USA dropped nukes on Greenland
An interactive cartographic reconstruction of the 1968 Thule Air Base accident. An emergency in-flight fire forced a USAF B-52G bomber carrying four B28FI thermonuclear weapons to crash onto the frozen sea ice of North Star Bay, Greenland.
Incident Sites & Strategic Outposts
6 Key Locations • North Star Bay, GreenlandThe Thule Air Base Accident Narrative
On January 21, 1968, a USAF Boeing B-52G Stratofortress (serial 58-0188, callsign HOBO 28) carrying four B28FI thermonuclear weapons (1.1 megatons yield each) crashed onto the frozen sea ice of North Star Bay in Bylot Sound, Greenland, approximately 7 miles south-southwest of Thule Air Base.
While flying a secret continuous airborne alert monitoring the Thule BMEWS radar ('Hard Head'), an improvised heating duct modification ignited spare seat cushions stowed under the lower deck. The fire rapidly escalated into an uncontrollable inferno, filling the cockpit with blinding smoke and knocking out all onboard electrical power. Unable to land on Thule's runway, Captain John Haug ordered the crew to bail out into the Arctic darkness before the unmanned bomber banked and plummeted into the sea ice at 500 knots.
B-52G slammed into sea ice at 500 knots. High explosives detonated on impact, gouging a 670-meter blackened trench into the ice pack.
Conventional high-explosive trigger lenses in the four B28FI bombs detonated upon high-velocity impact with the frozen ice. No nuclear yield occurred, but burning JP-4 fuel melted through the ice sheet into seawater, pulverizing the airframe and aerosolizing weapons-grade plutonium.
Main radioactive fallout plume spanning 5.6 km by 1 km across frozen Bylot Sound toward Saunders Island.
Polar winds whipped alpha-emitting plutonium-239 and americium-241 particles across the snowpack. Over 500,000 gallons of contaminated snow, ice, and blackened aircraft wreckage were scraped by heavy graders and bulldozers to prevent marine ecosystem contamination upon spring melt.
Subsea search grid for thermonuclear secondary stage Serial #78252, lost through ruptured ice to the ocean floor.
Declassified documents in 2008 confirmed that while components of the other weapons were recovered, one secondary uranium/lithium-6 deuteride cylinder (Serial #78252) sank to the bottom of North Star Bay. In summer 1968, Canadian submersible Taurus searched the 200 m seabed without locating it, and the US military concluded it was buried under marine sediment.
Critical SAC Arctic outpost and BMEWS missile radar installation; intended emergency divert runway for HOBO 28.
Hosts the 12th Space Warning Squadron's Ballistic Missile Early Warning System (BMEWS J-Site). HOBO 28 declared an emergency due to an uncontrollable cockpit fire and requested an immediate visual landing on runway 08/26, but power failure and zero cockpit visibility forced Captain Haug to order an evacuation 7 miles south of the runway.
Temporary polar station built directly on sea ice to manage Project Crested Ice (dubbed 'Dr. Freezelove').
Constructed in perpetual polar night at windchills reaching -60°C. Comprised heated prefab shelters, generators, and a helicopter landing zone. Housed over 70 Danish and American nuclear radiation specialists who operated around the clock to clear contaminated ice before the spring thaw.
Corridor where six crew members parachuted into the pitch-black Arctic night; rescued by Inughuit dog sledders.
Six crew members ejected at 2,000 feet over the frozen bay and survived parachute landings in -35°C Arctic gales. Local Inughuit hunters with dog-sled teams and USAF HH-43 Pedro helicopters located and rescued all six. Co-pilot Capt. Leonard Svitenko perished when attempting manual bail-out through the lower hatch without an ejection seat.