Memo to J R Totter, Subject: Trip to Thule Greenland January 23 to February 3, 1968 in Connection with B-52 Crash January 20, 1968 (Draft) (Partial of Doc No. 107150)

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US DOE ARCHIVES DAVIS: RADIOBIOLOGY LABORATORY Subject: TRIP TO THULE, GREENLAND, JANUARY 23 to FEBRUARY 3, 1968, IN CONNECTION WITH B-ft* CRASHER-JANUARY 20, 1968 Winter, Deputy Director, Division of MililTry Application. He had spoken ;to Mr. Hollingsworth |who, while agreeingjthat Wright Langham was the expert in to be at the^site. 'zfe Danislyteam proceeding at the same-^time from Copenhagen to Thule was thought to be medically oriented, but this turned out to be incorrect. Since Di^Storer was already slata^rfor Japan, I cancelled ^appointments, ffeot my passport, some money aneA'clothes, and reported to the Pentagon ayZlp. m In were briefed on the situation, as it was^then known, and on the members of|fee After a ^short visit |vith General Scott who pointed out \how very important it was for the crash to be Jtaken care of properly, promptly and thoroughly, Colonel Moore and Colonel Shwiller furnished us with orders, ■w£s>^' us to Andrews AFB. ■pi pir cp;d weather ^^ia^cpaaxBt equipment, and put us on an executive plane to McGuire AFB. We were to have t^ken off next morning at 6 for Thule^but also waiting for this flight and ^vhen we learned ^that he was the Commanding Officei of Thule AFB returning MK=£rpgx from leave, we^ook advantage of the 24 hour delay to learn as much as possible about Thule. Thus, we were instructed about "Phases" the local name for ®rtcwind storms off the ice cap. The characteristic of a Phase is that fine ice crystals are blown hori&oiltally so as toxxx fill the air and the "white out" in which one promptly gfets lost.. Also, the velocity of during the winter months has £he ^coolfing effect of something like y^man's bare ^hand ivill freeze solid under such circumstances fvithin a jminute. Annex I gives ^the safety procedures ^vhich are obeyed to the letter when Wi nnties hoods and radio give warnings of Phases. A Phase {can develop within 15 minutes, but usually they are forecast afapate about sixjpiours in advance. Note is ff made of Phases |because thev condition all activities on the base. Throughout, the first consideration^sanTthat Bbe'base personnel not be put at risk. It is because of

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DAVIS: RADIOBIOLOGV LABORATORY igloo whenever they make a rest Btop^B±di >; apparently they can read the weather signs as accurately as the me tier iologi star ^yLA-^cr^ofo^ *S & , Thule is 76 30' North and 68 30/, about ^800 miles Mouth of the North Pole, so that during January there^s little or po^light except for a light^tinge of pink on the southern ^horizon that fades into the |sharp blackness of nearly starless polar sky. As shown on the daylight-darkness chart the fshift Jfrom |total darkness to total daylight occurs rapidly. The of the investigation and clean-up had to be made The fully-ft^eled B-52 was about 90 miles south of Thule at 28, 000 feet when an electrical fire was discovered in the main compartment and^ts radioed a "May Day". Within a few minutes, thewwere approaching the base at 9000 feet, the men bailed out when over the^beacon. The rescue operation is described graphically in the "Thule Times" of January 26 (Annex mk). Six of the seven made it despite parachutiljg from that height, clothed only in their ^x For unknown reasons, l^fE-the abandoned plane made a U-turn, j^_2P0O feet altitude in roughly 18-20 miles and crashed onto the ice of North Star Bay about 7. 5 miles slightly south of west of the Base at about 5:30 p. m. January** 21. A very sharp £explosi©n accompanied the craslQ^his was followed by a large “’column" of fire--actually a strip of^fire^jut this could not be determined when viewed from the Base. The plane had been under continuous radar ----- afccml loot) met ere bout *’800 meters across gic map, shows the general jjAp’Crnphjr of the area and the location of e crash with respect to the Base and Stf£0depth of the Bay. This part of the Bay is >i ninil iimiil iim iiT fjiif il. the bottom has a long boat-shaped depression blocked by a sill between Cape Athol on the mainland and Wolstenholme Island. Thfc. if anything wj^nt through the ice, which averaged 30 inches thick at the time, it should drop into the deepest part of the Bay and stay in the ^hold qf the b occurred about 45 minutes after a high tide afjpe neap phaseboat in the ice and 4to piled-up blocks and "slip-joints" at the shoreline.

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xxx:J&^Oxxxx DAVIS: RADI OBI OLOGV LABORATORY Subsequently, it was inferred t^tat tlve plane must have reached near north of the crash point. The plane probably came in at about 15 to the surface with the left-wing 60 low and impacted at greater than 500 knots f p er hour. The nose crashed back against the wing^ loosed the 4 weapons and ^they exploded. The JP-4 fuel and heavy parts of the plane continued forward^ one engine rotor was found 6 km down the ice. The Pu of the weapons was aiidiinsck-and aerosolized by the explosion; some impacted on interior surfaces of the plane as it blew apart; some was taken up in the fire column (v. i. ); an tias spread fission productson the ice along with the JP-4 and the residua of the plane were found on the ice or plane wreckage and hence the detonations were all The spread of fuel down the ice by momentum and its ignition created the "fire column^" ) which burned fiercely for 20 to 30 minutes with whitish flares suggesting the combustion of magnesium. Th^ |fire died out after about an hour and the residual fuel, carbon, bits and pieces of metal, and PuC>2 — contaminated residua were refrozen into the surface during the fire. This was the composition of the ice v^iich had melted mposite photo made Jfrom 3000 fee^using chute flares on Thursday Jan. 25. The streak subsequently was Jpound to be about 2200 feet long and To return to the time of the crash; /he local rescue teams promptly went Jens Ziglersen, the local factor ifor the Danish Trading Corporation, proved to - Y be th^key person inwall ^subsequent work on the ice as he alone spoke the mobilized jthe Greenlanders and^their^og sleds and after ^ rescuing the fliers the crash site. They saw^nothing of any meaning to them so they returned to bas without tramping around. Major General Richard Hunziker, Chief of the SAC kfijoepcBOsse "Broken Arrow" Response Group, arrived Monday, Jan. 22 and got operations started |but the Phase which prevented our taking off from McGuire on Jan«24 also stopped all operations on the ice. However, by the time we arrived Thursday, "?he dog teams had carried enough 4x8 sheets of plywood out to the streak area^to construct a safe landing pad for the helicopters and to ;build

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-4- DAVJS: RADIOBIOLOGY LABORATORY The first problem encountered by the "Broken Arrow*1 cadre was that their standard PAC-1S alpha-meters simply did not jwork at th^se temperatures. They on at lea&£ 3 cpunts. Hence the contamination lev^la/at the crash site land the streak wereyunknfown until Mesrs. Ttnney and on Friday Jan. 26 ostensibly to test ^he field performance of ^he Fj dler meteri . Essentially thp-was a lightly sF^^ded Nal crystal with battery-po^^red electronics responding to the \1 kvjCrayB of Pu and/or the 60 ays Jfoi Am. After relocating the batteries under ^Keir parkas, repairing some contacts and gradually cold-adapting the instruments, they calibrated them against known sources covered by ^^erftrfrge thicknessfi$6f snow. The darkness and cold made civil engineering starting point and then walking radially, recording the number of paces until the meter reading changed a ^given number o/units. This resulted in the "semitaken by General Hussziker, on the basis of a Vfery few PAC-1S readings, to redflag the streak and a zone |around it. A s it happened, the phase winds of ^Jan 24 spread |the contamination transversely and each succefeing phase enlarged the contaminated area* -bas a^-shown on abater reliable quantitative isodose plot, most of the ux activity was related to the streak. A special team^f weapons ^xperts ^had priority in combing the area for ^pieces of weapons, ^ using the ^log sleds and helicopters. The problems of^existing, working, moving, and using instruments in the the credit ox General Hunziker and Colonel Dresser that not one man was ^killed or afcix loxtexetfamtjf ^lost then or la ter} Dr. ^-.angh^m and I arrived shortly before^ie Danish Team and were the ^'Americans to talk with them^JrT fact, we received them and intro duced them a bit later to General IIlimvA jfe—wjetshisuaine'~daI'iitxut Hunziker. They were Professor Jurgen KcY^h^^cn^sultant to Danish National Health Service, Professor of Physics, £^rsted^ University of Copenhagen^ Professor Otto Mogens Kofoed-Hansen, Head, Physics Department, The Danish Atomic Energy

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-5- DAVIS: RADIODIOLOGY LABORATORY Mr. H. Lassen, Head of Division, Ministry for Greenland. *-ux/ hunter atpaiapebilwrifApigmxtXK reputed^to have approached jthe crash from the ill at ease, but nodded agreement. Just as we were about to see about arranging a search, General Hunziker jvalked in, welcomed ^he nr\ told fhem that anything thereafter, we went to the briefing rowm for the first session with the newspaper men from both Europe and America. The European journalists had arrived on the same SAS plane with the four Danes. On the assumption that it was better for , the AEC not to seem to be masterminding or situation, I stayed out of the spotlight. T found Mr. Frank Tucker of the Danish Desk our State Department and ^ a 9S£ Brigadier General^n nondescript Jointer gear doing the same thing. Only Professor Kocti^ spoke for ptksudBuuaxk the Danes He merely |outlined their interest in determining the extent of the Pu contamination and of being assured that it would be safely taken care ofjSO that no harmaFould come to the Greenlanders. There were one or two sharp questions of a political nature^' Times reporter, a rather impertinent^"nSsSgeMissl^’typ^^nsisffd |pn calling the smoke column a mushroom. Professor Koch pointed out the difference and when the reporter said ^he preferred ''mushroom cloud” told the that it was reporters like him {who didn't deserve to be called journalists, etc;*The The weather turned bad l«JiS9E!fiu3i^SCand's^on the ^newsmen realized that ^ they w'ere accomplishing little^Dy staying on in this uncomfortable climat had to remai^ because the Phase reached stage II and closed down everything Iot^ almost two days. They were happy to leave on the first outbound plane. On the whole they reported the situation fairly, but a few^tried to make political hay otff* of it. Curiously, the Danish paper tlial ^ir^cfto^nihe most political furor Sui-*-*' of the accident, editoralized next week on how many Soviet warships sailed 7&Kattegat with nuclear weapons |aboard4Bsd^vhat |would happen if one offhem ran aground into the tjficky waters of this narrow sea lane--or collided with /T

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-6- DAVIS: RADIOBIOLOGY LABORATORY That evening^Dr. Langham and I were fully briefed on the situation as it was then understood, but the information was scanty and imprecise. In fact, it was at this time that a young Air Fo^ce captain, ^ast back from a trip bf^dog sled the crash area was able |to correlate theliEM&ifrSrphotographs taken by pho^>- flaslfwith the "dark streak" and the distribution of the debris. ^None of us, including the Danes, recognized that a hole had been blown the ice at the north en£ of the streak although the question had been^aised when parts of a weapon chute were found frozen ipi^he ice of this area. I tramped back and ]|forth over this zoac area and saw only a jumble of ice blocks and pieces of metal^whereas Dr. Borge Fristrup, e Danish glaciologist, who arrived on Feb.l, immediately recognized that the ice at the north end of the streak was newly-frozen and ^hat the blocks office had been upended and in abnormal positions. This was the clue that led to the suspicion atkxx that the concussion from the four -weapons had blown a hole in the ice and thereupon close study of an aerial infrared photo oflthe crash spot revealed a circular pattern of fracture lines kbout feet in diamete] It was obvious to all who examined -£he streak that this haateropre^] ent [the rcoiduc ef bits and piecesjof the plane, and the JP-4 fuel with carbon particles and PUO2 refrozen into a "cruddy^1 kind of ice; the point of impact was marked by the A few heavy pieces of the plane, engine lux rotors, fisd one landing gea^tf~^ -f^gSx kilometers south of the dark streak, indicating*j£he momentur vector in the crash, and amply explaining how ^the JP-4 fuel ^ould be splashed streakwise that far ero^-the ice. Some of these large parts can be detected as black dots^at the south end of ^the streak The skin, tanks and structural sparts of the plane were literally blown ipciac&xiufKKxp&juju to^bits; few pieces larger than 2 ft. were to be seen and they had jagged, irregular, torn edges. Later in February when there was daylight, squa< of men moving shoulder to shoulder along surveyed sectors Would pickup every possible piece of metal, plastic or other debris for Istorage on*3§ase and eventual removal to the U. S. for iburial. The pieces frozen into the ice of Jthe black streak It was General Hunziker who hypothecated that the plane must ytave been close to supersonic speed in order to have flown the radar-defined course in the f time available And therefore it might have begun to shed its skin. He made ranging trips north of the point of impact in a snow-cat and did find pieces of skin with clear

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7- DAVIS: RADIODIOLOGY LABORATORY evidence of sheared-off rivets. The volume of black streak ice scraped up later came to 1. 6 x 10 which on melting gave about 3 x 10 gallons of a cruddy oil-water emulsion. The# ice of the bay proved to contain a fair amount of entrapped organic detritus, mostly of a cellulose nature, which also helped form this rather unstable emulsion. The next morning, Friday, January 26, the pattern began to be established which we followed thereafter. General Hunziker ordered a large room set aside for use by the Danish scientists; this kept them out of the classified traffic pattern although they had full acce^ to General Hunziker and his staff at all times. Also it was convenient for Dr. fiiangham and me to use this room and |it {worked out that we perfprmed the scientific liaison between the Danes and General Hunziker as well a^thew collaborators in the colleetifej^of ideas, hypotheses and data. Officially we were Scientific Advisers to General Hunziker, but Dr. Lahgham doubled as Director of Health Physics activities(J*Qiereas I w'orked with the Danes in the bflecological and medical hazards and^hat should Kofoed-Hansen quickly established himself as the scientific spokesman for the Danes; jbk it was obvious that £he possessed unusual ii^illectual qualities and experience. His normal mode of operation, we soon learned, was |to put together a tenable hypothesis ^nd then say "^?ove to me that iPm wrong. " This if there was an egocentric component in the science. I was able ^ with seme success to …