Talk:Thule Air Base

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This entry needs to be linked to Greenland, and vice versa. Searching the Greenland entry on Wikipedia provides no link, or information on, Thule. Nor is there a link within the Thule entry, to Greenland.

I feel the entire entry needs a good re-edit . . . it contains useful but incomplete information and is written in a tone that can be hard to follow and seems not in keeping with Wikipedia's standards. I will be happy to work on it but would the primary authors of it like to address it first?--Mike 05:30, 18 September 2006 (UTC)

This article must talk more about the history of the Thule Airbasse, as well as what it's fuctions. the fact that the Inughuit living at Qaanaaq (Thule) were displaced after the base was built.

With only a few days notice, the local Inuit community was forced to move away from their ancient hunting grounds in May 1953 and resettle in Qaanaaq, north of Thule. They were not awarded compensation until 1999.

The Danish and Greenlanders have a policy barring nuclear weapons within their borders, but in 1995 the U.S. military informed them that nuclear surface-to-air and other warheads had been stored at the Thule air base. In 2001, the U.S. government unclassified documents reveling that, in 1968, a B-52 bomber laden with four nuclear bombs had crashed twelve miles from the Thule air base. Greenlanders had long suspected that an unexploded hydrogen bomb had been lost off the northeast coast of their territory in the accident. In the report on the incident released over thirty years after the event, the Pentagon contended that all four bombs had been accounted for although a pound of plutonium had been released into the environment. Reports of cancer and other illnesses began surfacing among Danish and Greenlandic Thule air base employeesin the eighties and nineties. Some 1,700 workers were exposed to radiation after the plane crash. The Danish government acknowledged the accident and paid the workers a $15.5 million settlement in 1995 (Cappoza, 2001).

I too belive that this article should mention the 1968 plane crash, as also mentioned in List of nuclear accidents. -- G. Gearloose (?!) 11:33, 30 July 2005 (UTC)

Contents 1 Origins of the name? 2 Air emergencies 3 Fastest surface wind speed? 4 1956 Reconnaissance 5 Tugboat 6 troops

[edit] Origins of the name?

does anybody know from what the name Thule is derived from? skimming over this disambiguation page reveals a few possible leads (It is in an indigenous Inuit region; Greenland is a Scandinavian country; it was founded during the Nazi era) and i was curious if somebody knew whether or not there was any precise reason it was given this name. Perhaps it was named after some military figure or geographical region/marker? popefauve 03:48, 31 Jan 2005 (UTC)

See Thule (myth). David.Monniaux 17:20, 10 Apr 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Air emergencies

I saw it mentioned that Thule Air Force Base is one of the few place where airliners can do an emergency landing if they have problems on routes going near the pole (such is the case of many flights from Europe to the US or Canada). I'd be happy to hear about it. David.Monniaux 17:20, 10 Apr 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Fastest surface wind speed?

Is it Thule or Mount Washington? See [1].

[edit] 1956 Reconnaissance

Routine, periodic air reconnaissance was conducted by RB-47H aircraft from Thule Air Base over the Pole to Russian defended airspace near the Barents Sea. These top secret missions, 12 hours long, requiring five KC-97 tankers, and four 20,000 pound off-loads, stretched the state of aviation art at that time. I was shot at, noted near the end of the B-47 Article. --plumalley —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Plumalley (talk • contribs) 23. mar 2006 kl. 16:00.

[edit] Tugboat

The tugboat is NOT used to move icebergs out of the flight path. First of all icebergs do not interfere with the flight path and second the tugboat would not be powerfull enough to push any sizable iceberg. The tugboat is launched at the beginning of the port season (usually beginning of July when the bay becomes icefree) and is used to assist ships visiting the port. It is also used to push smaller chunks of ice away from the port area. Kpusa 13:16, 30 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] troops

how many troops are stationed there