Ice Islands

Most of the Arctic Ocean is covered with spongy, saltwater ice only about ten feet thick--too thin to support anything more weighty than a family of iglooed Eskimos. Last week the Air Force reported that many hundred miles from land, aircraft crews of its weather service on polar flights had discovered ice islands with more important possibilities. Pictures of one of them were shown to an Alaskan Science Conference at Washington. The ice island is some 35 miles long and 18 miles wide; some parts rise 90 ft. above the frozen ocean. If it is really floating, its ice is about 350 ft. thick. The surface is covered with low parallel ridges 500 ft. wide and looks rather like a gigantic ploughed field. The island may drift a mile or so a day, probably in circles.

How the ice islands originated was a puzzle to the experts, but they were more interested in their possible uses. The islands may be smooth enough in places for airplanes to land upon. If not, their surfaces can probably be planed into landing strips by bulldozers parachuted from aircraft. An airfield near the pole would be useful as a weather station, an emergency landing field, a site for radar or a center for air rescues in the remote Arctic. In the back of military minds was the possibility of making the islands into advanced bomber bases.

So far as the public knows, no one has yet landed on any of the ice islands. Even their ownership is not settled. The U.S. maintains that land (even floating "land," presumably) belongs to the nation that discovers and occupies it first. But for polar regions the U.S.S.R. supports the "sector principle": that everything north of its territory is its property. At least one of the ice islands lies well beyond the pole in the Soviet-claimed "sector."

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