APLIS POSTCARD #2
13 March 2007
Position:
73-07N/145-46W
Temperature: -21ºF
Greetings from APLIS.
Today was “move-in” day with 13 more of our permanent camp staff
arriving. Among them was our
Officer-in-Tactical command - in charge of our camp and both of the submarines,
once they arrive - CAPT Ed Hasell. CAPT
Hasell is in charge of the Arctic Submarine Laboratory (ASL), our small
detachment in San Diego that plans and coordinates the US Navy’s submarine
Arctic program.
I told you I’d talk about how APLIS came to be. We actually started the planning for this
back in January of last year. At first,
we met just to make sure that everyone who we knew was interested in
participating understood the planning process.
In the months since, we’ve developed the schedule and the tests we’re
about to execute, even adding two new tests just in the last couple
months. Barry Campbell, the camp
Officer-in-Charge, has worked out a matrix where he knows exactly who is flying
to and from the camp every day, what the camp population will be, and what bunk
everybody will occupy. He had to make
sure that there’s a seat on a plane for everybody going to or from the camp and
a warm place to spend the night while they are here.
How do we set up an ice camp, Step one - decide when the
camp will be. The best time for an ice
camp is the spring. The ice is still
firmly packed from the long winter’s freeze which makes things much safer for
those of us who are going to live on it.
We could try to do an ice camp in the fall when the ice starts to freeze
up. But if we guessed wrong and started
too early, the ice might get loose again and dump the entire ice camp in the
ocean. Spring is better.
Step two was to pick out a good, thick, stable piece of ice
to put the camp on with an adjacent stretch of relatively flat ice that we
could use for a runway - yes, we land our planes right on the ice. For this part, we needed an expert set of
eyes to find this ideal piece of ice for us.
Those eyes belong to our Camp Manager, Fred Karig from APL/UW. Fred has been doing ice camps here in the
Arctic for 35 years and really knows what he’s doing.
The search began on March 1st. Two airplanes were used - a lightweight Cessna that Fred was
riding in and one of the larger Cessna Grand Caravans that we’re using for
daily ice camp transport. They flew
north together out of Prudhoe Bay, Alaska.
Reports that the thick ice was disappearing from this part of the Arctic
made us think that we’d have to go 250 or maybe even 300 nautical miles from
shore before we found a good site.
Fortunately, right about where we’ve put camps in the past, Fred spotted
a good candidate. His plan landed and
it looked even better from the ground (well, from the ice) than it did from the
air. He called for Barry Campbell in
the other plane to land and together they explored the area.
The camp floe was about a mile in diameter and, it turns
out, over 8 feet thick. Right next
door, the candidate runway was plenty long and 4 foot thick. And lots of good areas nearby to surface the
submarines through. Perfect. They got the GPS position of the floe then
flew back to Prudhoe Bay with the good news.
The next day, Fred returned with his team to start building
the camp. Like Fred, this team from
APL/UW - Fran Olson, Pat McKeown, and Kevin Parkhurst - all have years of
experience in the Arctic. Everything to
build the camp had to come out by airplane.
Even when it grows in flat sheets, ice always has small irregularities
that could make landing and takeoff difficult.
Which means that, first, they had to smooth out the runway. This occupied the first couple days. But with the runway smoothed and 4 or 5
flight possible each day, they next had to build enough of the camp that they
could stay out on the ice overnight - being able to live at the build site
allowed them to get a lot more work done each day than having to commute from
Deadhorse.
A Good Spot for an Ice Camp
The living huts, or “hooches” are built from pre-fabricated
sections of wood. Each section is two
pieces of ¾ inch plywood with insulation in between. Building a hut is far more than just putting up the shell - each
is provided with 3 double bunk beds and a table, all assembled at the
site. And each is equipped with an
oil-fired heater and a fan to circulate the heat. Not luxurious but a lot of work when everything has to be put
together in temperatures of -45ºF with 30 knot winds.
With each day bringing a little more daylight, the camp
steadily took shape. Building more
living hooches meant we could send out a larger workforce, including SK1 Urbano
Orozco from Submarine Development Squadron Five Detachment San Diego and MM3
Robert Baker from Submarine Squadron Eleven, along with ASL’s Travis
Major. This, in turn, allowed them to
start building and equipping the all-important mess hall and, after that, the
Command Hut where the operations will be run from.
APL/UW, ASL, & Navy Sailors
Building APLIS
Getting all of this equipment to the camp required a lot of
flights. We have two aircraft working
for us. The Cessna Grand Caravan I
mentioned before flown by Shawn Shoultys of Wright Air Services in Fairbanks,
Alaska. This type of aircraft is used
by commuter airlines throughout the world.
With its seats removed, it can carry about a ton of cargo. For additional cargo capacity, we’ve also
leased a Casa. This plane, flown by Bob
Eisele from Bighorn Airways in Sheridan, Wyoming, is rear-loaded and regularly
hauls about a ton ad a half of cargo on each trip to the camp. Between them, they’ve been making five round
trips every day. Once at the camp,
everything has to be unloaded by hand then hauled to the build site behind
snowmobiles.
Our Casa
The camp is now ready for moving in and it’s taken a lot of
work to get it built. Everyone on the
ice and both of our pilots have put in many long, cold days to get us this
far. The work isn’t done, though. We’ve got just two days to get our equipment
set up and tested before the first submarine arrives. We’ll be ready.
I’ve mentioned our logistics base several times, using both
the names Prudhoe Bay and Deadhorse.
Tomorrow, I’ll talk more about that part of our ice camp team and clear
up (maybe) any confusion about where I’m talking about.
Jeff Gossett
Arctic Submarine Laboratory