Greenland Bomber Crash

I was listening to a radio programme awhile ago, and the host and his guest were talking about an American bomber from the 1950s that recently sent a Mayday message to a Greenland airbase, then crashed. All of the aircrewmen were found dead inside. The flight recorder said that the bomber was flying during some point in 1950s, and this particular bomber had gone missing in the 1950s. This only happened in the past 5 years I think. I can't remember what the plane was called, nor can I remember the location, so could anyone who has information about this story please reply with links to related websites?

What? Weird, very weird. However, a B-52 did crash in Greenland, with a payload of nukes... very messy, they had to go chasing radioactive fragments all over the shop. One of the nukes was found with five of six safety devices failed, a theoretical one in a million chance...

I may be confusing two separte incidents, though.

MM,

are you suggesting that this is an example of time travel of some sort?

either aliens or a natural vortex (or atlantean), as in the Bermuda triangle?

Do you mean this incident:

16) January 21, 1968: B-52 Crash near Thule

Communication between NORAD HQ and the BMEWS station at Thule had 3 elements:

1. Direct radio communication.

2. A "bomb alarm" as described above.

3. Radio Communication relayed by a b-52 bomber on airborne alert.

On January 21, 1968, a fire broke out in the b-52 bomber on airborne alert near Thule. The pilot prepared for an emergency landing at the base. However the situation deteriorated rapidly, and the crew had to bale out. There had been no time to communicate with SAC HQ, and the pilotless plane flew over the Thule base before crashing on the ice 7 miles miles offshore. Its fuel and high explosive component of its nuclear weapons exploded, but there was no nuclear detonation.

At that time, the "one point safe" condition of the nuclear weapons could not be guaranteed, and it is believed that a nuclear explosion could have resulted form accidental detonation of the high explosive trigger. Had there been a nuclear detonation even at 7 miles distant, and certainty much nearer the base, all three communication methods would have given an indication consistent with a succsessful nuclear attack on both the base and the B-52 bomber. The bomb alarm would have shown red, and the other two communication paths would have gone dead. It would hardly have been anticipated that the combination could have been caused by accident, particularly as the map of the routes for B-52 airborne flights approved by the President showed no flight near to Thule. The route had been apparently changed without informing the White House.

www.nuclearfiles.org...

Yup, that's one. Thanks for digging it up, Paradigm!

Paradigm- I was referring to a separate incident. The plane crashed only recently, and was supposedly MIA for about 45 years. I'm also pretty sure that the aircraft was not a B-52.

I just found a site with details on the crash: ufocasebook.com...

Unfortunately, it looks like there are no real references, just 'highly placed sources" kind of thing. Not very reliable... could be true, but there's no other info for this.

LOL, this is a total fabrication!

Air Traffic Control at Thule Air Force Base first started making intermittent contact with the aircraft when it was approximately 100 nautical miles out of Thule, over the Atlantic.

Er, look at a map, if they were a 100 nautical miles east of thule, they would clearly be over the ice cap, NOT the Atlantic Ocean. Map of Greenland here

The last message came at 01:07 GMT, at which time the aircraft was a solid radar image, and approximately 10 nautical miles from Thule AFB's main runway, over the lip of the glacier.

10 nautical miles form the runway, huh? That would place them well within the territory of the base, between the runway and the ice cap.

I've worked at this very base for a couple of years, including the time at which this supposedly happened. Not many secrets to be kept there, small place, less than a 1000 people there. What else?

Thule AFB is accustomed to having unscheduled visitors� many of whom are in distress.

That is stretching the truth, in the time I've been there there hasn't been a single (non-scheduled flight) that had to make an emergency landing. I've heard of only one such incident, which was a commercial airliner a few years back, so stating that Thule AFB is "accustomed" to unscheduled visitors is a lie.

At first light, a search party was dispatched to the last known location of the incoming contact.

LOL, this is hilarious! As Thule is above the arctic circle, this means that the sun does not rise AT ALL between approximately November and May! Arctic night...And this was suppose to have happened on Dec.23rd? Right.

After a search of approximately two hours, they reported back to Thule AFB

Again not possible, if they were to mount a rescue effort on the ice cap, there is NO way anyone could do it in 2 hours!!

According to reports, the aircraft has, since it's recovery, been transported to a maintenance hanger at Thule Air Force Base.

Simply not true. As i mentioned earlier, there is NO way this could have been done without the whole base knowing about it. And there is not that many hangars up there anyway.

The original source was two fairly highly placed military people, serving at Thule Air Force Base, Greenland.

Hmm, how can you argue with that? That just means that he doesn't have to supply credible sources, such as people working there, for instance. Most of the people up there are actually contractors and civilians, this is hardly a secret.

So in my opinion this i totally BS...

BTW here is the official USAF homepage for Thule, many more to be found around, from ex-military to ex-employees on their own experiences in the arctic.

An expedition a few years ago attempted to restore an old WWII bomber, that had made an emergency landing in Northern Greenland, but failed when the plane caught on fire after they completed the refurbishment. Maybe this could be the source of this idea?

Hehe, no one seems to care to much for my little debunking here... Anyway I wrote an email to the author of this fairy tale, James L. Choron, with a link to this thread, but he hasn't answered yet. It seems he is writing a lot of these UFO crash stories. Just Google his name. Appearently he is currently living in Russia... I would like to see him defend his story.

You may be thinking of this plane...

news.nationalgeographic.com...

Amid bad weather and turbulence in the dark of night, the plane overshot its target and got lost. Running out of fuel, the pilot landed the 85,000-pound (38,000-kilogram) plane in a belly-flop on a shallow frozen lake in northern Greenland, 950 miles (1,500 kilometers) above the Arctic Circle. Two days later, the 11-man crew was rescued in a daring recovery effort that was heralded nationwide.

Nice find, NC, exactly what I was thinking about... I even think National Geographic made a documentary on it...

There was a show on that. Darrel Greenameyer was involved. In the end the plane burned and fell through the ice. Recently a p38 was brought from over 200 feet deep in a Glacier and restored. Read about it HERE

Another Keebird link, with pictures

About the Thule B-52 crash, it was messy indeed, Lampyridae. Many of the workers from back then, mostly contractors, has gotten cancer since, most likely from cleaning that up.

My dad was employed by the same contractor, but left a couple of months before the crash.
All the participants of the cleanup has since received a settlement of 50.000 Danish crowns (approx. $ 8.000).

They have their own association; The Association of Irradiated Thuleworkers

Another site about the incident

[Edited on 8-3-2004 by operatoreleven]

The attempted salvage of the B-29 was documented by NOVA. It is a very good documentary. I saw it on PBS about two years ago.

Originally posted by operatoreleven

The last message came at 01:07 GMT, at which time the aircraft was a solid radar image, and approximately 10 nautical miles from Thule AFB's main runway, over the lip of the glacier.

10 nautical miles form the runway, huh? That would place them well within the territory of the base, between the runway and the ice cap.

10 nautical miles to the lip of the ice cap is technically correct- i just got back from Thule and used to mountain bike back from the BMEWS radar site every day during the summer. this is exactly 12 miles and the road does curve around quite a bit to get to the top of the mountain where the site is located.

Thule AFB is accustomed to having unscheduled visitors? many of whom are in distress.

That is stretching the truth, in the time I've been there there hasn't been a single (non-scheduled flight) that had to make an emergency landing. I've heard of only one such incident, which was a commercial airliner a few years back, so stating that Thule AFB is "accustomed" to unscheduled visitors is a lie.

this is technically correct also: SAS charters all of their flights from the states and Canada to Denmark to overfly Thule in case of mechanical troubles. While they may not have had any while you were there Thule does recieve unschedule visitors here and there.

According to reports, the aircraft has, since it's recovery, been transported to a maintenance hanger at Thule Air Force Base.

Simply not true. As i mentioned earlier, there is NO way this could have been done without the whole base knowing about it. And there is not that many hangars up there anyway.

i do agree that the even never happened and could not have happened without more of the base knowing baout it but there is an abundance of hangars up at Thule- there used to be a whole squadron of intercept aircraft up there and it was a staging point for over the pole nuclear missions during the cold war. you can look at the pictures on the Thule web page and count well over a dozen hangars. thats quite a lot of hangars for a base that has none of its own aircraft stationed there. All of which are plenty big enough to house a c-141 or a b52. we frequently used an empty hangar for base wide parties of all things. all supplies are flown in during the fall, winter and spring months. all "grounds vehicals" are kept in various hangars and we still had empties.

IIRC, they dug up a flight of P38's a few years ago from Greenland who had crashed landed there during the war. All made precauctionary landings because of the weather but they decided not to recover them .

Funk knows why.

yeah i heard that the planes were under over 250 ft of ice- so much for a layer of ice every year- turns out each layer of ice commonly dated to 100,000's of years (by soft scientists) is just a warm day, cold day cycle.

they had a whole story on the discovery channel about the p-38s and b-17s that crashed there. happend to be just south of the artic circle on th Eastern half of Greenland. the b-17's were crushed by the ice beyond repair since the fuslage is less densely constructed compared to the fighters.

they did get one p-38 out after an amazing salvage and return it to flying status. one of the 50 cal BMG's the pulled out of the ice they test fired with ammo that had been under the ice for nearly 50 years and blew away a 55 gallon drum- and it flipped over the snow mobile they had it strapped too. very cool. would have loved to be part of that.

This is a test to see if my avatar is working

This story popped up again on C2C in April. Nothing new really, just James continuing to promote his "story" of King Bird Five Zero.