“Unraveling the Mysteries: How Fire, Ice, and Plutonium Could Redefine Our Understanding of the Universe”
The cabin quickly filled with thick black smoke, prompting Captain Criss, the navigator, to open the celestial navigation astrodome in an attempt to clear the air. While the crew fought heroically to smother the flames with fire extinguishers, stowage bags, clothing, and other pieces of gear, the blaze soon spread out of control. Captain Haug alerted Thule of his situation and steered the aircraft towards the air base, hoping to make an emergency landing. But at 6:30 the fire burned through a bundle of cables, causing the bomber’s electrical system to fail. At 6:37, upon spotting the lights of Thule directly below, Haug ordered the crew to bail out. Of the seven men aboard, six managed to eject safely, while the seventh, co-pilot Svitenko, was on a rest break on the lower deck and not strapped into an ejection seat. He attempted to bail out through a lower escape hatch but struck his head on the way out, suffering fatal injuries.
The now-pilotless aircraft kept flying northwards before making a 180 degree turn and plummeting earthward. At 6:39 it slammed into the sea ice covering North Star Bay at a speed of 900 kilometres per hour, the 102 tonnes of jet fuel aboard erupting into a massive fireball. As in the Palomares crash, the conventional explosives in the hydrogen bombs detonated on impact, scattering Plutonium across the ice – though once again no nuclear detonation was triggered.
Thanks to Captain Haug’s airmanship, all but two of HOBO 28’s crew landed within 3 kilometres of the Air Base. Haug and D’Amario actually landed among the buildings of the base itself, and informed base vice commander Colonel Paul Copher of the crash within minutes of each other. All available personnel and even the Base’s fleet of taxis was mustered to search for and rescue the other airmen. However, the combination of winter darkness, rough ice conditions, and -30 degree temperatures made this an exceedingly difficult task. Colonel Copher thus turned to Jens Zinglersen, the local representative of the Royal Greenland Trade Department, who organized teams of local Greenland Inuit to search the ice using dogsleds. In this manner, three of the surviving airmen were rescued within two hours of the crash while the body of Captain Svitenko was discovered after eight hours. The last man, gunner Staff Sergeant Snapp, had landed nearly ten kilometres south of Thule. He wrapped himself in his parachute and spent a very uncomfortable night on an ice floe before finally being rescued 21 hours later, alive but suffering from hypothermia. For his actions, Zinglersen was later awarded the Air Force Exceptional Civilian Service Medal.
