H-Bomb Armed B-52 Crash Cleanup in Greenland: "Crested Ice" 1968 US Air Force Strategic Air Command Film Report FR-818

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STRATEGIC AIR COMMAND SEMIANNUAL FILM REPORT... CRESTED ICE PROJECT

Originally a public domain film from the 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).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1968_Thule_Air_Base_B-52_crash

Wikipedia license: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

On 21 January 1968, an aircraft accident (sometimes known as the Thule affair or Thule accident... 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 B28FI thermonuclear 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 was completed. USAF Strategic Air Command "Chrome Dome" operations were discontinued immediately after the accident...

In 1995, a political scandal arose in Denmark after a report revealed the government had given tacit permission for nuclear weapons to be located in Greenland, in contravention of Denmark's 1957 nuclear-free zone policy...

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 Boeing B-52 Stratofortress bombers 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 secretly flew as part of the "Hard Head" mission (or "Thule Monitor Missions") over Thule Air Base. The objective of "Hard Head" was to maintain constant 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. The bomber crew consisted of five regular crew members, including Captain John Haug, the aircraft commander. Also... a mandatory third pilot (Major Alfred D'Mario).

Before take-off, D'Mario placed three cloth-covered foam cushions on top of a heating vent under the instructor navigator's seat in the aft section of the lower deck... Captain Haug directed co-pilot Svitenko to take his rest period. His seat was taken by the spare pilot, D'Mario. The crew was uncomfortable because of the cold, although the heater's rheostat was turned up, so D'Mario opened an engine bleed valve to draw additional hot air into the heater from the engine manifold... During the next half-hour, the cabin's temperature became uncomfortably hot, and the stowed cushions ignited. After one crew member reported smelling burning rubber, they looked for a fire. The navigator searched the lower compartment twice before discovering the fire behind a metal box. He attempted to fight it with two fire extinguishers, but could not put it out...

...directly over the lights of Thule Air Base, the four crewmen ejected, followed shortly thereafter by Haug and D'Mario. The co-pilot, Leonard Svitenko, who had given up his ejection seat when the spare pilot took over from him, sustained fatal head injuries when he attempted to bail out through one of the lower hatches.

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 thermonuclear 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...