Word: arctics
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...effectiveness goes down about 2%. Near 50 below, all his energy is used just to stay alive. But if the Western Hemisphere ever has to defend itself against an attack launched over the Pole, Western man must learn (as his enemy will presumably have learned) how to survive in Arctic weather, and still have energy left to fight. How to acquire that skill is the problem before the Joint U.S.Canadian Cold Weather Testing Station at Churchill...
Although Churchill is 550 miles south of the Arctic Circle, and its temperature rarely drops lower than 40° below zero F., it is an ideal spot for pitting men and machines against the cold. Located where the tree line meets Hudson Bay, it offers both timberland and tundra. And what it lacks in low temperatures is more than made up by its high winds...
...enough caribou to uniform an army. White men have tried piling on layers of clothing, which keep out cold but keep in sweat-and if the sweat freezes, so does the man. Churchill's commanding officer, Lieut. Colonel A. James Tedlie, showed Claxton the New Look for Arctic infantrymen...
Even if all the machines ran like clockwork, man in the Arctic would still be inefficient. A rifle will fire, but it takes a man to aim it and press the trigger-and a man wearing four layers of mittens has no trigger finger. Neither can he work small knobs on radio or radar sets...
...officers and men who have lived and worked in Churchill, the problems of large-scale Arctic war still seem almost insurmountable. Even if the cold could be licked, the difficulties of transport and supply would remain, and an Arctic army, like any other, must travel on its stomach. Dr. Omond M. Solandt, head of Canada's Defense Research Board, put it this way: "Today everybody knows it's impossible to fight a war in the Arctic, but we have to prepare for the man who doesn't know it's impossible...