- Project Iceworm
-
Coordinates: 77°10′N 61°08′W / 77.167°N 61.133°W Project Iceworm was the code name for a US Army proposal during the Cold War (a study was started in 1958), to build a major network of mobile nuclear missile launch sites under the Greenland ice sheet. Unsteady ice conditions caused the project to be cancelled in 1966.
Contents
Political background
Details of the project were first published in January 1997 when the Danish Foreign Policy Institute (DUPI) was asked by the Danish parliament to research the history of nuclear weapons in Greenland during the Thulegate scandal.[1]
Description
To test the feasibility of construction techniques a project site called "Camp Century" was started, located at an elevation of 6,600 feet (2,000 m) in northwestern Greenland, 150 miles (240 km) from the US Thule Air Base.
Camp Century was a demonstration of affordable ice cap military outposts. Project Iceworm was to be a system of tunnels 4000 km in length used to deploy around 600 nuclear missiles, which would be able to reach the USSR in case of nuclear war. The missile locations would be under the cover of Greenland's ice sheet and were supposed to be periodically changed.
A total of 21 tunnels were built; these tunnels also contained a hospital, a shop, a theater and a church. The total number of inhabitants was around 200. From 1960 until 1963 the electricity supply was provided by means of the world's first mobile/portable nuclear reactor "Alco PM-2A" [2]. Water was supplied by melting glaciers and tested to determine if germs such as the plague were present.
It was discovered[who?] that the ice was moving much more intensively than had been anticipated and would destroy the tunnels and launch stations in about two years. The facility was evacuated in 1965 and the nuclear generator removed. Project Iceworm was cancelled for good and Camp Century closed in 1966.
Nevertheless, the project generated valuable scientific information and provided scientists with some of the first ice cores, still being used by climatologists today.
Footnotes
- ^ "Greenland during the Cold War. Danish and American security policy 1945-1968". Copenhagen: Danish Institute of International Affairs. 1997-01-17. http://www.tidsskrift.dk/print.jsp?id=93193. Retrieved 2009-04-26.
- ^ Camp Century, Greenland, Frank J. Leskovitz
References
- Article "Aukstajā karā uzvarēja ledus" ("Ice won the Cold War") (in Latvian) in magazine "Ilustrētā zinatne" ("Science Illustrated"), issue No. 34, September 2008, page 85. ISSN 1691-256X. Published in Riga, Latvia. Part of "Bonnier Publications International A/S", Copenhagen, Denmark.
- Grant, Shelagh (2010). Polar Imperative: A History of Arctic Sovereignty in North America. Douglas & McIntyre. ISBN 978-1-55365-418-6.
- Weiss, Erik D. (2001). "Cold War Under the Ice: The Army's Bid for a Long-Range Nuclear Role, 1959-1963". Journal of Cold War Studies 3 (3, Fall 2001): 31–58. doi:10.1162/152039701750419501. http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/152039701750419501.
See also
- Camp Fistclench
External links
- Camp Century, Greenland, Frank J. Leskovitz (inc good pictures and diagrams)
- The Story of Camp Century - The City Under Ice, US Army film, 1961 (via You Tube)
- US Military Buildup of Thule, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution
- Camp Century, thuleab.dk
- Elmer F. Clark, Camp Century: Evolution of Concept and History of Design, Construction and Performance (6 Mb), Technical Report, US Army Materiel Command Cold Regions Research and Engineering Laboratory, October 1965
- Atomic Insights Nov 1995 Comments on army film.
- Glacialogical Studies in the Vicinity of Camp Century, Greenland
Categories:- Cold War
- Former United States Army facilities
- Military in the Arctic
- Nuclear weapons program of the United States
- Denmark–United States relations
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