Duck Hunt Photos – Getting to Greenland

Sunday, August 29, 2010

Written by: Dan Bender

As part of the Coast Guard’s effort to locate a missing World War II air crew, a team has been dispatched to the frozen Greenland ice cap. Getting there was half the battle.

The journey to Greenland began Friday morning at Air Station Elizabeth City, N.C., when Cmdr. Jim Blow and Master Chief Petty Officer John Long, from CG-711 Aviation Forces, departed with a C-130J crew and headed north. Their first stop was Trenton, N.J. where the contractors from North South Polar, Inc., were waiting with weeks worth of supplies and equipment for the desolate and unforgiving ice. Also waiting were a camera crew from HDNet World Report and a correspondent from the New York Times.

The next stop was St. John’s, Newfoundland, where the team stayed overnight and prepared for the last leg of the trip aboard the C-130 to Kulusuk, Greenland, Saturday. Today the 15-person team will take helicopters chartered from Air Greenland over a hundred miles west into the frozen wild of East Greenland.

Two helicopters have already left with the first wave of scientists to get the search started as soon as possible. The rest of us will be out there in the next few hours. Stay tuned for more updates.