of cigarettes. Aircraft engines were sighted, but no evidence was found of the four nuclear bombs that aircraft was carrying.

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The Disaster Control Team from Thule AFB was soon reinforced as personnel from the Air Force, Department of Energy, Danish agencies and local Greenlanders moved into assist in the aircraft and bomb recoveries. Over seventy U.S. agencies and 700 personnel were involved in these activities, with 565 people being the maximum involved at any one time. The logistics to support this number of people in these harsh climatic conditions became a major operation. To find components, personnel had to form lines and go over the area shoulder to shoulder. At first, the lack of light hampered these operations. As bomb components were recognized, they were moved into a hanger and identification of specific bombs became Components from all four were found, enough to determine that the high explosive of three of the units had detonated, but not all major components of the fourth unit were found. Contamination on aircraft debris indicated the bombs had detonated inside the fuselage. Contamination was wide spread over an area of about 1 mile by 3 miles, but the bulk was confined to an area blackened by burning jet fuel that was about 500 feet wide and 2,300 feet long. After consultation with the Danish authorities, the decision was made to remove the surface snow of the blackened area. This was done by grading it into wind rows, hauling it back to a tank farm area on the base and loading it into tanks for transport back to the Savannah River Plant in South Carolina. Over 600 containers of material were shipped back to the U.S., 67 of which held 25,000 The clean up of this accident was difficult because radiation detection equipment and their batteries would not function for long in the extreme cold. A new detection instrument developed by the Lawrence Livermore Laboratories, the Field Instrument for Detection of Low Energy Radiation, the FIDLER, was first used at this accident and it has become the preferred instrument for this type of work. New techniques for the use of existing instrumentation became necessary, again because of the extreme cold. The clean up of the area, to the satisfaction of both the U.S. and the Danish governments, was completed on September 13, 1968, a period of almost eight months. This accident, just two years after the Palomares, Spain accident, became another test of the U.S. government's ability to handle a serious international incident. The cooperation between the U.S. and Denmark was excellent, but there have been political problems in Denmark concerning that government's handling of the accident. The latest, in 1995, involves claims alleging that many of the Danish citizens who responded to the accident have developed radiation exposure related medical problems. The U.S. Department of State has relied heavily on the Departments of Defense and Energy to assist the Danish government in providing additional detailed information on the recovery operation and the exposures to