Donroe Doctrine

Aurora Borealis over Kapisillit, Greenland

Valdai Club to Discuss the ‘Donroe Doctrine’ and US Claims to Greenland

The ‘Donroe Doctrine’ got a chuckle out of me.

More Greenland

Lego to help Greenland
Daily Dad Jokes Podcast

More Greenland

Memers making hay while the sun shines.

Greenland

Nuuk Greenland

Seems to be a lot of noise about Greenland these days. I don't expect anything significant to happen for months, and we probably won't even notice when it does.

I've put up several other posts about Greenland. Most involve airplanes.

Greenland

Old Nuuk, Greenland

Just because Mr. Trump is making noises about annexing Greenland, and also because we don't get many pictures of Greenland. Old Nuuk is on the southwest coast of the island.

Old Nuuk, Greenland

The town shown at the top is in all in the flat area in the foreground of this Google Maps image. Since the hillside in top photo has been rendered flat in the satellite view, that might give you some idea of how big those hills are in back of the town.

Map of Greenland overlaid on a map of the continental United States

Greenland  is not nearly as big as it appears on flat maps, but it's still pretty good size, as this comparison shows.

Greenland

Greenland

I was amused when I heard that the Trump wanted to annex Greenland, but then I remembered that a while back we built a huge base under the ice in northern Greenland.

I just came across these two items so I thought I'd post them to commemorate Trump's announcement.

Iceberg Flips Over In Greenland
AccuWeather

Greenland Mega-Tsunami

Greenland Mega-Tsunami Breakthrough - Explained
Dr Ben Miles

Too cool.

Dickson Fjord

Wikipedia entry

Kangilinnguit

Sikorsky Sea King (OY-HAG)

Big helicopter in a far away place: Kangilinnguit, Greenland.

Southern Greenland Airports

Kangilinnguit is the second placemark from the left.

Greenland

AIRBUS A380 F-HPJ Greenland Fan Hub Recovery by GEUS / BEA (June 2019)
A couple of years ago an airliner engine disintegrated while it was flying over the North Atlantic Ocean. The airliner landed with all passengers and crew safe in Goose Bay, Newfoundland, Canada. The airline people, pagans that they are, were unwilling to accept that an act of God caused the engine to fail. They wanted to examine the pieces of engine and apply their godless scientific acumen to try and figure out what happened. In order to do that though they needed to locate the pieces that fell off.

Map of flight path with altitudes

Being as the aircraft was over Greenland and they knew exactly where it was when this happened, if should be easy enough to find them. And they did find some of the pieces right off. But then it started snowing, winter came and they were stymied. Come the following spring they resumed their search, but now everything is covered with snow. And while they knew where some parts had fallen, other parts might be miles away. The airliner was flying along at 500 knots at an altitude of 35,000 feet when the engine exploded. Predicting where anything jettisoned from that altitude at that speed, not to mention rotating at several thousand RPM, will land is going to be guess work at best.

The Falcon 20 F-GPAA with SETHI. The two containers that it carries under the wings are part of the system - BEA via Austin Lines (Polar Research Equipment) and Thue Bording (Aarhus HGG)

But the science guys persisted. They got out their ground penetrating radar, attached it an airplane, flew a search pattern over the suspect area and got some hits.

Ground Penetrating Radar Set on Sled

Then the put their radar on a sled and dragged it back and forth over the snow until they had a pretty good idea where they might find something, and then they started digging.

The Bureau d'Enquetes et a'Analyses has a full report available (pdf).

Flying into Narsasuaq

Ferry flight USA to Germany - C182T landing at Narsasuaq (BGBW) 4K !
Ernst K. Ganntt has a story about flying into Narsasuaq in Fate is the Hunter. It's very simple if you do it right, but there are any number of ways for it to go wrong, and you can't tell you've done it wrong until it's too late to do anything about it. It must have been a WW2 story, in any case before modern navigational aids like GPS.

Narsasuaq, Greenland

To get to Narsasuaq, you have to fly up a fjord, and you have to choose the right one. As you approach the coast of Greenland, which is where this is, there are several openings to choose from. You have to choose the right fjord because they are too narrow to turn around in and the mountains on either side are too tall to fly over. War Bird Forum has a better explanation.

Video via Posthip Scott.

Glacier Girl

Yesterday I was reading about some guys who dug up a 150 year old river boat that was buried under 45 feet of mud in a farmer's field in Kansas. This morning I'm reading about some guys who dug up a WW2 fighter that was buried under 265 feet of ice in a glacier in Greenland. Kind of weird to encounter two recent archaeological digs of recent events in two days, especially since there is no connection between the two. Here's some pics I collected of this one.

P-38 and B-17 where they were set down in 1942.

McBride’s team camped out in 2011 on the Arctic glacier where the Lightnings are located. The Wilga support plane is in the background. (photo via Ken McBide)

Excavating the P-38

P-38 Partially disassembled

P-38 Cockpit

Raising the central fuselage
The used a four foot diameter heated cone to drill through the ice, that and a pump to get rid of the water.

They spent $2.5 million retrieving this one airplane and another half a million restoring it to operating condition. Probably not a profitable venture, but emotionally satisfying.

Pic of the Day

Ukrainian Air Force IL-76 at Refuelling Station Nord during Operation Northern Falcon 2014 in Greenland.

When I first saw this picture, I wondered what such a big airplane was doing on the beach because that big, shiny expanse behind it looked like water, and then I realized that's it all ice, and we aren't on the beach. Shoot, there is no beach in Nord. Because of the ice you can only get a ship there once every five or ten years.