Command and Control

“so remote that they can be ruled out completely”: Quoted in ibid.

“But suppose some important aspect of nuclear safety”: “The Nuclear Safety Problem,” T. D. Brumleve, Advanced System Research Department 5510, Sandia Corporation, Livermore Laboratory, SCL-DR-67, 1967 (SECRET/RESTRICTED DATA/declassified), p. 5.

“The nation, and indeed the world, will want to know”: Ibid., p. 5.

a B-52 was serving as the Thule monitor: The Broken Arrow at Thule has received much less attention in the United States than the one at Palomares. But the Thule accident remains of interest in Denmark because the crash not only contaminated Danish soil with plutonium but also raised questions about the behavior of the Danish government. I found two declassified documents to be especially interesting. The first is “Project Crested Ice: The Thule Nuclear Accident,” vol. 1, SAC Historical Study #113, History and Research Division, Headquarters, Strategic Air Command, April 23, 1969 (SECRET/RESTRICTED DATA/declassified), NSA. The other is “Project Crested Ice,” a special edition of USAF Nuclear Safety magazine that appeared in 1970. The latter has many photographs that show the challenge of decontaminating a large area in the Arctic. A number of recent investigations by Danish authors were also useful: “The Marshal’s Baton: There Is No Bomb, There Was No Bomb, They Were Not Looking for a Bomb,” Svend Aage Christensen, Danish Institute for International Studies, DIIS Report, 2009, No. 18., 2009; and Thorsten Borring Olesen, “Tango for Thule: The Dilemmas and Limits of the ‘Neither Confirm Nor Deny’ Doctrine in Danish-American Relations, 1957–1968,” Journal of Cold War Studies, vol. 13, no. 2 (Spring 2011), pp. 116–47. And I learned much from the documents in Maggelet and Oskins, Broken Arrow, Volume II, pp. 125–50.

three cloth-covered, foam-rubber cushions: For details of the accident and the rescue, see “Crested Ice: The Thule Nuclear Accident,” pp. 5–8; “The Flight of Hobo 28,” in USAF NUCLEAR SAFETY, special edition, vol. 65 (part 2), no. 1 (JAN/FEB/MAR 1970), pp. 2–4; and Neil Sheehan, “Pilot Says Fire Forced Crew to Quit B-52 in Arctic,” New York Times, January 28, 1968; and Alfred J. D’Amario, Hangar Flying (Bloomington, IN: Author House, 2008), pp. 233–54. D’Amario served as a copilot on the flight, and he vividly describes what it was like to bail out of a burning B-52 over the Arctic.

about 428 degrees Fahrenheit: Cited in “Crested Ice: The Thule Nuclear Accident,” p. 7.

temperature… was -23 degrees Fahrenheit: Cited in G. S. Dresser, “Host Base Support,” in USAF Nuclear Safety, p. 25.

windchill made it feel like -44: The wind was blowing at 9 knots (10.3 miles per hour); the temperature was –23 degrees Fahrenheit; and according to a windchill chart compiled by the National Weather Service, that means the windchill was roughly –44 degrees Fahrenheit. See “Host Base Support,” p. 25.

SAC headquarters was notified, for the first time, about the fire: Ibid., p. 25.

uncovered skin could become frostbitten within two: Ibid.

But he later worked as a postmaster in Maine: See Keith Edwards, “Sons Recall Father’s Story of Survival in Greenland after SAC Bomber Crash,” Kennebec Journal, March 17, 2010.

The radioactive waste from Thule filled 147 freight cars: Cited in Leonard J. Otten, “Removal of Debris from Thule,” in USAF Nuclear Safety, p. 90.

claims that an entire hydrogen bomb had been lost: Those claims are convincingly refuted by “The Marshal’s Baton. There Is No Bomb, There was No Bomb, They were Not Looking for a Bomb.”

The B-52… had been on a “training flight”: Quoted in Thomas O’Toole, “4 H-Bombs Lost as B-52 Crashes,” Washington Post and Times Herald, January 23, 1968.

A handful of people within the Danish government: See Olesen, “Tango for Thule,” pp. 123–31.

stored in secret underground bunkers at Thule as early as 1955: In a recent article for the base newsletter — the Thule Times, published by the Air Force Space Command — a retired lieutenant colonel, Ted A. Morris, described a trip to Greenland in May 1955. Morris and his crew flew there in a B-36 bomber, landed, and practiced the loading of a “live war reserve Mk 17” hydrogen bomb that had been stored at the base. The practice of flying to Thule without nuclear weapons and picking them up there seems to have been routine. “How about all those underground ammo bunkers?” Adams wrote. “Maybe you thought they were there for the Greenlanders to use instead of igloos.” See Ted A. Adams, “Strategic Air Command at the Top of the World,” Thule Times, November 1, 2001.

antiaircraft missiles with atomic warheads were later placed at Thule: See Norris, Arkin, and Burr, “Where They Were,” p. 32.

Walske, was concerned about the risks of nuclear accidents: Bill Stevens spoke to me about Walske’s interest in weapon safety. At the time, Walske also served as the head of the Military Liaison Committee to the Atomic Energy Commission. See Stevens, “Origins and Evolution of S2C,” p. 85.