Operation Highjump

USS Sennet (SS-408) participating in Operation Highjump

Operation Highjump (OpHjp), officially titled The United States Navy Antarctic Developments Program, 1946-1947, was a United States Navy operation organized by RADM Richard E. Byrd Jr. USN, (Ret), Officer in Charge, Task Force 68, and led by RADM Richard H. Cruzen, USN, Commanding Officer, Task Force 68. Operation Highjump commenced 26 August 1946 and ended in late February 1947, six months earlier than planned due to an early onset of the Antarctica winter. Task Force 68 included 4,700 men, 13 ships, and multiple aircraft. The primary mission of Operation Highjump was to establish the Antarctic research base Little America IV.

Highjump’s objectives, according to the US Navy report of the operation, were:

1. training personnel and testing equipment in frigid conditions;
2. consolidating and extending United States sovereignty over the largest practicable area of the Antarctic continent (This was publicly denied as a goal even before the expedition ended);
3. determining the feasibility of establishing, maintaining and utilising bases in the Antarctic and investigating possible base sites;
4. developing techniques for establishing, maintaining and utilising air bases on ice, with particular attention to later applicability of such techniques to operations in interior Greenland, where conditions are comparable to those in the Antarctic;
5. amplifying existing stores of knowledge of hydrographic, geographic, geological, meteorological and electro-magnetic propagation conditions in the area;
6. supplementary objectives of the Nanook expedition. (The Nanook operation was a smaller equivalent conducted off eastern Greenland.)

Timeline

The Western Group of ships reached the Marquesas Islands on December 12, 1946, whereupon the Henderson and Cacapon set up weather monitoring stations. By the 24th, the Currituck had begun launching aircraft on reconnaissance missions.

The Eastern Group of ships reached Peter I Island in late December 1946.

On January 1, 1947, LCDR Thompson and Chief Petty Officer Dixon utilized "Jack Browne" masks and DESCO Oxygen rebreathers to log the first dive by Americans under the Antarctic. Paul Allman Siple, PhD was the senior U.S. War Department representative on the expedition. Dr. Siple was the same Eagle Scout who accompanied Admiral Byrd on the previous Byrd Antarctic expeditions.

Human losses

On December 30, 1946, aviation radiomen Wendell K. Hendersin, Fredrick W. Williams, and Ensign Maxwell A. Lopez were killed when their PBM Mariner George 1 crashed during a blizzard. The surviving six crewmembers, including Aviation Radioman James H. Robbins and co-pilot William Kearns, were rescued 13 days later. A plaque was later erected at the McMurdo Station research base, honoring the three killed crewmen.

In December 2004, an attempt was made to locate the remains of the plane. There are ongoing efforts to repatriate the bodies of the three men killed in the crash Killed airman Maxwell A. Lopez had a mountain named in his honour after his death, Mount Lopez on Thurston Island.

Additionally, Vance N. Woodall died during a "ship unloading accident" sometime after December 30, 1946. In a crew profile, deckman Edward Beardsley described his worst memory as "when Seaman Vance Woodall died on the Ross Ice Shelf under a piece of roller equipment designed to "pave" the ice to build an airstrip."

Afterwards

Father William Menster served as chaplain during the expedition. He became the first member of the clergy to visit the continent, and in a service in 1947 he consecrated Antarctica.

The Central Group of ships reached the Bay of Whales on January 15, 1947, where they constructed temporary runways along the glaciers, in a base dubbed Little America IV.

Naval ships and personnel were withdrawn back to the United States in late February 1947 and the expedition was terminated, due to the early approach of winter and worsening weather conditions (Summerhayes & Beeching, 2007, p.15-16).

Admiral Byrd in an interview with Lee van Atta of International News Service aboard the expeditions command ship, the USS Mount Olympus, discussed the lessons learned from the Operation. The interview appeared in the Wednesday, March 5, 1947 edition of the Chilean newspaper El Mercurio. In the interview Byrd warned of an imminent attack on the United States and the necessity to "remain in a state of alert and watchfulness" and take defensive precautions against "the possibility of an invasion of the country by hostile aircraft proceeding from the polar regions". Byrd said, "I do not want to scare anybody but the bitter reality is that in the event of a new war the United States will be attacked by aircraft flying in from over one or both poles." Byrd explained that, "the most important of the observations and discoveries made was the of the present potential situation as it relates to the security of the United States...I can do no more than warn my countrymen very forcibly that the time has passed when we could take refuge in complete isolation and rest in confidence in the guarantee of security which distance, the oceans and the poles provide." Byrd said that the United States was now in a better position due to the "discoveries" made during the expedition, saying that he now, "realized perhaps better than any other person the significance of the scientific discoveries made in these explorations because I can make comparisons." Byrd finished the interview by stating, "We are abandoning the region after making important geographical discoveries."

After the operation ended, a follow-up Operation Windmill returned to the area, in order to provide ground-truthing to the aerial photography of Highjump. Finn Ronne also financed a private operation to the same territory, until 1948.

As with other U.S. Antarctic expeditions, interested persons were allowed to send letters with enclosed envelopes to the base. Here commemorative cachets were added to their enclosures which were then returned to the senders. These souvenir philatelic covers are readily available at low cost.

In popular culture

Operation Highjump has become a topic among UFO conspiracy theorists, who claim it was a covert US military operation to conquer alleged secret underground Nazi facilities in Antarctica and capture the German Vril flying discs, or Thule mercury-powered spaceship prototypes. This has been the central theme of Robert Doherty's "Area 51" series of novels.

An esoteric Hitlerist legend recounts that Adolf Hitler did not commit suicide in 1945, but fled to Argentina, then to an SS base under the ice in New Swabia during the early 1950s where he resumed his career as a painter. According to this account, Operation Highjump, the largest expedition mounted to the Antarctic, is claimed to have been sent to wipe out the Nazi presence.

Formation of Participating Units

Eastern Group (Task Group 68.3)

CAPT George J. Dufek, USN, Commanding.

• Seaplane Tender USS Pine Island. CAPT Henry H. Caldwell, USN, Commanding.
• Destroyer USS Brownson. CDR H.M.S. Gimber, USN, Commanding.
• Tanker USS Canisteo. CAPT Edward K. Walker, USN, Commanding.

Western Group (Task Group 68.1)

CAPT Charles A. Bond, USN, Commanding.

• Seaplane Tender USS Currituck. CAPT John E. Clark, USN, Commanding.
• Destroyer USS Henderson. CAPT C.F. Bailey, USN, Commanding.
• Tanker USS Cacapon. CAPT R.A. Mitchell, USN, Commanding.

Central Group (Task Group 68.2)

RADM Richard H. Cruzen, USN , Commanding Officer.

• Communications and Flaship USS Mount Olympus. CAPT R.R. Moore, USN, Commanding.
• Supplyship USS Yancey. CAPT J.E. Cohn, USN, Commanding.
• Supplyship USS Merrick. CAPT John J. Hourihan, USN, Commanding.
• Submarine USS Sennet. CDR Joseph B. Icenhower, USN, Commanding.
• Icebreaker USS Burton Island. CDR Gerald L. Ketchum, USN, Commanding.
• Icebreaker USCGC Northwind. CAPT Charles W. Thomas, USCG, Commanding.

Carrier Group (Task Group 68.4)

RADM Richard E. Byrd Jr. USN, (Ret), Officer in Charge.

• Aircraft carrier and Flagship USS Philippine Sea. CAPT Delbert S. Cornwell, USN, Commanding.

Base Group (Task Group 68.5)

CAPT Clifford M. Campbell, USN, Commanding.

• Base Little America IV.

See also

• List of Antarctic expeditions
• Military activity in the Antarctic
• New Swabia

References

• Navy Proudly Ends Its Antarctic Mission; Air National Guard Assumes 160-Year Task. Chicago Tribune; February 22, 1998.
• Antarctic Mayday: The Crash of the George One Read the story of one of the survivors - James Haskin(Robbie) Robbins
• Operation Highjump: A Tragedy on Ice
• Where Hell Freezes Over by David A. Kearns (son of one of the survivors of the George One crash); Published 2005
• Nexus Magazine Volume 12, three part Article BRITAIN'S SECRET WAR IN ANTARCTICA

External links

• The Secret Land, 1948 documentary film about Operation Highjump
• Article discussing enigma of operation highjump
• Photos from Operation Highjump
• EzineArticles.com, Article# 2114562 - Operation Highjump - Longhaul Nazi UFO's in Antarctica
• George One Recovery Information
• Families Urge Navy to Bring Sailors Home
• Should Navy Recover Bodies of Sailors
• Ship cover site with good history
• Colin, Summerhayes; Beeching, Peter (2007). "Hitler's Antarctic base: the myth and the reality". Polar Record. 43 (1): 1. doi:10.1017/S003224740600578X. {{cite journal}}: |format= requires |url= (help)