Michael de Laine

By Michael de Laine, Copenhagen 11 November 2008

Greenland is a self-governing province of Denmark. Because of domestic policies, an agreement with the Americans allowing them to transport nuclear weapons over Danish territory was kept secret, as was the loss of one in 1968.

According to a new BBC report, the United States abandoned a nuclear weapon beneath the ice in northern Greenland following a crash in 1968.

Thule Air Base has been of immense strategic importance to the US since it was built in the early 1950s, allowing a radar to scan the skies for missiles coming over the North Pole.

Believing the Soviet Union would take out the base as a prelude to a nuclear strike against the US, the Pentagon ordered the start of “Chrome Dome” missions in 1960. Nuclear-armed B52 bombers continuously circled over Thule - and could head straight to Moscow if ordered to.

But on 21 January 1968, one of those missions went wrong and a B52 carrying four nuclear weapons crashed on the ice a few miles out from the base, scattering thousands of tiny pieces of debris across the frozen bay.

The high explosives surrounding the four nuclear weapons had detonated but without setting off the actual nuclear devices, which had not been armed by the crew.

The Pentagon maintained that all four weapons had been “destroyed”, but partly declassified documents obtained by the BBC under the US Freedom of Information Act reveal a much darker story.

Within weeks of the incident, investigators piecing together recovered fragments and debris realised that they could account for only three of the weapons.

Even by the end of January, one document talks of a blackened section of ice which had re-frozen with shroud lines from a weapon parachute.

“Speculate something melted through ice such as burning primary or secondary,” the document stated (the words ‘primary or secondary’ refer to parts of the weapon).

By April, a decision had been taken to send a Star III submarine to the base to look for the lost bomb, which had the serial number 78252. But the real purpose of this search was deliberately hidden from Danish officials.

“For discussion with Danes, this operation should be referred to as a survey repeat survey of bottom under impact point,” one document from July stated.

But the underwater search was beset by technical problems and, as winter encroached and the ice began to freeze over, the documents recount something approaching panic setting in.

As well as containing uranium and plutonium, the abandoned weapons parts were highly sensitive because of the way in which the design, shape and amount of uranium revealed classified elements of nuclear warhead design.

Eventually the search was abandoned as it was not possible to search the entire area where debris from the crash had spread.

On 20 January 1977, former foreign minister and the chairman of the Danish Liberal Party, Uffe Ellemann-Jensen, commented on what he called ‘Danish duplicity in nuclear policy’ in his weekly electric newsletter.

“Danish duplicity has been the week’s hot subject,” Ellemann-Jensen wrote. “The duplicity occurred in the years up to 1968, when there were American nuclear bombs at Thule. This was in accordance with an agreement and an understanding with the Danish Social Democratic Prime Minister, H C Hansen, whose party simultaneously conducted an election campaign under the theme ‘No to nuclear weapons on Danish territory’. This duplicity was thus aimed at Danes.”

The former foreign minister said that in 1968, after the B52 crash, Denmark reached a clear agreement with its allies - that there should be no nuclear weapons on Danish territory. This has been Danish policy since.

The Americans broke no agreements, Ellemann-Jensen underlined.

“But one can also say that Danish duplicity towards its allies started after 1968,” he added. “On the one hand we wanted nothing to do with their nuclear weapons - in peacetime. But on the other hand we were ready to let nuclear weapons defend us if it should prove necessary. That didn’t show much Danish solidarity, to put it mildly.

“A report from the Danish Foreign Policy Institute (DUPI) gave an admirably clear and sober description. There’s a sentence in the DUPI report on Danish nuclear policy up to 1968 that should have been used as a large headline on the cover of the report: ‘The present view cannot be used as such to measure decisions and events that are up to 50 years old’.”

If you are without a sense for history, you cannot assess your own time, Ellemann-Jensen noted. And if you want to judge what happened in Denmark during the Cold War, then you must also know the situation then.

“Therefore it isn’t enough to be outraged by H C Hansen’s decision to keep as a secret the fact that there existed an understanding with the Americans that they could have nuclear weapons at the Thule base,” Ellemann-Jensen said.

“In itself, the agreement was an inevitable extension of the events during the Second World War and it was a necessary part of the West’s defence against the Soviet threat,” the former foreign minister said. “That it was necessary to keep the agreement a secret was due to quite concrete threats to Denmark: at the start of the 1950s it was feared that the Russians would again occupy Bornholm and in 1957, when H C Hansen wrote his letter to the Americans, the Soviets had just crushed Hungary. Denmark really was in the danger zone, which made it necessary for us to show solidarity with our allies, but discreetly.”

Ellemann-Jensen added that this explains why he - had he been in H C Hansen’s place - would also have made such an agreement without publishing it.

He said criticism should be directed towards Danish domestic policies. The three-party coalition would have broken up had H C Hansen told his government partners about the agreement with the Americans. Instead, H C Hansen and his Social Democrat successors said one thing, but did another.

They conducted a campaign about a ‘no’ to nuclear weapons on Danish soil and they positioned themselves as guarantors of a policy that they knew was indefensible - instead of telling their own voters what was necessary, or at least refrained in turning opinion in the wrong direction.

“When the agreements about a ‘no’ to nuclear weapons on Danish territory were made in 1968, the subject was hot,” Ellemann-Jensen continued. “But it was seen that prohibiting ships carrying nuclear weapons from sailing through Danish waters would be problematic towards the Russians and couldn’t be controlled.”

So the duplicity continued: “The hypocrisy would have been even worse, as we know that many nuclear weapons passed through Danish waters at that time - the weapons on board Russian warships” that sailed to and from Baltic Sea naval installations.

BBC report: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/7720049.stm

Uffe Ellemann-Jensen document: http://www.atagu.gl/debat/indlaeg/1997/97020101.htm