EMBEDDED IN GREENLAND: IN THE ARCTIC, EVERYTHING GOES WRONG
June 28, 2023Jenna Biter
The US military is built on a pile of unofficial mottos. “If you’re early, you’re on time. If you’re on time, you’re late” and, of course, “Hurry up and wait.” The domino effect of those two particular slogans is that American service members are an hour early for the day’s first task, two hours early for the second, and so on. Above the Arctic Circle, multiply those wait times by about 10 because everything is broken, and the weather is crap. I learned that firsthand in May while embedded with the New York Air National Guard’s 109th Airlift Wing during training in Greenland.
Based out of Stratton Air National Guard Base near Albany, New York, the 109th is home to the only 10 ski-equipped LC-130 cargo planes in the world. Because the fleet is in high demand but has limited numbers, the unit cycles its aging “Skibirds,” ranging in age from 30 to 50 years old, through a high-paced rotation of missions to science stations in Greenland and Antarctica, two of the coldest and most remote places on earth. To prepare for the worst-case scenarios of a crash or emergency landing while overflying the massive, desolate ice sheets that sandwich the globe, the 109th’s airmen undergo four days and three nights of Barren Land Arctic Survival Training, or BLAST, on Greenland’s unforgiving ice cap.
Arctic
The Milky Way glows through green and purple auroras over the radome at Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station, Antarctica, on July 23, 2022. Every Austral summer, the New York Air National Guard’s 109th Airlift Wing resupplies South Pole Station as well as the National Science Foundation’s other Antarctic research camps. Photo by John-Michael Watson/National Science Foundation.
Arctic ‘Camp Outs’
At first, I thought BLAST was just a military box-checking exercise. The likelihood that the 109th’s aircrews would have to survive a string of sub-zero nights on the ice must be just a farfetched nightmare. While aviation accidents over Greenland aren’t unheard of — a museum on the island country has documented more than 50 crashes, and the Aviation Safety Network has recorded upwards of 150 incidents — they also aren’t an all-the-time occurrence. The last US Air Force plane crash occurred in 1976, when 23 people died in a C-141 StarLifter landing gone wrong. But after boots hit the ground in Greenland, I learned that crashes and emergency landings aren’t the only dangerous outcomes the aircrews prepare for.
https://coffeeordie.com/arctic-goes-wrong
