“Unraveling the Mysteries: How Fire, Ice, and Plutonium Could Redefine Our Understanding of the Universe”
But among that unrecovered 7% was a very important – and sensitive – piece of material. Within weeks of Operation Crested Ice getting underway, it became clear that the bomb debris recovered from the crash site accounted for only 3 of the 4 weapons aboard HOBO 28. The fourth, it appeared, had melted through the ice and lay somewhere at the bottom of North Star Bay. In August, the Air Force sent a recovery ship carrying a General Dynamics Star III submersible to search for the missing bomb. Due to top-secret nature of the weapon’s design, the purpose of the search mission was not disclosed to the Danish government, with an internal USAF memo from July 1966 stating that:
“Fact that this operation includes search for object or missing weapon part is to be treated as confidential NOFORN [no disclosure to foreign governments]…For discussion with Danes, this operation should be referred to as a survey repeat survey of bottom under impact point.”
Unfortunately, the search was plagued by technical difficulties and eventually abandoned, with William Chambers, a former nuclear weapons designer at Los Alamos later explaining that:
“There was disappointment in what you might call a failure to return all of the components … it would be very difficult for anyone else to recover classified pieces if we couldn’t find them.”
Officially, the United States Air Force maintained that all four bombs had been completely destroyed, and that no major components had sunk intact to the seafloor.
Project Crested Ice officially ended on September 13 when the last container of contaminated water from the crash site was loaded on a ship bound for the United States. All told, the operation is estimated to have cost $9.4 million – around $82 million in today’s money. Among the stranger items on the bill were the number of polar bear skins to replace traditional Inuit pants contaminated in the cleanup.
