Drift Station
Karmen Mcarthun
A drifting ice station is a temporary or semi-permanent facility built on an ice floe. During the Cold War the Soviet Union and the United States maintained a number of stations in the Arctic Ocean on floes such as Fletcher's Ice Island for research and espionage, the latter of which were often little more than quickly constructed shacks. Extracting personnel from these stations proved difficult and in the case of the United States, employed early versions of the Fulton surface-to-air recovery system.
The modern NP drifting ice station resembles a small settlement with housing for polar explorers and special buildings for the scientific equipment. Usually an NP station begins operations in April and continues for two or three years until the ice floe reaches the Greenland Sea. Polar explorers are replaced yearly. Since 1937 some 800 people were drifting at NP stations.
The idea to use the drift ice for the exploration of nature in the high latitudes of the Arctic Ocean came from Fridtjof Nansen, who fulfilled it on Fram between 1893 and 1896. The first stations to use drift ice as means of scientific exploration of the Arctic originated in the Soviet Union in 1937, when the first such station in the world, North Pole-1, started operations.[1]
North Pole-1 was established on 21 May 1937 some 20 km from the North Pole by the expedition into the high latitudes. Sever-1, led by Otto Schmidt. "NP-1" operated for 9 months, during which the ice floe travelled 2,850 kilometres. On 19 February 1938, Soviet ice breakers Taimyr and Murman took off four polar explorers from the station, who immediately became famous in the USSR and were awarded titles Hero of the Soviet Union: hydrobiologist Pyotr Shirshov, geophysicist Yevgeny Fyodorov, radioman Ernst Krenkel and their leader Ivan Papanin.
Since 1954 Soviet NP stations worked continuously, with one to three such stations operating simultaneously each year. The total distance drifted between 1937 and 1973 was over 80,000 kilometres. North Pole-22 is particularly notable for its record drift, lasting nine years. On 28 June 1972 the ice floe with North Pole-19 passed over the North Pole for the first time ever.
During such long-term observations by NP stations numerous important discoveries in physical geography were made such as valuable conclusions on regularities and the connection between processes in the polar region of the Earth's hydrosphere and atmosphere and the deep water Lomonosov Ridge,[2] which crosses the Arctic Ocean, other large features of the ocean bottom's relief, the discovery of two systems of the drift (circular and "wash-out"), and the fact of cyclones' active penetration into the Central Arctic.
In the post-Soviet era, Russian exploration of the Arctic by drifting ice stations was suspended for twelve years. The year 2003 was notable for Russia's return into the Arctic. As of 2006[update], three NP stations had carried out scientific measurements and research since then: "NP-32" through "NP-34".[citation needed] The latter was closed on 25 May 2006.[citation needed]
The other day I took my students up to the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory for an afternoon of tours through the awe-inspiring Core Lab and for a visit with the Borehole Group; we stopped in at the Lamont-Doherty seismic research station along the way, where we watched our technician-guide create artificial earthquakes with a wooden mallet so that we could watch his digital equipment go to work. It was a great day.
These mobile islands of ice would be temporarily repurposed, turned into science labs at sea. Researchers would simply ride them till they melted, often quite far south into the waters of the North Atlantic.
I had forgotten about this. Oddly, I have been meaning to post about an old ice island called Drift Station Bravo, used for exactly these sorts of purposes, since the earliest days of BLDGBLOG (in fact, I mentioned Drift Station Bravo in a very old interview with Ballardian).
During the period of active habitation, T-3 covers [basically postage stamps] were serviced, each stamped with a variety of hand-stamped cachets and markings, dated, and often marked with a manuscript notation of the geographic position of the drifting station on that particular day of ops. The T-3/Bravo covers were often cancelled at Barrow or at a USAF base in Alaska, and then placed in the mailstream.
Ice islands are formed by spraying ice into cold air (below 20 degrees F), and layering the ice until it reaches a thickened state. These islands are either grounded at the bottom of the sea floor or are floating structures in deeper waters. Fabricated in just two months, these islands provide enough stability to support exploratory drilling tools including the rig and attendant equipment.
That same transcript goes on to explain exactly how the U.S managed to architecturally colonize these nomadic ice worlds. Like a vision straight out of Archigram, military civilization on the ice established itself as follows:
While Soviet postwar activities in the Arctic were unknown to the west until 1954, the US Air Force began B-29 reconnaissance flights to the region beginning in 1946. Surprisingly, several large ice masses were spotted in the deep basin, which were later determined to be icebergs which had broken off and drifted from the ancient glacial ice foot of northern Ellsmere Island. By 1951, daily reconnaissance trips to the Pole were being implemented, and the drift of three large ice island targets (T-1, T-2, and T-3) were being tracked. The following year, the Alaska Air Command organized Project ICICLE in order to establish a weather station on one of the ice islands and conduct geophysical research. Joseph O. Fletcher was put in charge of the project, and ice island T-3 was selected as the site.
In March 1952, a C-47 aircraft from Thule Air Base landed on T-3, which was seven miles long and protruded 50 feet above the surrounding icepack, and the station was installed. Insulated huts were flown in sections to the ice island (which was renamed "Fletcher's Ice Island") and assembled by members of the military. Scientists (led by Alfred P. Crary) arrived soon after and performed numerous scientific investigations including hydrographic measurements, seismic soundings, and meteorological observations. The station was abandoned in May 1954 (when the weather observations were deemed redundant with nearby Canadian weather station Alert) but was reoccupied from April to September 1955.
The International Geophysical Year (IGY) planned for 1957-1958 stimulated interest in the US for occupying two drifting stations in the Arctic. Project ICESKATE (again under the command of Fletcher) was formed to install station ALPHA on a drifting ice floe, and station BRAVO would reoccupy T-3.
In April 1957, the first ski-equipped C-47 landed at 79N, 159W in order to install the ALPHA camp. By the end of May, a 1500 m long runway and most of the camp's 26 Jamesway huts had been completed, and scientific operations commenced. Typically between 25 and 30 military and scientists manned the camp at any time. During April of the following year, the ice floe began to crack, and the camp was moved 2 km away. Drifting generally north then east, ALPHA was visited by the submarine USS Skate in August 1958. Afterwards, the ice began cracking and ridging again so the camp was finally abandoned in November. However, there was still interest in continuing research started at ALPHA, so in April 1959, station CHARLIE (also known as ALPHA II) was established at 75N, 158W by the Alaska Air Command, with assistance from the Navy's Arctic Research Laboratory in Barrow, Alaska. Scientific work was conducted from June 1959 until January 1960, when the ice floe cracked, shortening the runway so that CHARLIE had to be evacuated.
Meanwhile, in 1957 the Northeast Air Command established BRAVO on T-3 by bringing in 42-foot long commercial house trailers on C-130s equipped with skis. The reoccupied ice island drifted west off of the north coast of Canada, arriving in Alaska waters by July 1959, where air support responsibilities were transferred to Alaskan bases. In May 1960, the ice island went aground at near Wainwright, Alaska, making study programs ineffective. The following year, in October 1961, it was abandoned again, with the station left intact for possible future use.
The Navy was still eager to continue operations in the Arctic, so as a replacement for CHARLIE, the Arctic Research Laboratory (under Max Brewer) sought to install a drifting station in May 1960, but balked at the costs required to charter a C-47 for the installation. As a result, the following September icebreaker Burton Island was used to transport the equipment to 75N, 137W, and the Arctic Research Laboratory Ice Station I (ARLIS I) was constructed in 40 hours with help from the ship's crew. Though intended to support 8 scientists and 4 camp personnel, ARLIS I never achieved a full complement. Small Cessna-180 aircraft were used for resupplying the station as it drifted westward, but upon approaching the range limit of these aircraft, the station was evacuated in March 1961.
For the second Arctic Research Laboratory Ice Station (ARLIS II), a more permanent drifting ice station was desired, but with T-3 grounded, a tentative site on an ice floe was selected. However, during deployment in May 1961, chance resulted in the finding of a 3.5 by 1.5 mile ice island north of Point Barrow at 73N, 156W. Using R4Ds (the Navy equivalent of the C-47) and Cessnas, all of the equipment to outfit the 14 prefabricated buildings was transported to the ice island in 22 days. Scientific operations commenced in June 1961, and continued all the way into 1965. Resupply of ARLIS II during the first year was carried out by Cessnas, later by airdrops from Lockheed Lodestars, by the icebreaker Staten Island twice in the summer, and by R4Ds. As the ice island drifted farther north, away from Barrow and across the Arctic Ocean between 1962 and 1964, resupply from Alaska became a bigger problem involving longer flights, fuel drops, intermediate stops, and sometimes other aircraft from the USAF and RCAF.
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