[Granville-Hough] 29 Nov 2009 - Thule Airbase

[Trustees for Granville W. Hough]

Date: Sun, 29 Nov 2009 07:53:44 -0800
From: Granville W Hough <gwhough at oakapple.net>
Subject: The Thule Airbase - 29 Nov 2009

The day here was densely foggy (2 December 2008)in the morning and some
hazy sunshine late in the day, so I gave some thought to the Thule
Airbase and its various odd-ball groups of people.
    The reason for its being was that it gave early warning to missile
attack from the Soviet Union with its BMEWS site, a huge radar which was
out a few miles from the main base.  It was on an inlet where you could
see the glaciers calving and dropping into the bay.  Then to protect the
radar, we had the Air Force fighters, then to protect the base when the
fighters were occupied we had the Nike Hercules Air Defense Group, with
nuclear warheads.
    We had other interesting attachments such as the Army Signal Corps
sound-wave detection system for nuclear detonations anywhere in the
world.  I had worked with Signal Corps on an adaptation of this system
to the sound-wave frequency of  missile and space-ship lift-off firings,
but I had no clearance for the Thule Signal Corps operations.
    Then we had an Army Engineer station out on the icecap but it was a
little city underneath the ice, entirely.  This is where the ice cores
were drilled which were then taken, frozen, back to the research labs in
the U. S. These cores gave us what we know about the earth's climate
back at least 10,000 years.  They did all kinds of other cold-weather
research there.  I got a tour of the place in the daylight and we went
out by helicopter.  While we were going through the tunnels to all the
operations, the helicopter pilot sat in his machine with the engine
running.  He was terrified that the engine would fail and that it would
freeze.
    Then we had the usual Air Force support groups for maintaining
runways, fighter planes, Post Exchanges, passenger operations daily back
to New Jersey, and other services.  We also had the port operations, and
the Coast Guard, with its icebreakers, was essential for bringing the
convoys into port and getting them out.  The port could function six
weeks for ship arrivals and two more weeks for getting them out.
    The Thule operation was terribly expensive.  All the fresh food was
flown in, but the canned goods and drinks were brought in by ship during
the summer six weeks.  Sometimes we would have weather conditions so
severe there could be no flights.  Then we lived on canned goods.  We
had water, electricity, sewage, and warm barracks.
My memory fails me on how we had water supplies.  I think we had a dam
which caught the summer melt from the icecap, then we had to keep it
thawed and flowing through the pipeline to the air base distribution
system.  I once stopped to look at the water pipeline, and it had its
electrical heaters attached and going year in, year out.  When I saw a
picture of the Alaska oil pipeline, I knew it was a scaled up version of
our Thule water line.  We were careful with our water, but we had plenty
for keeping clean and healthy.
    I think that the Air Base originally had local generators for
electricity, but these were expensive and hard to maintain.  The Air
Force learned there was a city in Southern Florida which was beyond the
power lines and had a electricity generating ship.  When the power lines
finally reached this town, the ship was advertised for sale.  The Air
Force bought it and towed it to Thule, where it became our source of
electricity.  A French-speaking Belgian was the operating engineer, and
I got acquainted with him.  We had a power system with regular lights
for our barracks and work places, all dependent on the generating ship.
If it failed, we were dependent on the back-up generators.  The big
problem for all electricity was that of grounding.  You had great
difficulty grounding anything in permafrost, and I do not know how the
problems were resolved.  The Engineering village under the ice cap had
special difficulties.
    The great problems we had with our barracks were phase storms and
fire.  The buildings were all a standard size, and about 3 feet above
the ground.  Each one had been built on pilings placed in the
permafrost.  The 3 feet of air space prevented the permafrost from
melting from the building heat. (There were examples of early buildings
built on the ground, and the permafrost melted and contorted the
building so that it soon became unusable.)  Each building was far enough
from the next that one could burn without setting the others on fire.
Each barracks was connected to the next one  with a phase-rope, actually
a ship hawser which would not break with several people hanging on to
it.  During a phase-storm, the blowing ice crystal from the ice cap
created a whiteout, so you could not see your own hands on the phase
rope.  You just pulled your way against the wind until you got to the
safety of the next building.
    Fire could start from any number of sources, but when it got into
the attic insulation, the building was a goner.  I was the Artillery
Group Fire Marshall, and I was the first one not to lose at least one
building.  I was lucky, and I had help from people with experience in
insulation fires.
    So we had food, shelter, electricity, and water; and we also has
sewage, human wastes of all kinds.  How did we handle sewage in a land
where nothing ever decays but just thaws a bit in the summer, then
freezes for the rest of the year.  First, we had to keep it warm until
the big tankers came around to the collecting points.  (Those of us who
had been in Korea called them "honey wagons.") They were heated  trucks,
and I suppose they took the hot sewage to  disposal points  where there
could be no drainage into the water supply, then  turned it loose.  I
once had some business in a building where the odor indicated the honey
wagon had just visited.  In the darkness I could not see that the airman
had spilled some of the cargo.  It was slippery stuff, and I took the
hardest fall I ever had in Thule.  Everyone knew I had been working with
human sewage until I could get to my barracks and change clothes.  I had
to clean the parka by hand as I had no extra.  In winter the honey wagon
airmen  could have driven out on the ocean and dumped their load there
where it would go down  when the ocean thawed.   I just was not
interested in this problem of sewerage disposal enough to follow it
through.  The Air Force was in charge of it.  I just hoped they did not
spill any more.
    The Air Base was laid out in regular streets, and in the center was a
sign with distances to all the points of interest.  I recall that we
were closer to Moscow than to Washington, DC.  The Post Exchange was
stocked with all sorts of things that would give you some sense of home,
favorite candies, drinks, etc.  You could buy name-brand tailored suits
for about half-price.
    We served there for one year.  After about six months, you got a
one-month leave. We could call our families through some sort of
hand-operated switching central in Four Corners, Newfoundland.  We had
to call about 2 am in the morning to reach families at a reasonable hour
for them.
    So this gives you some idea about Greenland in general and the Thule
Air Base in particular.  I will continue with some of my own
experiences.  Love to all, Grampa