There have been a couple of mysterious deaths in Antarctica. In one case a USARP fellow just wandered away from a remote camp and was never seen again. I have never understood this, and perhaps someday I will. I would like to tell you about the other case : the death of Dr. Edward Thiel.
Ed grew up in small town America, as an all American boy. He pledged allegiance to the flag, believed in God, tried hard in school, probably was a boy scout, enjoyed playing in the snow, and ice skating. In high school he had won an award from the Veterans of Foreign Wars (VFW) for his patriotism. He attended and became a junior faculty member at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He worked with George Woollard and had done exploratory work in Antarctica using seismological, gravity and magnetics measurements. His position working alongside military people in Antarctica was a comfortable one. He often worked with them in aircraft flights used to measure the earth's magnetic field to search for anomalies : possible ore bodies, volcanoes and other crustal signatures. His wife worked in the department as a staff member. Altogether a success story for Wisconsin.
Then, things changed. As often happens, new people enter a department for various reasons, often waiting for a more permanent position. Albert Crary and Charles Bentley, both from Columbia, were looking for permanent positions after their earlier explora
tions in the Arctic and Antarctic. Crary, the senior of the two obtained a permanent postion in Washington as Chief Scientist of USARP, while Bentley, was hanging out at Wisconsin, joining the geophysical group doing Antarctic research there already. There was a gap of ten years between the time he acquired his PhD in 1950, and when he popped up at Wisconsin. Whatever Bentley's background, which included traverses in Antarctica and spending extended periods way down in Antarctica, he did not acquire faculty membership at Columbia. Two other Antarctic groups existed, one at OSU that focused on the geology/glaciology, and the Wisconsin group that did geology/ geophysics. So it was natural for Bentley, who was educated as a Everett Darrow pre-law/geophysicist, to join the Wisconsin group as an extended post-doc. Besides being a polar explorer, Bert Crary was also connected with Soviets. He was responsible for teaching them how to monitor nuclear explosions using geophysical equipment similar to that used for geophysical exploration work. Crary was also involved in spying on SAC flights, at a time when the Soviets were curious about the US putting nuclear weapons on longrange aircraft (1947). After this nuclear work, Crary turned his attention to polar work as the US Army engaged in a cold region project at Camp Century in Greenland. Later his interest became Antarctica, as it did for the Soviets also.
With his comrade Crary in Washington influencing funding and the orientation of the glaciology program, Bentley decided he could get rid of the former participants in the Wisconsin program. Bentley brought his own interest in seismology to the program, and proceeded to discourage participation by others who were in the program. He became aggressive in defense talks, and soon Ed Thiel found himself in trouble. With his mentor and former advisor, George Woollard having decided to leave the department, Ed decided to move to Minnesota.
The forte of Bentley being his participation in traverses along which he detonated seismic shots every 1 km to establish ice thicknesses; Thiel had done similar work. Some of this early work was suspect because of wind noise, deep ice, and substantial amounts of water at the glacial bed. Then in 1959 Professor Evans of Cambridge University initiated the use of radar for this purpose, making seismic sounding for glacial depth obsolete.
Ed was going to set a new record for an airborne traverse, covering the distance of 3,500 miles from McMurdo Station(US) to Mirny Station(USSR), in a modified P2V Neptune Bluebird, a twin engine jet aircraft with a bombay specially modified with an extra fuel tank for the long distance flight. The use of an extra tank like this is common practice. After a night over at Mirny Station, the Neptune was to fly a short hop to Wilkes station, and then after a full refuelling at Wilkes fly
the long return trip to McMurdo.
What was uncommon about the flight besides the distance, was that a military aircraft was being flown in and around a major Soviet Station at the height of the Cold War. in this craft, Ed was measuring the magnetic field with recorders in the cabin of the craft. This was routinely done as a means of exploring the subglacial geology, but the Soviets may have thought it was being used as a surveillance tool - spying on their base and its activities. Why the flight went like this to Mirny is unclear. Would it not have been as scientifically meaningful to fly directly to Wilkes and back instead? Who suggested the flight to Mirny? Was it Crary back in Washington at NSF?
Without fear, Ed and the crew of his VX-6 aircraft flew to Mirny, and stayed the night. They left for Wilkes the next morning and fully fueled up for the return trip to McMurdo. On takeoff with JATO assist the aicraft climbed into the air and "an intense, uncontrollable inflight fire developed in the landing gear-bomb bay fuel tank area. Within a minute the aircraft banked to the left, dipped, and crashed; On November 9, 1961 five of the nine crew members burned to death including Dr. Thiel. He was just 33 years old.
Although the official explanation was that the Neptune suffered damage from sustrugi on takeoff, who could not have wondered if the tank had been sabotaged at Mirny Station? An Aussie at Wilkes reported that the tank was loose prior to the takeoff. If so, how did it get that way? Sustrugi at Mirny? When they bolt these tanks in and attach hoses with clamps to the fuel system, no doubt that installation would have been firm, and checked prior to takeoff at McMurdo. The only other reasonable explanation was the disruption of the aircraft structure itself due to sastrugi, at Mirny. Would someone have noticed this at Wilkes?
Whatever the explanation, two years later Bentley became a UW-Madison faculty member and sole geophysicist at NSF in the Antarctic Program. His specialty besides purging other people from the program, was to use his fluency in Russian to improve relations with the Russians. So with Russian journals in hand, he prepared for his first season in Antarctica as a professor. His glacial expertise: sounding ice thickness with seismic shots, even though that was obsolete since 1959.
Did Ed inadvertently collect magnetics data that showed Russian noncompliance with the Antarctic Treaty just two years earlier? If he had, it would have been the only time anyone has collected any data verifying compliance or noncompliance with the 59 International Treaty. Despite the US program being held to high standards by people like Bentley, the Russians probably have never honored the Treaty in the least, except accidentally, giving the commercial use of Antarctica solely to the Russians for 50 years.
If people had known Charles Bentley was the son of Elizabeth Bentley, the Red Spy Queen, would that have changed anything? Did anyone care about Bentley's trips to the Soviet Union? Was he given special consideration by the state department in trade for his mother's testimony? Did anyone care about Crary being a spy? Was the organization of NSF's science program, an error in judgment? Did a faction in the US throw Ed under the bus, just like James V. Forrestal?
Today you can go to Walmart and purchase as a dietary source of Omega-3 fatty acids, encapsulated Antarctic krill. Presumably it is the Chinese doing this currently, a signatory of the Antarctic Treaty. Two quadrants of Antarctic waters have ben reported to be sterile or nearly so because of the harvesting of these creatures low in the food chain. The US has had no commercial development in Antarctica of any kind, while other countries are placing the eco-system in peril and nothing is being done about it. All these years satellites could have been used to monitor activities there, and nothing has been done.
Friday, April 17, 2009
Happening in Antarctica : Cui bono?
There have been a couple of mysterious deaths in Antarctica. In one case a USARP fellow just wandered away from a remote camp and was never seen again. I have never understood this, and perhaps someday I will. I would like to tell you about the other case : the death of Dr. Edward Thiel.
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