Fletcher's Ice Island

Fletcher's Ice Island or T-3 was an iceberg discovered by U.S. Air Force Colonel Joseph O. Fletcher. Between 1952 and 1978 it was used as a manned scientific drift station that included huts, a power plant, and a runway for wheeled aircraft. The iceberg was a thick tabular sheet of glacial ice that drifted throughout the central Arctic Ocean in a clockwise direction. First inhabited in 1952 as an arctic weather report station, it was abandoned in 1954 but reinhabited on two subsequent occasions. The station was inhabited mainly by scientists along with a few military crewmen and was resupplied during its existence primarily by military planes operating from Barrow, Alaska. The iceberg was later occupied by the Naval Arctic Research Laboratory, and served as a base of operations for the Navy's arctic research projects such as sea bottom and ocean swell studies, seismographic activities, meteorological studies and other classified projects under the direction of the Department of Defense. Before the era of satellites, the research station on T-3 had been a valuable site for measurements of the atmosphere in the Arctic.

Produced by the northern coast of Ellesmere Island, the iceberg T-3 was a very large tabular iceberg. This 7 by 3 mile kidney-shaped iceberg was discovered near the North Pole by researchers studying the Arctic haze during the spring and summer. Although the thickness of the iceberg was 125 feet and it weighed over seven billion tons, it rose only ten feet above the surrounding ice packs and was virtually indistinguishable from the pack ice at any distance.

The temporary drift station consisting of insulated huts was first assembled by the U.S. Military, and by the end of May, 1957, a 1500-meter-long runway and most of the station's 26 Jamesway huts had been completed, allowing the commencing of scientific operations. Beginning in 1952 scientists including Albert P. Crary arrived later and performed numerous scientific investigations including hydrographic measurements, seismic soundings, and meteorological observations. In general, 25- to 30-man military crews and scientists manned the camp at any one time.

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