Word: norwegians
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Called off last week by the U.S. Air Force was the great capsule hunt in the icy wilds of Spitzbergen. There-somewhere-the telltale orange parachute with the instrumented nose capsule of Discoverer II was seen to drop into the mountains after it was ejected from orbit. And there Norwegian coal miners, U.S. air-rescue squadrons and helpful Norwegian helicopter pilots scoured the bleak, white mountains for eight days (TIME, April 27). The search-in which residents of a local Russian mining community participated on their own-was halted after the arrival of Colonel Theodore Tatum, air-rescue boss...
...search disappointed many Norwegians, who felt that the U.S. had not given it a proper try. "I don't understand it," said a Norwegian helicopter pilot. "We could have continued the search for days. I told the Americans that it is naturally difficult to find an object like that, but that I was not pessimistic." Around Longyearbyen, many miners refused to give up. Their optimism was kept alive partly by a $500 reward offered by Lockheed Aircraft Corp., one of the builders of the Discoverer II, partly by the fervent hope that they could beat Russian search parties...
...late in the evening when Major General Tufte Johnsen, commander of the Norwegian air force's northern command, picked up the telephone. Calling him from California was an old friend, U.S. Air Force Lieut. Colonel Charles A. Mathison. The colonel's bizarre message: Be on the lookout for a recoverable capsule likely to float down from outer space at about 0230 or 0300, Spitzbergen time. Thus last week began one of the most incredible treasure hunts in the short, incredible history of space...
Sighting. Norway's General Johnsen, nevertheless, knew just what to do. He telephoned his friend Knut Deinboll, director of the Great Norwegian Mining Co. at Longyearbyen (pop. 800). Deinboll, a former Norwegian air force flyer, had two hours to set up a search. He flashed the mining company's office at the sister village of Ny-Alesund (pop. 1,000), then set out to rouse the sleeping villagers of Longyearbyen. He organized a dozen ski patrols of two and three men each, assigned them to nearby mountain lookout positions. Soon three men rushed back from their patrol...
Signaling U.S. officials in Oslo, local miners quickly began work on extending a small glacier airstrip for the use of U.S. planes. Then the U.S. Air Force got permission from the Norwegian government to send out search planes from its base near Reykjavic, Iceland and from U.S. bases in Germany. Later, two U.S. C-130 cargo planes touched down at the makeshift runway at Longyearbyen, unloaded two helicopters that the U.S. hurriedly leased from the Norwegian government...