A SECRET cold war struggle between spy stations set up by America and the
Soviet Union on drifting Arctic icebergs has been revealed in a new book.
The bases spied on each other's activities around the North Pole, important
as the shortest route for missiles travelling between the superpowers.
"They were there because it was where the Soviet Union and the United States
came closest to each other and it was where they could get eavesdropping
equipment closest to each other," said James Bamford, author of Body of
Secrets, to be published this month.
The "battle of the icebergs" is reminiscent of the 1968 film Ice Station
Zebra, starring Rock Hudson, Patrick McGoohan and Ernest Borgnine. The plot,
from an Alistair MacLean book, was thought to have been the author's
invention. MacLean is now believed to have been tipped off about the real ice
stations by spying friends.
Russian and American teams often spent months in cramped wooden huts on huge
icebergs slowly circumnavigating the pole before breaking up. In the 1950s
Drifting Station Alpha, an oval chunk, accommodated up to 20 Americans who
faced gales and the constant threat of disintegration. They tracked Russian
submarines under the ice, lowering sonar gear or watching for attempted
reconnaissance flights over the pole, and eavesdropped on their counterparts'
communications.
Arriving there on an improvised runway in 1958, US Air Force Captain James F
Smith, a Russian-speaker and Arctic survival expert, almost immediately met a
terrible storm, followed by a second one a week later. "Standing at the edge
of the camp floe," wrote Smith, "one could hear the soft rumbling and feel
vibrations, occasionally punctuated by sharp cracks, grinding and crashes as
large pieces were forced up, broke and tumbled."
Almost half the iceberg broke away, damaging the runway. Eventually an
aircraft got through and the men made a dash for safety as it turned and
immediately took off.
In 1959 the Russians established North Pole 8 on a 4�- mile-long iceberg
that was drifting towards the pole at 2mph. It was evacuated in a hurry in
the 1962 winter after 1,055 days of continuous occupation. So fast was the
departure that food was left on tables and equipment was abandoned where it
lay.
Two Americans who were parachuted onto the floe retrieved 83 documents and
21 pieces of equipment, concluding that most was "superior in quality to
comparable US equipment".
To leave they copied a method used for mail bag collection. The man to be
picked up wore a harness connected to a lift-line, which was raised 500ft
using a weather balloon. The line was snagged by an aircraft with a V-shaped
yoke attached to its nose cone. This would release the weather balloon and
haul the man to where he could be winched into the plane.
