The United States and Greenland, Part I: Episodes in Nuclear History 1947-1968

One of the earliest NSC policy papers, NSC 2/1 spelled out why U.S. defense officials sought base rights on islands in the North Atlantic. Both Greenland and Iceland, along with the Azores, were of “extreme importance” for any war “in the next 15 or 20 years.” They would serve as bases for “offensive operations,” such as “staging of air transport and combat aircraft.” Moreover, because Greenland “lies astride the most probable route of enemy attack… it would certainly form a most desirable part” of an air defense system that could include bases for interceptors and “early warning” facilities. Greenland was also important as an “area to be denied” to an enemy. “We certainly could not allow an enemy to gain a foothold in this region.”[15]

Greenland’s strategic value created some interest in the Truman administration for a purchase arrangement, but the Danish government would not consider it. Indeed, believing that the threat to the Americas had passed and that the 1941 agreement gave the U.S. too much freedom of action in Greenland, Denmark was interested in abrogating it, which would have required the withdrawal of U.S. forces within 12 months. To balance the interests of both countries, the United States was interested in negotiating a new agreement that would confirm Danish sovereignty and consider “legitimate U.S. and hemispheric defense requirements.” An interagency committee was developing a proposed agreement, but it took some years to achieve.

By late 1950, intensified Cold War tensions heightened U.S. interest in reaching an agreement on Greenland. The U.S. Air Force leadership, worried about the vulnerability of other U.S. overseas air bases, began to assign priority to developing a base in northwestern Greenland to support a “Polar Strategy” for targeting the Soviet Union if war broke out. Cold War tensions had encouraged Denmark to abandon its traditional neutrality policy by signing the North Atlantic Treaty, and it dropped any thought of abrogating the 1941 agreement. With the improvement in U.S.-Denmark security relations and the escalation of world tensions after the outbreak of war in Korea, a base at Thule became a priority to Washington. After secret negotiations in Copenhagen, the U.S. and Denmark reached an agreement on “The Defense of Greenland” in April 1951 that met U.S interests in providing wide scope for developing and operating defense facilities in specified areas of Greenland, including Thule. At the same time, the agreement affirmed Danish sovereignty, brought an end to the 1941 agreement, and put the U.S.-Denmark relationship on a somewhat more even basis.[16]

As CIA analysts noted, the “technical schedule” defining territory in northern Greenland available to the United States would remain secret. According to the analysts, “The Danish Government is very sensitive with respect to Greenland… This extreme caution on the Government’s part is due partly to fear of providing grounds for Soviet protests and partly to a desire not to excite ‘neutrality’ elements in Denmark.” Copenhagen had some leverage of its own and worked to ensure that the agreement met important interests.

This supplemental agreement demarcated the “defense areas” in which the U.S. would be free to develop and operate military bases. The main areas were Narsarsuaq, which had been the site of a U.S. air base since 1941, Sondrestrom, which the U.S. saw as a support base during the construction of Thule, and the area around Thule.[17] The information was secret, most likely to minimize political debate in Denmark and Soviet knowledge of U.S. military interests. Under the 1951 agreement, if the U.S. sought additional territory for installing military facilities, it would have to reach an agreement with Denmark to do so.

A Joint Chiefs of Staff policy paper from early 1955 spoke to the continuing U.S. government strategic interest in Greenland as defense officials had perceived it since World War II: as a base for “offensive air operations” but also a site for warning systems. Thus, the “large U.S. Air Force base at Thule provides an intermediate staging area for continental and Alaskan-based units” of the Strategic Air Command. If the U.S. lost access to other “forward air bases … the importance of Greenland to the air offensive would increase correspondingly.”

To Secretary of Defense Charles Wilson’s query as to whether it would be to the U.S military advantage to acquire title to Greenland, Radford answered that the Chiefs “believe it to be axiomatic that sovereignty provides the firmest basis of assuring that a territory and its resources will be available for military use when needed” and that U.S. “sovereignty over Greenland would remove any

doubt as to the unconditional availability of bases.” Radford acknowledged that the Chiefs “recognize that there are political and economic problems involved which they are not in a position to assess.”

The Secretary of Defense forwarded the 21 January JCS memo (Document 4) to President Eisenhower. Seeing no hurry to deal with the issue, but probably wanting to reply, a few weeks later, he asked that the memo be forwarded to Secretary of State John Foster Dulles for comment.

The State Department’s response to Admiral Radford’s query has not yet surfaced, but those involved did not forget it. According to this note on the “Purchase of Greenland” by Northern European Affairs desk officer William M. Kerrigan, “our view [was] that the time was long past when such a plan would be feasible.” It would raise serious constitutional problems for Denmark because “Greenland is, under the Constitution of [1953], an integral part of Denmark, just as much as the State of New Jersey is an integral part of the United States.” In addition, Greenland was psychologically important to Denmark, where there was “general … sensitivity to threats to its sovereignty.” Finally, an attempt to purchase Greenland “could be extremely dangerous for the retention of our activities there, and could hardly improve our status, since we are permitted to do almost anything, literally, that we want to.”

William Kerrigan may have had nuclear weapons in mind when he wrote (in Document 6 from this EBB) that the U.S. was allowed to do “almost anything” it wanted to do in Greenland. The 1951 agreement included language about the U.S. ability to “store” supplies, but did not refer specifically to nuclear weapons. With the Defense Department seeking to deploy nuclear weapons to Greenland for SAC operations and air defense purposes, senior State and Defense Department officials discussed whether and how to inform the Danish government. The Defense Department was willing to go ahead without asking. While the State Department interpreted the 1951 agreement as “sufficiently broad” to permit the storage of nuclear weapons, it asked the U.S. Embassy in Copenhagen for its views on consulting the Danish government. The Embassy recommended asking the Foreign Office’s Political Director whether the government wanted to know.

It is far from clear exactly why SAC wanted to store nuclear weapons in Greenland; the documents are not available. Possible reasons include: supporting emergency deployments of B-47 bombers to carry the weapons during an offensive, having bombs available for re-strike missions, and the fact that having bombs on base was SAC’s standard procedure. Also possibly salient was that, by 1957, the U.S. was seeking nuclearization of NATO, which involved the deployment of a wide range of delivery systems on alliance territory.[18]

State Department official Philip J. Farley sought the views of U.S. Ambassador Val Peterson on whether to “inquire informally” with Danish foreign office officials about storing nuclear weapons at Thule. Noting that the Defense Department opposed any prior approach to the Danish Government, Farley said “we are inclined to agree that it probably would be better simply to take the action without creating the opportunity (or, in view of public sentiment, perhaps the necessity) for the Danish Government to raise some objection.” To better determine the best approach, Farley asked Peterson what he would recommend. Because the Pentagon wanted to move promptly on the deployments, once it started doing so, Peterson could, if he thought it was “advisable to do so … inform appropriate Danish officials in the manner you thought best.” In any event, Farley writes, “the fact that the necessary storage facilities are ready should reduce to a minimum the likelihood of particular notice being taken of our action.”

The State Department’s consultations with Ambassador Peterson concluded that it was best to “make a very private and informal approach to the Danish Government.” The Department authorized him to ask Prime Minister H.C. Hansen, who also was the Foreign Minister, whether he wanted to be “informed in the event that the United States should place nuclear weapons in Greenland.” Peterson met with Hansen on 13 November, where he brought up the proposed deployment, and then met with him again on 18 November, where the Prime Minister replied with the following “informal written statement”:

“During your visit here some days ago you made some remarks about the possible storing of supplies of munitions of a special kind in the defence areas in Greenland.

I gathered that your Government did not see any problem in this matter, which in its opinion was covered by the Agreement of April 27, 1951, according to which each Government will take such measures as are necessary to carry out their responsibilities in Greenland and the US Government is entitled to store supplies, provide for the protection of the area, etc. and all materials, supplies, etc. shall be permitted entry into Greenland free of inspection.

You did not submit any concrete plan as to such possible storing, nor did you ask questions as to the attitude of the Danish Government to this item. I do not think that your remarks give rise to any comments from my side.”[19]

In his telegram about the meeting, Hansen did not include the text of the paper (which so far has shown up only in Danish archives) but briefly summarized the gist of the discussion. Treating Hansen’s paper as an implicit go-ahead, Peterson observed that, with this exchange, “we have now fulfilled our obligation to Prime Minister.” He further noted that Hansen was “adamant that there should be no publicity of any kind now or later.” Peterson urged that “every effort be made to avoid leak.”

Whether Hansen had in mind a “green light” or an “indirect acceptance” of a U.S. right to deploy the weapons, his insistence on keeping his paper secret showed recognition of its danger. He had raised no objections to the proposed deployment and had not asked for any details. Any publicity would have invited a strong Soviet reaction and blown apart the coalition government that was ruling Denmark.[20]

Murphy informed Sprague of Ambassador Peterson’s conversation with Prime Minister Hansen. Seeing Hansen’s statement as permission to “go ahead,” Murphy recommended taking “every precaution” to protect knowledge of the deployments in Greenland.

During a meeting with Hansen, in an apparent reference to the nuclear weapons discussions, Dulles “expressed appreciation … for the helpful arrangements that had been made for our establishments in Greenland.” Showing how NATO burden-sharing controversies never go away, Hansen expressed “displeasure” about U.S. criticisms of Denmark’s supposedly “inadequate defense effort.”

As previously noted, the deployment of nuclear weapons at Thule Air Base for Nike-Hercules ended during 1965. Howard Brandon, a State Department desk officer, told a Canadian diplomat that the Defense Department had decided to withdraw the missiles and presumably the warheads. According to Brandon, the “advancing technology and the declining nature of the manned bomber threat” had made the Nike-Hercules units “of only marginal usefulness for continental defense.” The U.S. would announce the end of the deployments in Denmark, Greenland, and Washington at a future date.

“Declassified Pentagon History Provides Hair-Raising Scenarios of U.S. Vulnerabilities to Nuclear Attack through 1970s,” 12 November 2012

Beginning in the mid-1950s Greenland’s strategic salience increased as U.S. defense officials worried about the possibility of Soviet bomber and missile attacks. To provide two hours of early warning of bomber attacks, the U.S. established the radar-based Distant Early Warning (DEW) line, deployed at sites above the Arctic Circle. By 1961, the U.S. had 57 DEW line stations running across Alaska, Canada, Greenland, Ireland, and Scotland. Four of the sites were in Greenland separated by average distances of 263 miles.

During the 1960s, the Ballistic Missile Early Warning System (BMEWS) became the “basic” ICBM warning system for the U.S. With radars deployed in Alaska, Greenland, and the United Kingdom, BMEWS could provide 15 minutes of warning time of a Soviet ICBM attack. Besides providing the Strategic Air Command with enough warning time to launch bombers, BMEWS would also enable “SAC to exploit the unique capability of bombers to launch under positive control, even in ambiguous or equivocal circumstances, without pre-commitment to strike—a ‘launch-on-warning’ and recall option that was not available in the case of missiles.”

BMEWS had “serious shortcomings, primarily in geographic coverage and in the amount, quality, and timeliness of the information that it provided.” Moreover, it could be “deliberately spoofed, blacked out, or attacked,” although “such events could be treated as potential indicators of attack and … easily interfere with surprise.”

With the B-52 bomber’s intercontinental capabilities, Thule had lost its purpose as a major strategic base, but the BMEWS facility stationed there had significant importance for U.S. defense. Worried about the vulnerability of the site, Joint Staff director General Earle Wheeler informed Secretary of Defense McNamara that SAC had modified an airborne alert route to include a “24-hour airborne monitor” of the installation to ensure that it was secure. The change would go in effect on 15 August 1961 and would involve “no degradation of target coverage.” As Scott Sagan has noted, with this “operational innovation [SAC] created its own twenty-four-hour-a day warning system.” In case of a disruption of BMEWS communications with NORAD, SAC would know through its bomber circling BMEWS at Thule whether the facility was safe and secure.[21]

Wheeler did not mention Denmark but probably took it for granted that the 1951 agreement gave SAC carte blanche to fly nuclear-armed B-52s over Greenland.

This is an excerpt from a telegram that the State Department sent to the U.S. Embassy to summarize what U.S. officials had found in the declassified record about U.S.-Danish official interactions on nuclear issues before 1968. It included the summary of a meeting between Denmark’s Under Secretary for Greenland, Eske Brun, and U.S. Ambassador William M. Blair after a January 1964 accident when a nuclear-armed B-52 crashed in western Maryland killing three of the five crew members. Brun asked about nuclear flights over Thule and the possibility of a similar accident. If such an “unfortunate incident” occurred, Blair said, the government of Denmark could say the purpose of such overflights was in the “defense interests of the Free World” and that the U.S had carried them out “in full cooperation” with Denmark under the 1951 agreement.

According to this summary of the discussion, Brun did not take exception to Blair’s proposal. The detailed U.S. record of the discussion remains classified at the National Archives. What Blair did not know was that, after this conversation, Brun asked the Foreign Ministry if there were any restrictions on nuclear-armed overflights over Greenland. The response was that there were no such limits and that the government had “no knowledge as to whether SAC aircraft with nuclear weapons came anywhere near Greenland territory.” The Foreign Ministry did not believe that the Government would be willing to raise the matter with the U.S.[22]

Keeping President Johnson informed of airborne alert operations, Vance mentioned that the U.S. did not need “formal clearance or notification” from either the Danish or Spanish governments because of “existing service-to-service agreement.” The memorandum included maps that showed the “North Route” or “Hard Head” route to Greenland, which provided for daily B-52 surveillance of the BMEWS installation at Thule Air Base.

Before the B-52 accident at Palomares, Spain, in January 1966, Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara wanted to discontinue the airborne alert program for budgetary and strategic reasons (for example, bombers were a shrinking element of U.S. strategic forces). JCS Chair Wheeler opposed discontinuing the program but accepted cutting back on the flights to six sorties a day. Part of his defense included the role of SAC airborne alert bombers in monitoring BMEWS at Thule, which he saw as an “important benefit.” According to Wheeler, “Visual/electronic surveillance of those facilities is maintained on a continual basis at all times; thus, the airborne alert indoctrination itself becomes a positive link in our improved warning capability.” During 1966, after the Palomares crash, the debate continued. McNamara wanted to end airborne alert but he accepted Wheeler’s compromise proposal for four daily sorties. Airborne alert continued, including the Thule Monitor.[23]

In the mid-afternoon of 21 January 1968, a B-52 on a Thule monitor mission crashed in the ice near Thule Air Base. A fire had broken out in its heating system, and an attempt at an emergency landing having failed, the crew bailed out. Six survived except and one crew member was lost. As the four 1.1 megaton bombs on board fell onto the ice, their conventional high explosives detonated, scattering plutonium and weapons parts across the ice field. The bombs themselves did not detonate, owing to safety devices. While the likelihood of an accidental nuclear detonation was low, it was not impossible.[24]

Word of the crash spread quickly. With this message, the State Department provided basic information to the U.S. Embassy in Copenhagen. The wreckage apparently covered five miles, and “difficult climate conditions and lack of daylight” obstructed the search for wreckage. The State Department agreed with the Danish ambassador’s insistence that his government should be the first to announce the crash officially.

Heading towards the presidency of the World Bank, Robert McNamara’s tenure as Secretary of Defense was about to end. One of his last duties was to report to President Johnson on the crash of a B-52 carrying nuclear weapons in Greenland. The bomber or a major part of it crashed through the ice in 250 feet of water about seven and a half miles from Thule. McNamara told Johnson that the State Department was working with the Danish government in preparing a news release acknowledging the crash that was scheduled for 10 a.m. and that the two countries were in “complete agreement on what should be said.” That was an overstatement because Danish officials wanted clearer reference to the question of radioactivity.[25] According to Harold Brown and other experts on nuclear technology, there was “no danger” from the accident. McNamara did not mention airborne alert or the BMEWs monitor aspect. He then reported on a “long expected” attack on Khe Sanh in South Vietnam.

This early report on the B-52 accident at Thule demonstrated the imperfect state of knowledge about what caused it, only noting that the smoke caused by a fire in the navigator’s compartment. As the crashed plane burned on the ice of North Star Bay, the “main part of the aircraft” sank into 600 feet of water. Major General James Hunziker, the head of SAC’s Disaster Control Team, had surveyed the wreckage from a helicopter and saw the engines, a tire, and other debris still on the surface.

According to Giller, the location of the four bombs was unknown; the “present evaluation,” which was quite optimistic, was that they stayed on the racks and “sank with the fuselage.” He had learned of no report of explosions or radioactive contamination. Besides the SAC team, the Air Force had sent two teams and an AEC/Albuquerque Operations office (ALO) team was on the way. Two public relations officers from the Pentagon and the European Command were also due to arrive.

Responding to the State Department message, a telegram signed by Ambassador White noted that the Danes had not yet made a statement about the accident but that the Embassy’s Air Attache had received information from a Danish Air Force officer. The Embassy had not yet spoken with the Foreign Ministry to explore what it was thinking about a line of approach. With elections taking place the next day, Prime Minister Jens Otto Krag might be delaying an announcement to avoid a political impact. The Embassy worried about “severe” repercussions “in light [of] nuclear sensitivities.” In the meantime, the Embassy would take a “no comment” position, referring all questions to Danish authorities.

According to a statement made by the Danish Foreign Ministry, the B-52 crashed in an attempted emergency landing and was not based in Greenland. It included statements that would receive a poor reception in Washington [See Part II]: “Danish policy regarding nuclear weapons also applies to Greenland and also to air space over Greenland. There are no nuclear weapons in Greenland.” Moreover, U.S. “authorities are aware of Denmark’s policy and the Danish Government assumes that there are no American overflights by aircraft carrying nuclear weapons.” With such statements, the Danish Government was ending the double-standard policy by applying its no-nuclear approach to Greenland.

Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara began the top-level meeting by observing, “this what it is like on a typical day. We had an inadvertent intrusion into Cambodia. We lost a B-52 with four H-bombs aboard. We had an intelligence ship [Pueblo] captured by the North Koreans.” His successor Clark Clifford then asked, “May I leave now?” Most of the discussion was about the Pueblo, but President Johnson asked for an explanation of the B-52 crash. According to the notes, JCS Chair Earle Wheeler said the cause was a fire in the navigational compartment causing the plane to plunge to the ice about seven and a half miles from Thule Air base. The Pentagon had sent technical and disaster teams to the area to “locate the nuclear device [sic].”

McNamara reported that he and Wheeler had agreed yesterday that “no more live bombs will be carried aloft at any time.” Wheeler added that “there is no need for this and the practice will be discontinued.”

This report to President Johnson was prepared by Tom Johnson, who became a White House fellow in 1965. He worked in various roles, ranging from Deputy to the Press Secretary and Special Assistant to the President, soon becoming a note taker for presidential meetings, including the Tuesday Lunches of top national security officials.[26]

This early account by AEC official W. Lee Hancock of the initial survey work at the crash site provides detail on the tough winter conditions near Thule: “continuous darkness and the extreme cold minus 27 degrees limit the duration and effectiveness of survey.” The debris in the area “generally ranges in size from a dime to three feet in length” with the “average size … about the size of a cigarette package… Thousands of [small] pieces [are] upon the snow and the ice.” Noting the absence of portions on the airframe on the ice, Hancock suggested that it either sank or blew up because of a “violent explosion” caused by the conventional high explosives in the weapons. He wrote that the “existence of thousands of pieces of small debris and the contorted form of the larger pieces discovered” could support the violent explosion hypothesis. So far, the survey had not made a “positive identification of weapons parts [or] segments.”

According to Hancock, the “contamination is generally confined to the burn and debris pattern extending south and southwest from the impact point” and appears to be light, fixed, and closely confined.” Noting that Air Force personnel, “Eskimo [sic] drivers,” and the Danish guide had picked up “limited amounts of low level contamination,” the AEC had established “controls” so that “personnel visiting the crash site are processed through a decontamination center.” In addition to controlling access, they were establishing a “zero reading line” demarcation with a “dye marker around the entire contaminated area.”

This message sent by the disaster team reported on the ongoing discovery of weapons parts and radioactive contamination readings within a “rectangular area, approximately 3 miles by 1 mile.” A security area had been established, and so far evidence suggested the occurrence of a “low order high explosive detonation,” with all four weapons “broken up in varying degrees.”

AEC official Paul R. Smith provided details on “weapons items” discovered on 25 January. Declassified portions of the message reveal that bomb lugs, portions of three “secondaries,” and a portion of a “weapon case” were among the items found. (Secondaries referred to the technology facilitating the fusion stage of a thermonuclear explosion, which is triggered by a fission explosion, the primary.) Smith also saw “convincing evidence that at least three separate WH [warhead?] H.E. [high explosives] detonated high order on or above the surface of the ice,” a conclusion based on the location of the four weapon parapacks, three tritium bottles, and portions of three separate weapon secondaries. Work was already started on “collecting and moving weapons parts/debris to a heated [Thule] base building.” So far, the disaster control team had set up six buildings at the site. At the close of his message, Smith asked if the AEC would provide barrels for “packaging AEC material [presumably weapons debris]” and whether it would “bury contaminated aircraft debris.”

Giller recounted some of the information already sent from Thule about the discovery of weapons parts, the detonation of high explosives, and the scope of contamination. Additional information had come in concerning the discovery of the parachutes that had been affixed to the bombs. Gillert identified some of the U.S. experts that had arrived at the scene, including Wright Langham, with Los Alamos Laboratory, who had “provided advice and assistance” during the 1966 Palomares accident investigation and cleanup. The Danish government also sent a team to investigate any radioactive dangers.

According to this SAC history, on 22 January 1968, the day after the accident, the JCS instructed SAC to immediately stop carrying nuclear weapons on airborne alert sorties. The instructions permitted SAC to continue airborne alert without nuclear weapons, but SAC’s commander in chief, General Joseph Nazzaro, had no interest in doing so. SAC halted airborne alert, but it continued two daily sorties, without nuclear weapons, over the BMEWS facility in Greenland through April 1968. At that point, SAC began to instead monitor the BMEWS site in Clear, Alaska, using KC-135 tanker aircraft instead of bombers. In the meantime, SAC began to develop a new alert concept, Selective Employment of Air and Ground Alert (SEAGA), that could involve nuclear-armed flights during periods of international tension.