Tuesday 22 March 2016

Many Years Ago,

I watched a film where a nuclear submarine broke through the polar ice cap,


the film was Ice Station Zebra, I was never sure if the conning tower could have really taken the force needed to perform this task without buckling, until now as above the USS Hartford, breaks through the polar ice,

and here its compatriot, the USS Hampton, shown above, X marks the aiming point, both vessels joins a long tradition of nuclear submarines in the Arctic circle, the USS Nautilus was the first to cross under the Arctic circle in 1958, in March 1959, the USS Skate breached ice at the North Pole, and since then, many other American submarines have done the same, so this is by no means a first,

this is a longer video, if you watch carefully it is amazing to watch the ice rise and fall that the spectators are standing on as the underice shock wave reaches them, as an aside the film Ice Station Zebra was an obsession of at the time the world's richest man, Howard Hughes, he reportedly watched the film over 100 times, it appears he owned a Las Vegas TV station and would call them to re-run the movie again and again.


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