[Granville-Hough] 2 June 2009 - Thule Wabbit

[Trustees for Granville W. Hough]

I never intended to use material from others, but I did run across this 
little story from former Air Force Capt. Ronald Fellner, Lakeland, FL, 
(page 14, “Military Officer,” June 2009). It is the sort of thing which 
happened at Thule, Greenland, which we pronounced as “Too-lee,” with 
accent on the Too. Granpa.

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Thule Wabbit

[In the 1950s at Thule Air Base, Greenland,] a baby arctic hare was 
apparently rejected by his mother and found by members of some unit…
He was named Wesley Worthington Wabbit. He would race around the halls 
of [the nurses’] quarters, following them like any dutiful mascot or 
pet… One day, while following one of his friends, he didn’t make it 
through the large freezer-type door we had in our quarters as it closed. 
His hindquarters were pinched severely [and] his rear end was paralyzed… 
The veterinarian was called upon to design a little cart to carry 
Wesley’s rear end while he motivated it with his front legs… It worked 
like a charm, and Wesley ran around it it like a NASCAR rookie.
Wesley…was a masterful ambassador for that cold, empty land. [It was the 
only home he knew.]

Comment: I will just say that the mother wabbit was probably seeking 
some vegetables in the garbage dump and encountered an arctic fox who 
was just as hungry as she was.

Radar Alert

On page 76 of the same magazine, is another story headed by: “This Air 
Force sergeant and his colleague prepare for the worst when radar 
indicates something in the water off the coast of Greenland is moving 
toward shore.” This story is from retired Lt Col Ivan L. McKinney, who 
lives in Louisiana.

Due to the worrisome environment caused by a combination of the Cold War 
and the Korean War, from 1951-52, I found myself, an Air Force sergeant, 
posted just a few hundred miles from the North Pole of Thule Air Base, 
Greenland. My job was to use ground controlled approached (GCA) radar to 
give landing instructions to friendly aircraft as they flew into the air 
base.
Thule Air Base is situated at almost 80 degrees north latitude, and 
there is total darkness 24 hours a day in the winter. I was one of only 
two supervisor GCA radar operators.
One early winter evening at about 8 pm, I was off duty in the icebox 
barracks, and my colleague sent for me, saying I was needed immediately 
at the GCA radar unit.
When I arrived at the unit, he was red-faced, breathing heavily, and 
scared to death. “Look here on the final approach scopes,” he said, “I 
believe that this blip [radar return] is a Russian submarine. They’re 
going to land a force and kill us all!”
I looked at the scopes and, sure enough, saw the blip slowly moving 
toward shore. We quickly sounded the alert to the air base group 
commander. He arrived and looked at the moving blip and directed civil 
engineering and the air police to put a big light on a truck, proceed to 
the shore area and try to determine what or who was almost ready to come 
ashore.
We had a more recent model GCA unit that had not been cleared for 
aircraft landing duties yet, but it had sharper radar. My colleague 
started it up,, and we saw three or four blips moving toward the shore. 
He started yelling that he didn’t want to die in Greenland with only a 
month to go [of his enlistment or of his tour in Thule.]
The air police truck arrived on the beach, and the light was aimed just 
off shore—on a school of whales feeding at the garbage dump and blowing 
water straight in the air. Everyone involved was just glad the whales 
weren’t Russians.

Comments: There are several comments I could make about this story, but 
then its author could be just as critical of my stories. We did indeed 
dump garbage off shore on the ice when it became strong enough to 
support a garbage truck. I doubt, however, that any whale could have 
broken through that ice to get at it. Perhaps before my time in 61/62, 
the Air Force took garbage out by barge or boat during the summer. At 
the vernal and autumnal equinoxes, the days and nights were each 12 
hours long, then they changed quite rapidly. The autumnal equinox ended 
the shipping season, and the ships hurried away so they would not be 
captured by the ice for the winter. So for such an event, as reported on 
an early winter evening, it would have to be before the ice was solid.
I never heard anyone mention whales off shore, but orcas go everywhere, 
and garbage dropped in shallow water will lie frozen until the tide and 
storms sweep it away. The whales could have been feasting on garbage 
from previous years. Then there is the problem of GCA radar detecting 
objects under water. I personally never saw it demonstrated.