I suppose they have to start from Thule when flying northern Greenland, that being the only full airport. Not sure they do that much straight instrument flying in bad weather (have to stay very low for radar to minimize side-scatter) so might head up to Camp Century for visual orientation, then head out on the mission from there if conditions are still go.
Seems like they pass over NEEM and NGRIP quite a bit too. Since nothing happens on the summit ridge, if the radar configuration changes in some fashion every year, they have year-on-year interpretive controls as well as the borehole characteristics.
In the 1968 Broken Arrow incident -- a pilot of an always-in-the air B52 stuffed foam cushions over a hot air vent catching the plane on fire -- the crew mostly ejected but the plane flew on with four hydrogen bombs (and their conventional explosive fuses) until it crashed on sea ice in North Star Bay and exploded.
Some of the nuclear contamination was taken back to the US -- 500,000,000 gallons worth -- but they never could find the 4th secondary.
This should not be confused with separate Camp Century nuclear contamination. During its brief operational life, that reactor (loaded with 20 kg of enriched uranium-235) discharged 47,078 gallons of radioactive liquid waste into an icecap well. No attempt was ever made to recover it; the site is slumping badly and the waste would have moved with it.
Eventually the US resolved the Thule situation by declaring there never was a fourth bomb with serial number 78252, or maybe 78252's components had been removed with the others, in any case not to worry just because one itty bitty 1.1 megaton hydrogen bomb named 78252 could not be located, see, because there was, like, maybe a typo in the cargo manifest or sumpin and it didn't never exist.
One US document BBC obtained in July 1968 said the futile Star III submarine "search for a missing weapon is confidential NOFORN.” NOFORN means no foreigners can see, especially not Danes or Five Eyes partners, so familiar today from Snowden documents.
However a blackened section of ice was found which had refrozen with shroud lines from a weapon parachute, with a US document reading: "Speculate something melted through ice such as burning primary or secondary."
The US was concerned back then, but not now, that the Russians would find the missing bomb and learn secrets of nuclear warhead design. WH Chambers, a former nuclear weapons designer at the Los Alamos nuclear laboratory, told BBC "there was disappointment in what you might call a failure to return all of the components."
Years later, a definitive 279-page report of the Danish Institute of International Studies (DIIS) resolved the matter once and for all claiming: "There is no bomb, there was no bomb and they were not looking for a bomb [with the risky submarine search].”
Period photos and datasheets for the B28 bomb show a 4.2 m long, 0.5 m diameter object weighing 984 kg containing plutonium, lithium-6 deuteride and tritium, plus fission and high explosive components.
The very same Fogh Rasmussen in charge today of fomenting NATO aggression in countries like Georgia and the Ukraine, blew off Thule workers exposed to plutonium, saying elevated thyroid cancer could surely be attributed to heavy drinking at the remote airbase. Workers were to accept a small one-time payment in exchange for future silence.
A nuclear scientist recently told reporters "we really don’t know what has happened to this bomb. It’s not going to explode but the possibility remains of very large contamination with all of the dangers that involves."
Nobody got around to measuring land contamination until 2007:
"The results show levels of plutonium in soil at Narsaarsuk ranging from background values around 39 Bq m-2 up to levels of 1.7 MBq m^2. Local sub-areas of sizes ranging from a few hundred to a few thousands of square metres show elevated levels above 10 kBq m^2 of plutonium. Based on geostatistical analysis, the total amount of plutonium in soil at Narsaarsuk is estimated at 270 GBq (100 g)."
"Investigations were carried out at to determine the occurrence of radioactive particles in air. This involved collection of airborne particles with an air sampler, collection of airborne particles on sticky foils, collection of rain samples and collection of particles that could be resuspended by wind from the soil surface to the air. Small amounts of plutonium were found in air and rain samples..."
http://orbit.dtu.dk/en/publications/id%28c3b7244a-5c9d-49a1-84aa-4397903103ec%29.htmlThere's a comprehensive account of the contamination at wikipedia:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1968_Thule_Air_Base_B-52_crashThe local people avoided direct exposure because the US had previously relocated them to a canvas tent concentration camp at Qaanaaq:
"The town of Qaanaaq was established in the winter of 1953 when the United States expanded their airbase at Thule and forcibly relocated the population of Pituffik, Dundas, and Uummannaq 31 km to the north within four days during the height of the Cold War. The settlement was subsequently moved another 100 kilometers to the north."
