{"id":20027154,"date":"2026-09-04T10:35:56","date_gmt":"2026-09-04T08:35:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/migflug.com\/afterburner\/thule-1968-b-52-crash-broken-arrow-project-crested-ice\/"},"modified":"2026-09-04T10:36:46","modified_gmt":"2026-09-04T08:36:46","slug":"thule-1968-b-52-crash-broken-arrow-project-crested-ice","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/migflug.com\/afterburner\/de\/thule-1968-b-52-crash-broken-arrow-project-crested-ice\/","title":{"rendered":"Thule 1968: Four Hydrogen Bombs on the Greenland Ice"},"content":{"rendered":"<style>.et_pb_title_container h1.entry-title { padding-top: 40px !important; }<\/style>\r\n\r\n<p>Somebody put four foam cushions on a heating vent.<\/p>\r\n\r\n<p>That is where it starts. Not with a missile, not with a Soviet fighter, not with a catastrophic structural failure. Three cloth-covered cushions stowed on a hot-air outlet under a seat before take-off, and a fourth pushed under the seat once airborne, on a B-52 carrying four hydrogen bombs over the Arctic.<\/p>\r\n\r\n<p>Six hours later that aircraft hit the sea ice of North Star Bay at a shallow angle, seven and a half miles from Thule Air Base in Greenland, and the conventional explosives in all four weapons went off.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n<div style=\"background:#f5f5f5;padding:20px 24px;margin:26px 0;border-left:4px solid #5C91FF\"><p style=\"margin:0 0 10px;font-weight:700;font-size:17px;color:#0d1117\">Quick Facts<\/p><table style=\"width:100%;border-collapse:collapse;font-size:15px\"><tr><td style=\"padding:5px 12px 5px 0;color:#555;vertical-align:top;width:38%\"><strong>Date<\/strong><\/td><td style=\"padding:5px 0;color:#222\">21 January 1968<\/td><\/tr><tr><td style=\"padding:5px 12px 5px 0;color:#555;vertical-align:top;width:38%\"><strong>Aircraft<\/strong><\/td><td style=\"padding:5px 0;color:#222\">Boeing B-52G Stratofortress, serial 58-0188, callsign HOBO 28<\/td><\/tr><tr><td style=\"padding:5px 12px 5px 0;color:#555;vertical-align:top;width:38%\"><strong>Unit<\/strong><\/td><td style=\"padding:5px 0;color:#222\">380th Strategic Bomb Wing, Plattsburgh AFB, New York<\/td><\/tr><tr><td style=\"padding:5px 12px 5px 0;color:#555;vertical-align:top;width:38%\"><strong>Mission<\/strong><\/td><td style=\"padding:5px 0;color:#222\">Operation Chrome Dome airborne alert, Hard Head monitoring of the Thule BMEWS<\/td><\/tr><tr><td style=\"padding:5px 12px 5px 0;color:#555;vertical-align:top;width:38%\"><strong>Crew<\/strong><\/td><td style=\"padding:5px 0;color:#222\">7 \u2014 six ejected, one killed<\/td><\/tr><tr><td style=\"padding:5px 12px 5px 0;color:#555;vertical-align:top;width:38%\"><strong>Fatality<\/strong><\/td><td style=\"padding:5px 0;color:#222\">Co-pilot Leonard Svitenko<\/td><\/tr><tr><td style=\"padding:5px 12px 5px 0;color:#555;vertical-align:top;width:38%\"><strong>Weapons<\/strong><\/td><td style=\"padding:5px 0;color:#222\">Four B28FI thermonuclear bombs, 1.1 megatons each<\/td><\/tr><tr><td style=\"padding:5px 12px 5px 0;color:#555;vertical-align:top;width:38%\"><strong>Nuclear yield<\/strong><\/td><td style=\"padding:5px 0;color:#222\">None. Conventional high explosive detonated on impact<\/td><\/tr><tr><td style=\"padding:5px 12px 5px 0;color:#555;vertical-align:top;width:38%\"><strong>Impact site<\/strong><\/td><td style=\"padding:5px 0;color:#222\">Sea ice, North Star Bay, 7.5 miles (12.1 km) west of Thule<\/td><\/tr><tr><td style=\"padding:5px 12px 5px 0;color:#555;vertical-align:top;width:38%\"><strong>Clean-up<\/strong><\/td><td style=\"padding:5px 0;color:#222\">Project Crested Ice, 21 January to 13 September 1968<\/td><\/tr><tr><td style=\"padding:5px 12px 5px 0;color:#555;vertical-align:top;width:38%\"><strong>Personnel<\/strong><\/td><td style=\"padding:5px 0;color:#222\">Around 700 American and Danish specialists, 70-plus U.S. agencies<\/td><\/tr><tr><td style=\"padding:5px 12px 5px 0;color:#555;vertical-align:top;width:38%\"><strong>Cost<\/strong><\/td><td style=\"padding:5px 0;color:#222\">Approximately $9.4 million at 1968 values<\/td><\/tr><tr><td style=\"padding:5px 12px 5px 0;color:#555;vertical-align:top;width:38%\"><strong>Classification<\/strong><\/td><td style=\"padding:5px 0;color:#222\">Broken Arrow<\/td><\/tr><\/table><\/div>\r\n\r\n\r\n<h2 style=\"padding-top:22px\">Why there was a bomber over Greenland at all<\/h2>\r\n\r\n<p>Operation Chrome Dome started in 1960: nuclear-armed B-52s permanently in the air near Soviet borders, at its height twelve aircraft aloft at any moment. From 1961 a further, quieter task was added \u2014 the Hard Head mission, in which a bomber flew a figure-eight at 35,000 feet over Thule keeping the Ballistic Missile Early Warning System in visual contact.<\/p>\r\n\r\n<p>The logic was grim and sound. If the communications link between NORAD and Thule went dead, somebody needed to be able to say whether the radar had been destroyed by a Soviet first strike or whether a cable had simply failed. A pair of human eyes at 35,000 feet was the answer.<\/p>\r\n\r\n<p>Robert McNamara tried to cut the programme in 1966 \u2014 BMEWS was working, missiles had made bombers redundant, and it would have saved $123 million a year. SAC and the Joint Chiefs resisted, and a compromise left four bombers on alert daily. SAC quietly kept one of them dedicated to watching Thule, without telling the civilian authorities, whom it had decided did not have the need to know.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\" style=\"margin:0 0 24px;width:100%\"><img data-opt-id=522441397  fetchpriority=\"high\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"skip-lazy\" data-no-lazy=\"1\" loading=\"eager\" width=\"1024\" src=\"https:\/\/ml5psubhxdln.i.optimole.com\/cb:FBbs.d0d6\/w:auto\/h:auto\/q:mauto\/ig:avif\/https:\/\/migflug.com\/afterburner\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/4\/2026\/09\/thule-1968-b-52-gunner-rescue.jpg\" alt=\"Rescue of the B-52 gunner after the 1968 Thule crash\" style=\"width:100%;height:auto;max-width:100%;display:block\"><figcaption style=\"font-size:13px;color:#777;text-align:center;margin-top:6px;font-style:italic\">Recovering the gunner, Staff Sergeant Calvin Snapp, who ejected first, landed six miles from the base and spent 21 hours on an ice floe at around minus 31 Celsius wrapped in his own parachute. U.S. Air Force photo via Wikimedia Commons.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\r\n\r\n\r\n<h2 style=\"padding-top:22px\">Six hours, then five minutes<\/h2>\r\n\r\n<p>HOBO 28 launched from Plattsburgh with seven men aboard \u2014 five regular crew plus a substitute navigator and a mandatory third pilot, Major Alfred D\u2019Amario. It was D\u2019Amario who put the cushions on the vent.<\/p>\r\n\r\n<p>The flight was routine until an autopilot fault forced a manual air-to-air refuelling from a KC-135. An hour later the aircraft commander, Captain John Haug, sent co-pilot Leonard Svitenko down for his rest period and D\u2019Amario took his seat \u2014 and, crucially, his ejection seat.<\/p>\r\n\r\n<p>The crew were cold. D\u2019Amario opened an engine bleed valve for extra hot air. A heater malfunction meant the air arrived in the ducts barely cooled. Over about thirty minutes the cabin became uncomfortably hot, and the cushions caught fire.<\/p>\r\n\r\n<p>Somebody smelled burning rubber. The navigator searched the lower compartment twice before finding the fire behind a metal box. Two extinguishers made no difference.<\/p>\r\n\r\n<p>At 15:22, ninety miles south of Thule, Haug declared an emergency. Within five minutes the extinguishers were empty, the electrical power was gone and the cockpit was so full of smoke the pilots could not read the instruments. D\u2019Amario looked down, saw the lights of the base directly below, and the crew went out.<\/p>\r\n\r\n<p>Six ejected. Svitenko, with no seat, tried to bail out through a lower hatch and was killed by head injuries in the attempt.<\/p>\r\n\r\n<p>The empty aircraft flew on north, turned through 180 degrees, and struck the ice at 15:39.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n<div style=\"position:relative;padding-bottom:56.25%;height:0;overflow:hidden;margin:24px 0\"><iframe class=\"skip-lazy\" data-no-lazy=\"1\" loading=\"eager\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/Oh42WXrXFsM\" style=\"position:absolute;top:0;left:0;width:100%;height:100%;border:0\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/div>\r\n\r\n\r\n<p>Contemporary U.S. Air Force film of the Crested Ice clean-up operation on the ice at Thule.<\/p>\r\n\r\n<h2 style=\"padding-top:22px\">What was left<\/h2>\r\n\r\n<p>An aerial survey found six engines, a tyre and small debris on blackened ice. Wreckage was spread over an area a mile by three miles, with parts of the bomb bay two miles north of the impact point, indicating the aircraft had broken up before it hit. The ice was punched open, briefly exposing about fifty metres of open seawater. South of the impact, a patch 120 by 670 metres was black where the JP-4 had burned.<\/p>\r\n\r\n<p>The four B28FI weapons did not produce a nuclear explosion \u2014 they cannot, without the precise implosion sequence \u2014 but their conventional high explosive detonated, scattering plutonium, uranium, americium and tritium across the ice. Plutonium was later measured at up to 380 milligrams per square metre.<\/p>\r\n\r\n<p>The search for the survivors, meanwhile, was largely organised by a civilian: Jens Zinglersen, the Thule representative of the Royal Greenland Trade Department, who raised and led dog-sled teams across the ice. He was given the Air Force Exceptional Civilian Service Medal a month later.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\" style=\"margin:0 0 24px;width:100%\"><img data-opt-id=1403340858  fetchpriority=\"high\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"skip-lazy\" data-no-lazy=\"1\" loading=\"eager\" width=\"1024\" src=\"https:\/\/ml5psubhxdln.i.optimole.com\/cb:UHhP.d0d5\/w:auto\/h:auto\/q:mauto\/ig:avif\/https:\/\/migflug.com\/afterburner\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/4\/2026\/09\/camp-hunziker-project-crested-ice-thule-1968.jpg\" alt=\"Camp Hunziker, the base camp for Project Crested Ice at Thule in 1968\" style=\"width:100%;height:auto;max-width:100%;display:block\"><figcaption style=\"font-size:13px;color:#777;text-align:center;margin-top:6px;font-style:italic\">Camp Hunziker, thrown up on the ice beside the crash site and named for the general commanding the clean-up. Average temperature during the operation was about minus 40; at times it reached minus 60, with winds up to 89 mph. U.S. Air Force photo via Wikimedia Commons.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\r\n\r\n\r\n<h2 style=\"padding-top:22px\">Dr. Freezelove<\/h2>\r\n\r\n<p>The clean-up was called Project Crested Ice. Everybody on it called it Dr. Freezelove.<\/p>\r\n\r\n<p>It was commanded by USAF general Richard Overton Hunziker, and the camp built on the ice beside the wreckage was named after him. Arctic night lasted until 14 February; operators carried battery packs inside their coats to stop them freezing. A \u201czero line\u201d marking the contaminated area was established within four days, and two ice roads were cut back to the base, the second because the first had fatigued the ice.<\/p>\r\n\r\n<p>The Danish government made two demands that shaped everything: the blackened area had to be physically removed, and no nuclear material was to remain in Greenland. So graders scraped up contaminated snow and ice, it was boxed, hauled to a \u201cTank Farm\u201d near the base, and sealed into steel tanks for shipping \u2014 weapons debris to the Pantex plant in Texas, the tanks to Savannah River in South Carolina.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\" style=\"margin:0 0 24px;width:100%\"><img data-opt-id=862358048  decoding=\"async\" class=\"skip-lazy\" data-no-lazy=\"1\" loading=\"eager\" width=\"1024\" src=\"https:\/\/ml5psubhxdln.i.optimole.com\/cb:UHhP.d0d5\/w:auto\/h:auto\/q:mauto\/ig:avif\/https:\/\/migflug.com\/afterburner\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/4\/2026\/09\/project-crested-ice-tank-loading-thule-1968.jpg\" alt=\"Loading contaminated material into steel tanks during Project Crested Ice\" style=\"width:100%;height:auto;max-width:100%;display:block\"><figcaption style=\"font-size:13px;color:#777;text-align:center;margin-top:6px;font-style:italic\">Loading tanks at Thule. More than 550,000 US gallons of contaminated liquid and thirty tanks of other material were shipped to the United States. U.S. Air Force photo via Wikimedia Commons.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\r\n\r\n\r\n<p>Hunziker reported that 93 percent of the contaminated material had been removed. More than 550,000 US gallons of contaminated liquid and thirty tanks of miscellaneous material went south. The last tank was loaded onto a ship on 13 September 1968.<\/p>\r\n\r\n<h2 style=\"padding-top:22px\">The bomb that may or may not be down there<\/h2>\r\n\r\n<p>This is the part that has never quite closed. Recovery on the ice produced four bomb reservoirs, one nearly intact secondary stage, and parts amounting to two more secondaries. Parts equalling one secondary were never accounted for.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n<div style=\"background:#f8f9fa;border-left:4px solid #5C91FF;padding:20px 22px;margin:18px 0 24px;font-size:16px;line-height:1.7;display:flex;gap:20px;align-items:flex-start\"><div><em>&ldquo;An analysis by the AEC of the recovered secondary components indicates recovery of 85 percent of the uranium and 94 percent, by weight, of three secondaries. No parts of the fourth secondary have been identified.&rdquo;<\/em><div style=\"margin-top:10px;font-size:14px;color:#555\"><strong>U.S. government report, July 1968<\/strong> &mdash; on the accounting for the four weapons, quoted in declassified documents<\/div><\/div><\/div>\r\n\r\n\r\n<p>In August 1968 a Star III mini-submarine was sent to look for what remained on the seabed, specifically fissile material. It suffered technical problems and the whole debris field was never searched. A contemporary document instructed that the true purpose be handled carefully: for discussion with the Danes, it said, the operation should be referred to as a survey of the bottom under the impact point.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n<div style=\"background:#f8f9fa;border-left:4px solid #d32f2f;padding:20px 22px;margin:18px 0 24px;font-size:16px;line-height:1.7;display:flex;gap:20px;align-items:flex-start\"><div><em>&ldquo;There was disappointment in what you might call a failure to return all of the components ... it would be very difficult for anyone else to recover classified pieces if we couldn\u2019t find them.&rdquo;<\/em><div style=\"margin-top:10px;font-size:14px;color:#555\"><strong>William H. Chambers<\/strong> &mdash; former Los Alamos nuclear weapons designer who led a nuclear accident team including Thule, quoted by the BBC<\/div><\/div><\/div>\r\n\r\n\r\n<p>In 2008 the BBC published documents obtained under the U.S. Freedom of Information Act suggesting investigators had realised within weeks that only three weapons could be fully accounted for. In 2009 the Danish Institute for International Studies compared those documents with an earlier Department of Energy release and concluded the opposite: there was no missing bomb, and the underwater search had been for the uranium-235 core of a secondary. That remains the official Danish position.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n<div style=\"position:relative;padding-bottom:56.25%;height:0;overflow:hidden;margin:24px 0\"><iframe class=\"skip-lazy\" data-no-lazy=\"1\" loading=\"eager\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/7BJdWDmAw3s\" style=\"position:absolute;top:0;left:0;width:100%;height:100%;border:0\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/div>\r\n\r\n\r\n<p>The Thule accident and its long political afterlife, told in full.<\/p>\r\n\r\n<h2 style=\"padding-top:22px\">Thulegate<\/h2>\r\n\r\n<p>Denmark had been a declared nuclear-free country since 1957. A nuclear-armed American bomber crashing onto Danish territory was therefore not only an accident but a constitutional problem, and at the time both governments said the aircraft had diverted to Thule in a one-off emergency.<\/p>\r\n\r\n<p>Documents declassified in the 1990s showed that was untrue: nuclear-armed flights over Greenland were routine. The 1995 scandal was named Thulegate. A Danish Institute of International Affairs report published in January 1997 concluded that the United States had acted in good faith \u2014 and laid the blame on Prime Minister H. C. Hansen, who in a 1957 letter noted that the question of \u201csupplies of munition of a special kind\u201d had not been raised and that he had nothing further to add. The report read that as a deliberate green light.<\/p>\r\n\r\n<p>The same report confirmed the United States had stored nuclear weapons in Greenland until 1965, and revealed Project Iceworm, a plan to put as many as 600 nuclear missiles under the ice cap.<\/p>\r\n\r\n<p>Then there are the Danish clean-up workers. A 1995 survey found 410 cancer deaths in a sample of 1,500. A Danish study found cancer incidence roughly 40 percent higher among Crested Ice workers than among comparable Thule workers, and about 50 percent higher than the general population, without being able to attribute it to radiation. Nearly 200 former workers sued the United States in 1987; they lost, but forced the release of hundreds of classified documents, which revealed that American personnel \u2014 probably more exposed than the Danes \u2014 had never been medically monitored at all. In 1995 the Danish government paid 1,700 workers 50,000 kroner each.<\/p>\r\n\r\n<h2 style=\"padding-top:22px\">What changed<\/h2>\r\n\r\n<p>Chrome Dome ended immediately. Coming two years after Palomares, where another B-52 had scattered hydrogen bombs over Spain, airborne alert had become politically and operationally impossible to justify.<\/p>\r\n\r\n<p>Weapons design changed too. Investigators concluded the high explosive in the bombs was not chemically stable enough to survive an aircraft accident, and that the safety circuits became unreliable in a fire. Lawrence Livermore developed the \u201cSusan Test\u201d to simulate crash forces on explosives; by 1979 Los Alamos had produced insensitive high explosive. One physicist later suggested the Palomares and Thule weapons probably would not have detonated at all had IHE existed.<\/p>\r\n\r\n<p>And there is one more thing worth sitting with. The political scientist Scott Sagan pointed out that HOBO 28 came down in Baffin Bay. Had it come down on the BMEWS array instead, NORAD would have seen the radar go silent and the monitoring aircraft go silent at the same instant, with no nuclear detonation detected \u2014 which is precisely what a surprise conventional attack on Thule would have looked like.<\/p>\r\n\r\n<p>A satellite link that would have resolved the ambiguity was not installed until 1974.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n<div style=\"position:relative;padding-bottom:56.25%;height:0;overflow:hidden;margin:24px 0\"><iframe class=\"skip-lazy\" data-no-lazy=\"1\" loading=\"eager\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/rZjCCZrYUz4\" style=\"position:absolute;top:0;left:0;width:100%;height:100%;border:0\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/div>\r\n\r\n\r\n<p>A short account of the Broken Arrow at Thule and what was recovered from the ice.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n<style>.mfq{margin:34px 0 8px}.mfq h2{font:26px\/1.3 \"Gilroy semiBold\",Helvetica,Arial,sans-serif;color:#0d1117;padding-top:22px;margin:0 0 6px}.mfq .qa details{border-top:1px solid #5C91FF;margin:0;padding:0}.mfq .qa details:last-of-type{border-bottom:1px solid #e2e7ee}.mfq .qa summary{cursor:pointer;list-style:none;display:flex;justify-content:space-between;align-items:center;gap:16px;padding:22px 26px;font:18px\/1.7 \"Gilroy semiBold\",Helvetica,Arial,sans-serif;color:#0d1117}.mfq .qa summary::-webkit-details-marker{display:none}.mfq .qa summary::after{content:\"+\";font:24px Helvetica,sans-serif;color:#3568e0;flex:0 0 auto}.mfq .qa details[open] summary::after{content:\"\\2013\"}.mfq .qa details:hover summary{color:#3568e0}.mfq .qa .a{font:16px\/1.7 \"Gilroy regular\",Helvetica,Arial,sans-serif;color:#454e5e;padding:0 26px 24px}.mfq .qa .a a{color:#3568e0}@media(max-width:680px){.mfq .qa summary{padding:18px 14px;font-size:17px}.mfq .qa .a{padding:0 14px 20px}}<\/style>\r\n\r\n\r\n<section class=\"mfq\"><h2>Frequently Asked Questions<\/h2><div class=\"qa\"><details open><summary>What happened at Thule in January 1968?<\/summary><div class=\"a\">On 21 January 1968 a U.S. Air Force B-52G Stratofortress, serial 58-0188, callsign HOBO 28, caught fire in the cabin during a nuclear alert mission and crashed onto the sea ice of North Star Bay about 7.5 miles west of Thule Air Base in Greenland. Six of the seven crew ejected; the co-pilot was killed. All four thermonuclear bombs aboard were destroyed, scattering radioactive material across the ice.<\/div><\/details><details><summary>What caused the Thule B-52 crash?<\/summary><div class=\"a\">A cabin fire. Before take-off a spare pilot stowed three cloth-covered foam cushions on a heating vent under a seat, with a fourth added shortly after departure. When the crew became cold, an engine bleed valve was opened to draw additional hot air, and a heater malfunction meant the air barely cooled before reaching the cabin. Within about half an hour the cushions ignited. Two extinguishers failed to put the fire out and the aircraft lost electrical power.<\/div><\/details><details><summary>Did the nuclear weapons at Thule explode?<\/summary><div class=\"a\">Not as nuclear weapons. The four B28FI bombs, each rated at 1.1 megatons, had their conventional high-explosive components detonate on impact, dispersing plutonium, uranium, americium and tritium across the ice in the manner of a dirty bomb. There was no nuclear yield.<\/div><\/details><details><summary>Was a nuclear weapon left behind at Thule?<\/summary><div class=\"a\">It is contested. Recovery accounted for four bomb reservoirs, one nearly intact secondary stage and parts equalling two more, with parts equalling one secondary unaccounted for. A July 1968 report said 85 percent of the uranium and 94 percent by weight of three secondaries were recovered and that no parts of the fourth had been identified. A 2008 BBC report based on declassified documents suggested a weapon component was never found; a 2009 Danish Institute for International Studies study concluded there was no missing bomb, and that the underwater search was for the uranium-235 of a secondary\u2019s fissile core.<\/div><\/details><details><summary>What was Project Crested Ice?<\/summary><div class=\"a\">The joint American-Danish clean-up of the crash site, informally nicknamed \u201cDr. Freezelove.\u201d Around 700 specialists and more than 70 U.S. government agencies worked for nine months in temperatures averaging minus 40 degrees and occasionally reaching minus 60, collecting contaminated ice, snow and debris into steel tanks for shipping to the United States. It ended on 13 September 1968 and cost an estimated $9.4 million at the time.<\/div><\/details><details><summary>Who died in the Thule crash?<\/summary><div class=\"a\">Co-pilot Leonard Svitenko. He had given up his ejection seat to a spare pilot earlier in the flight and sustained fatal head injuries attempting to bail out through a lower hatch. The other six crew ejected. The gunner, Staff Sergeant Calvin Snapp, landed about six miles from the base and spent 21 hours on an ice floe in minus 31 degrees Celsius, wrapped in his parachute, before he was found.<\/div><\/details><details><summary>What was Operation Chrome Dome?<\/summary><div class=\"a\">A Strategic Air Command programme begun in 1960 that kept nuclear-armed B-52s continuously airborne near Soviet borders \u2014 at its height, twelve bombers aloft at all times. From 1961 SAC also flew a \u201cHard Head\u201d mission over Thule to keep visual watch on the Ballistic Missile Early Warning System. Airborne alert was discontinued immediately after the Thule crash.<\/div><\/details><details><summary>Why was the Thule crash a political scandal in Denmark?<\/summary><div class=\"a\">Because Denmark had a nuclear-free policy dating from 1957, and a B-52 with four hydrogen bombs had just crashed on Danish territory. Documents declassified in the 1990s showed the flights were routine rather than an emergency diversion, producing the 1995 scandal known as Thulegate. A 1997 Danish Institute of International Affairs report found that Prime Minister H. C. Hansen had, in a 1957 letter, deliberately left the question of \u201csupplies of munition of a special kind\u201d open \u2014 in effect tacitly permitting American nuclear weapons at Thule.<\/div><\/details><\/div><\/section>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@type\":\"FAQPage\",\"mainEntity\":[{\"@type\":\"Question\",\"name\":\"What happened at Thule in January 1968?\",\"acceptedAnswer\":{\"@type\":\"Answer\",\"text\":\"On 21 January 1968 a U.S. Air Force B-52G Stratofortress, serial 58-0188, callsign HOBO 28, caught fire in the cabin during a nuclear alert mission and crashed onto the sea ice of North Star Bay about 7.5 miles west of Thule Air Base in Greenland. Six of the seven crew ejected; the co-pilot was killed. All four thermonuclear bombs aboard were destroyed, scattering radioactive material across the ice.\"}},{\"@type\":\"Question\",\"name\":\"What caused the Thule B-52 crash?\",\"acceptedAnswer\":{\"@type\":\"Answer\",\"text\":\"A cabin fire. Before take-off a spare pilot stowed three cloth-covered foam cushions on a heating vent under a seat, with a fourth added shortly after departure. When the crew became cold, an engine bleed valve was opened to draw additional hot air, and a heater malfunction meant the air barely cooled before reaching the cabin. Within about half an hour the cushions ignited. Two extinguishers failed to put the fire out and the aircraft lost electrical power.\"}},{\"@type\":\"Question\",\"name\":\"Did the nuclear weapons at Thule explode?\",\"acceptedAnswer\":{\"@type\":\"Answer\",\"text\":\"Not as nuclear weapons. The four B28FI bombs, each rated at 1.1 megatons, had their conventional high-explosive components detonate on impact, dispersing plutonium, uranium, americium and tritium across the ice in the manner of a dirty bomb. There was no nuclear yield.\"}},{\"@type\":\"Question\",\"name\":\"Was a nuclear weapon left behind at Thule?\",\"acceptedAnswer\":{\"@type\":\"Answer\",\"text\":\"It is contested. Recovery accounted for four bomb reservoirs, one nearly intact secondary stage and parts equalling two more, with parts equalling one secondary unaccounted for. A July 1968 report said 85 percent of the uranium and 94 percent by weight of three secondaries were recovered and that no parts of the fourth had been identified. A 2008 BBC report based on declassified documents suggested a weapon component was never found; a 2009 Danish Institute for International Studies study concluded there was no missing bomb, and that the underwater search was for the uranium-235 of a secondary\u2019s fissile core.\"}},{\"@type\":\"Question\",\"name\":\"What was Project Crested Ice?\",\"acceptedAnswer\":{\"@type\":\"Answer\",\"text\":\"The joint American-Danish clean-up of the crash site, informally nicknamed \u201cDr. Freezelove.\u201d Around 700 specialists and more than 70 U.S. government agencies worked for nine months in temperatures averaging minus 40 degrees and occasionally reaching minus 60, collecting contaminated ice, snow and debris into steel tanks for shipping to the United States. It ended on 13 September 1968 and cost an estimated $9.4 million at the time.\"}},{\"@type\":\"Question\",\"name\":\"Who died in the Thule crash?\",\"acceptedAnswer\":{\"@type\":\"Answer\",\"text\":\"Co-pilot Leonard Svitenko. He had given up his ejection seat to a spare pilot earlier in the flight and sustained fatal head injuries attempting to bail out through a lower hatch. The other six crew ejected. The gunner, Staff Sergeant Calvin Snapp, landed about six miles from the base and spent 21 hours on an ice floe in minus 31 degrees Celsius, wrapped in his parachute, before he was found.\"}},{\"@type\":\"Question\",\"name\":\"What was Operation Chrome Dome?\",\"acceptedAnswer\":{\"@type\":\"Answer\",\"text\":\"A Strategic Air Command programme begun in 1960 that kept nuclear-armed B-52s continuously airborne near Soviet borders \u2014 at its height, twelve bombers aloft at all times. From 1961 SAC also flew a \u201cHard Head\u201d mission over Thule to keep visual watch on the Ballistic Missile Early Warning System. Airborne alert was discontinued immediately after the Thule crash.\"}},{\"@type\":\"Question\",\"name\":\"Why was the Thule crash a political scandal in Denmark?\",\"acceptedAnswer\":{\"@type\":\"Answer\",\"text\":\"Because Denmark had a nuclear-free policy dating from 1957, and a B-52 with four hydrogen bombs had just crashed on Danish territory. Documents declassified in the 1990s showed the flights were routine rather than an emergency diversion, producing the 1995 scandal known as Thulegate. A 1997 Danish Institute of International Affairs report found that Prime Minister H. C. Hansen had, in a 1957 letter, deliberately left the question of \u201csupplies of munition of a special kind\u201d open \u2014 in effect tacitly permitting American nuclear weapons at Thule.\"}}]}<\/script><p><em>Sources: Wikipedia (1968 Thule Air Base B-52 crash), Danish Institute of International Affairs (DUPI) 1997 report, Danish Institute for International Studies 2009 report, BBC, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, U.S. Air Force \/ Wikimedia Commons.<\/em><\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n<div style=\"background:#f0f4ff;border-left:4px solid #5C91FF;padding:16px 20px;margin:32px 0 8px\"><p style=\"margin:0 0 8px;font-weight:600;color:#333\">Related Posts<\/p><p style=\"margin:4px 0\"><a href=\"https:\/\/migflug.com\/afterburner\/palomares-1966-b-52-hydrogen-bombs-spain\/\">Palomares: The Day Four H-Bombs Fell on Spain<\/a><\/p><p style=\"margin:4px 0\"><a href=\"https:\/\/migflug.com\/afterburner\/b-52-stratofortress-designed-weekend-hotel-van-cleve-1948\/\">The B-52 Was Designed in a Hotel Room Over One Weekend<\/a><\/p><p style=\"margin:4px 0\"><a href=\"https:\/\/migflug.com\/afterburner\/rb-47-shootdown-barents-sea-1960-lubyanka\/\">Shot Down Over the Barents, Held in Lubyanka<\/a><\/p><\/div>\r\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A cabin fire started by foam cushions on a heating vent put a B-52 with four hydrogen bombs onto the sea ice near Thule in January 1968. The clean-up took nine months and the politics took thirty years.<\/p>","protected":false},"author":27,"featured_media":20026680,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"editor_notices":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[666,664],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-20027154","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-history-and-legends","category-military-aviation"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v28.4 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Thule B-52 Crash: Hydrogen Bombs on the Greenland Ice | MiGFlug<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"The 1968 Thule B-52 crash put four hydrogen bombs onto the sea ice off Greenland. 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