Project COLDFEET Deserved More Extended Historical Treatment, Leary Tried to Cont::J.Q Other Individu Als Who Had Taken Part in the Adventure
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ofNP8 .. ..... ... .. ...• in the • Jam<;:s Bond Thunderball,.lifting both}ames B cmcl and his leading lady (in fact, dlilll miessubstituted for the movie stars ) to safety. The\=ircumstances of the COLDI<EET pickup, however, went far beyond the imaginationoft:1:le moviemalcers. -From the introduction «An exciting, informative booll abottt a mysterious part of the lVorld the Arctic-and a mysterious agency-the CUI.. This booll should appeal to a broad audience. » -Eugene Rodgers author of Beyond the Barrier: The Story ofByrd's First Expedition to Antarctica ISBN 1-55750-514-4 327.1247 Lea , 781557 505141 n May 1962 the Office of Naval Re search and the CIA launched one of the most exotic and successful spy InlS- sions of the Cold War: the parachuting two intelligence officers onto a hastily aban doned Soviet drift station on a deteriorating Arctic ice pack to collect data, and their retrieval using an experimental aerial recov ery technique. This book, coauthored by one of those officers and a leading CIA his torian, offers a first-time description of the top secret mission. It combines page-turning adventure with a detailed inside look at the U. S.-Soviet race to conquer the Arctic at the height of the Cold War. Combating bureaucratic resistance, dwin dling funds, untested equipment, and savage weather conditions, the small American team of researchers and intelligence specialists raced against time to talce advantage of a rare opportunity to assess the Soviets' progress in meteorology, oceanography, and espe cially submarine detection-before the station disintegrated. The key to success was the Fulton Skyhook, a new technology designed to snatch the men from the ice on a 500-foot, balloon-lifted line and reel them up into a specially outfitted B-17 bomber traveling at 125 knots. Based on station logs, after-action reports, and interviews with many of the participants, this one-of-a-kind account provides fascinat ing background on the participants, their spe cial equipment, mysterious CIA aircraft and personnel, and Soviet and U.S. drift stations. The authors also place the lnission in the per spective of the Cold War race to develop under-ice nuclear sublnarine operations and acoustic submarine detection capabilities. JACKET PHOTO: The abandoned Soviet Arctic drift station NP8, 1962 JACKET DESIGN: SUE L. LEONARD Pmject Coldfeet ~~~!!!!!!!!! Project ~~~~ NAVAL INSTITUTE SPECIAL WARPARE SERIES COLDFEET Secret Mission to a Soviet Ice Station ,P" William M. Leary and Leonard 1\. LeSchack NAVAL INSTITUTE PRESS. ANNAPOLIS, MARYLAND n To Margaret MacGregor Leary and Pamela Vipond LeSchack Wives) partners) friends) and proud Canadians © 1996 by William M. Leary and Leonard A. LeSchaclc All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced without written permission from the publisher. ISBN 1-55750-514-4 s: lJ4 fR F()~CS E jOl :~~::; - 11 ".,~, ,"- ". , .. iL..J1Ldl"LliP(L;( F!L. t!4f7 T FLf.J~ 1 FL 225lJ<"~rslJ:3jj Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paperS 03 02 01 0099 98 9796 9 8 76 5 4 3 2 First printing Vlll * Contents 9 Conclusion / 148 Appendix A / 155 Appendix B / 157 Appendix C / 160 Preface Notes /171 Glossary / 179 Bibliography / 183 Index /189 Author William Leary first heard about an unusual Arctic intelligence operation while doing research for a study of the aviation businesses (proprietaries) that were secretly owned by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) in Asia. His curiosity led to a meeting with Robert E. Fulton, Jr., a former director of one of those proprietaries and inventor of the aerial retrieval system that was used to pluck two intrepid inves tigators off the ice of a Soviet drifting station that had been hastily abandoned near the North Pole. Leary published tlle preliminary results of his research in 1994 in the CIA's Studies in Intelligence ("Robert Fulton's Skyhook and Operation Coldfeet"). As it had become clear that Project COLDFEET deserved more extended historical treatment, Leary tried to cont::J.q other individu als who had taken part in the adventure. After ~ome difficulty, he finally managed to reach author Leonard LeSchack, the central par ticipant in COLDFEET, who was living in western Canada. About the same time, Leary also discovered that James F. Smith, the other investigator of the Soviet drifting station, was residing in Spokane, Washington. Leary arranged to meet with both men in Calgary, Alberta. It marked the first time that LeSchack and Smith had seen one another in more than thirty years. LeSchack, it turned out, had hoped to write his own account of COLDFEET. He had saved a good deal of material connected with the operation and had written down some of his recollection of IX x * Preface events. Leary and LeSchack quicldy agreed to cooperate in putting together the story of COLDFEET. Over the next few months, Leary and LeSchaclc located most of the participants in the operation and arranged for a first-ever reunion in Las Vegas in January 1995, during which they conducted a number of interviews. The high point of the weekend came when it was dis Project Coldfeet covered that the B-17 employed in COLDFEET and in the first oper ational use of Fulton's invention was in town in connection with a helicopter convention. Its current owner, Evergreen Aviation, gra ciously invited the reunion participants to talce a ride in the aircraft. Leary, LeSchack, and Smith flew over the desert outside Las Vegas during one of these hops-the first time the two former investigators had been in the B-17 since it had carried them back to Barrow, Alaska, after having lifted them off the Soviet ice station in June 1962. What follows is a collaborative effort not only by Leary and LeSchaclc but also by the many individuals who were involved in COLDFEET and who shared their memories and historical material with the two authors. The authors hope that they have done justice to one of the most daring and successful intelligence operations of the Cold War in the far north, and to the courageous men who made it possible. William Leary wishes to acknowledge the generous support he received for his research through a Senior Faculty Research Grant from the University of Georgia. b Introduction Project COLDFEET is the story of a highly successful U.S. intelligence-gathering mission conducted against the Soviet Union at the height of the Cold War. The target of the operation was North Pole 8 (NP8), a Soviet scientific drifting station in the high Arctic. Abandoned in haste after a pressure ridge destroyed its ice run way, NP8lay beyond the range of helicopters. It seemed likely that the Soviets had been able to remove from the station only personnel and the most easily transportable equipment. Because there was no real expectation that anyone would ever visit the base again before it com pletely disintegrated in the grinding and ever-changing ice pack, no significant attempt would have been made to destroy evidence of data gathering activities during the many months of suc<;:e§sful occupation. In an effort to penetrate the curtain of secrec/that masked Soviet operations in the Arctic, two American military officers undertook a daring mission to investigate the abandoned drifting station. James F. Smith, an Air Force major in intelligence and a Russian linguist, and Leonard A. LeSchack, a Navy lieutenant (j.g.) and scientist, both of whom had extensive experience in the Arctic, parachuted onto NP8 on May 28, 1962. According to their plan, they would remain on the ice station for three days, collecting artifacts and sifting through data that the Soviets had left behind. At the end of this time, a World War II B-17, secretly owned by the CIA and equipped with the newly designed Fulton Skyhook Aeroretriever System, would appear overhead __ "__ ~ ____ "_____ ~-~---~---"~;::::::,:::-,~ __________.h ___________________________ 2 * PROJECT COLDFEET Introduction * 3 and pluck them from the ice. As it turned out, execution of the plan capability, sending an increasing number of weather-reporting and would prove a dangerous challenge for the men of COLDFEET. reconnaissance flights over the Arctic portion of the North American land mass and the international waters of the Arctic Ocean. * Recognizing the likelihood that eventually accidents would happen, As the tensions of the Cold War begin to fade, it seems appropriate to the Air Force enhanced its search-and-rescue capability in the far recall the state of superpower geopolitics after World War II that set north. Also, Air Force planners entertained the possibility of estab the stage for COLDFEET. With growing hostility between the lishing bases on the frozen polar sea. United States and the Soviet Union, many Air Force officers came to Much needed to be learned about the Arctic Ocean before it could view the polar regions as an area of potential threat. Addressing the be exploited for military purposes.1 The world's fourth-largest ocean, graduating class of the U.S. Military Academy in 1946, Gen. Henry one-sixth the size of the Atlantic, the Arctic measures 2,400 miles H. ("Hap") Arnold, wartime commander of the Army Air Forces, from the Bering Strait to Spitzbergen and 1,600 miles fi-om the announced that the nation's first line of defense now lay to the north. Canadian Archipelago to the shore of Siberia. A broken and ridged If the United States were attacked, the enemy "will surely come from layer of sea ice covers some 75 percent of the ocean (60 percent in over the Pole." To meet this attack, and to launch a counterstrike summer). Averaging ten feet thicle, the ice pack is in constant motion.