to make sure everything is prepared for the morning’s flight.”
Snyder stood up and shook their hands. Dave gave the colonel a crisp salute and shook his hand as well. Snyder punched the intercom, “Sergeant, please run these gentlemen over to the Raytheon Warehouse and run our good Captain back over to the VOQ. Before you go Captain, take this back with you.” Snyder handed him a three ring binder, “That’s a little home work for you to get familiar with where you are going in the morning.”
After returning to his room and changing into his sweats, he laid across the bed. He opened up the orientation notebook and began reading about the DYE sites.
There were four DYE sites located in southern Greenland close to the Arctic Circle. DYE-1 was located on the west coast on a two thousand foot peak overlooking the Baffin Sea. DYE-4 was on the east coast on another mountain peak on the Island of Kulusuk, an extinct volcano.
The USAF also had two radar and communications stations out on the icecap. DYE-2 was built approximately one hundred miles east of Sondrestrom AB and ninety miles south of the Arctic Circle at an altitude of 7,600 feet. DYE-3 was located approximately one hundred miles east of DYE-2 and slightly south at a higher elevation of 8,600 feet.
The locations for the icecap sites were found to receive from three to four feet of snow fall each year. Since the winds were constantly blowing, at times over one hundred mph, this snow accumulation constantly formed large drifts. To overcome this potential problem, it was decided that DYE-2 and DYE-3 should be elevated approximately twenty feet above the surface of the icecap.
Eight huge I-beam columns, along with two 350 ton hydraulic jacks per column were used to lift the site above the snow. These jacks were designed to level the building whenever it became necessary due to different rates of settlement between the beams. The “big eyes” were forty feet long by four feet wide by five feet high and weighed fifteen tons each.
The icecap sites were built like offshore oil platforms, similar to the Texas Towers. They were 125 feet tall with five stories of support equipment, storage, and crew accommodations. The radome was fifty feet tall. The sites encompassed 45,000 square feet and weighed over five million pounds each.
Each site was manned by a twelve to eighteen man crew. Dave thought to himself, “This is the real Ice Station Zebra. Just like Dreamland at Area 51, it did exist.” He read on with fascination.
Each site was built by flying in the components one piece at a time on specially equipped C-130 Hercules cargo planes. Thousands of flights were required to haul all the pieces to the top of the icecap. Over 127,000 tons of steel and equipment were landed on the icecap.
Dave closed the book and pondered a thought of how many billions must have been spent up here. “Wow, your tax dollars at work.” He flipped off the light and tucked in for the night. He felt like a kid waiting for Christmas morning.
CHAPTER 4
The Ice Station DYE-3
The next morning Dave had breakfast at the Air Base dining hall with Brad Johnson, the Chief Engineer for the contractor running the DYE sites. He drove them over to Base Operations hangar. It was a balmy 28°F this morning. On the ramp were two C-130 Hercules cargo planes. These four engine turboprops were the workhorses of the Air Force. These planes belonged to the 109th ANG Squadron based in Schenectady, New York. They were proudly known as the Raven Squadron and nicknamed the Firebirds. These Hercules were part of a select few that were outfitted specifically for operations on the ice. They were fitted with several million dollars worth of retractable Teflon coated skis that allowed them to operate on both paved runways and the icecap. The nose ski was ten feet long by six feet wide, while the main skis were twenty feet long by six feet wide. Each ski weighed approximately a ton.
The 109th is the only military unit in the world that flies ski-equipped C-130s. These cargo planes can carry 30,000 pounds for over 500 miles at 275 mph.
The Greenland icecap is a foreboding place. It is a dome of ice twice the area of Texas. The ice is about 11,000 feet thick at the center of the world’s largest island. It is completely ringed with mountains with hundreds of fjords and glaciers making their way through them out to the Atlantic Ocean on the east coast and Baffin Bay on the west coast. The weight of the ice actually suppresses the bedrock to below sea level.
Dave took time to read an article posted on the bulletin board concerning the icecap. He found the facts and figures fascinating:
The Greenland icecap contains one eighth of the total global ice mass. The total ice mass on Earth is 125 million cubic miles; Antarctica has 112 million cubic miles; Greenland 11.5 million cubic miles.
The average height of the Greenland icecap is 7,000 feet above sea level with 65 percent of the area above 6500 feet. That is why Greenland deserves the name of most extreme highland in the world.
Lowest recorded temperature: -94º F (1953 Station Northice). Mean annual temperature: -22º F: So the Greenland icecap is without any doubt the coldest place in the northern hemisphere, even colder than the North Pole.
Because the snow surface reflects most of the sunlight, the temperature is lowest near the snow and increases in upper air levels. This is an exceptional situation because usually temperature decreases in higher air levels. The dome structure of the icecap causes cold air to flow constantly to lower areas at the edges. So, crossing the icecap, you will always experience head wind until the top of the icecap and then backwind.
Above the seas around Greenland, the air is less cold and thus creates a substantial difference in temperature and air pressure between the coast and the inland. This can cause terrible storms.
At present the maximum thickness of the icecap is 10,500 to 11,000 feet. If the entire icecap should melt (which is extremely unlikely), the sea surface worldwide would rise 20 to 25 feet!
The planes were being prepared and loaded with the supplies and ice drilling equipment. Timken and Rapp were working with the crew chiefs to get them loaded properly. He was met at Base Ops by Major Rick Boop. Dave gave Major Boop a crisp salute. Boop returned it and welcomed him to the Ravens’ Nest.
Boop grinned a big smile and said with a southern drawl, “Good morning, I’m the mission commander for your flight out to DYE-3 this morning. Kid, you’re in for the ride of your life. People would fork over a year’s pay to do what you are about to do. Not many people have been to where you’re about to go. DYE-3 does exist. Unlike Dreamland it can be found on any air chart. Its coordinates are 65 degrees, 10 minutes, 57 seconds north latitude by 43 degrees, 49 minutes, 10 seconds, west longitude. Its code name is Sob Story. Don’t know why. To this day, the history behind this name is lost. Might have been some random string of names put together by some computer in the basement of the Pentagon. Anyway, it is 250 miles inland at an elevation of nearly 9,000 feet above sea level.”
Boop continued with the mission brief and gave Dave a Flight Safety briefing. He familiarized him with
