"Operation Icicle" Progressing

OPERATION Icicle" is currently in high gear. To the Army Corps of Engineers this means that the relocation of its Cold Regions Research and Engineering Laboratory in Hanover is nearly completed. At the same time the town of Hanover is opening wide its doors to welcome some 120 civilian personnel employed on the CRREL project.

The $2,500,000 government installation on Lyme Road will be ready for total occupancy in January. When completed it will combine two present Army facilities: the Snow, Ice and Permafrost Research Establishment in Wilmette and Evanston, Ill., and the Arctic Construction and Frost Effects Laboratory in Waltham, Mass. The College donated the 18-acre tract of land on which CRREL is being built.

Temporary CRREL headquarters have been set up in Hartford, Vt., where Col. William L. Nungessor, in charge of the project, is now engaged with the many details which occur when two Army installations are moved.

A large number of staff families have already located homes in Hanover and in the surrounding towns of Lebanon, Norwich and Hartford. When completed the project will employ about 160 scientists, technicians, and other personnel, including about thirty to be hired after the move is made.

The moving of glacial ice, snow, ice crystals, and permafrost from Wilmette to Hanover was officially termed "Operation Icicle" by the Corps of Engineers, and refers to CRREL's most priceless cargo, glacial ice. This was transported in cylindrical cores, the shape given the ice when extracted from the ground by drill machinery. The ice and other materials have been gathered from the polar extremities of the earth over the last nine years.

The new CRREL facilities provide 22 "cold rooms' as compared with three in the Wilmette installation. The new building also contains a large, well-equipped soil laboratory, as well as physics, chemistry, electronics, air photo, and environmental laboratories.

One of the main purposes of the CRREL project is to find the best way to construct buildings, lay air strips, and live and fight in polar and subpolar regions. In keeping with this purpose, three members of the CRREL staff left in October for a three-month research expedition at the South Pole.

An aerial view of the Army Engineers' CRREL establishment on Lyme Road