HEROES: The Ice-Cube Rescue

"Ice Skate" was a mile-square ice floe, 10 ft. thick. It drifted on the cap of the globe, beyond the Arctic Circle, whose mysteries are as dark as those faced by Columbus, Magellan, and De Soto. There, 20 Air Forcemen and scientists participating in the International Geophysical Year took over a simple camp: 20 Quonset huts, mess hall, science laboratory, 5,000-ft. runway and an electric homing beacon for supply planes. And there they resolutely logged their fresh jigsaw pieces of knowledge about water masses, current patterns, ice drift, season changes...

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