Evening bell:
The Fellowship of the Passing Day On October 29, 1988, the Soviet-American Operation Breakthrough, a rescue effort to rescue three whales trapped in ice in the Arctic, ended. Twenty days of heroic efforts by the Inuit from the village of Barrow proved fruitless. The Americans then called the icebreaker Admiral Makrob and the diesel-electric ship Vladimir Arsenyev for assistance. Excerpts from the notes of Nikolai Shtelin, a hydrologist on the Makroob, were published in Rodina magazine. The Makarov, under the command of Sergei Rashtov (right in the photo), was assigned the crucial task of breaking the ice ridges (if only there was enough depth!), while the Arsenev was tasked with digging a channel through the shallows to reach the whales. Only two of the poor remained. photo and sic. The smallest, a whale calf named Bo, died of exhaustion. - As expected, we failed to take the first ice hammock on the first try. Once we got the hang of it, we hit more aggressively, loaded the nine diesel engines to full power and changed the direction of the hit. Two hours of non-stop pounding. - When they broke through the ice, we almost crawled on our stomachs - 60 cm remained below the kid (the norm is 5 meters). - Taking control of us, the Arsenive began to cut a channel. But the 900 meters to the whale hole turned out to be inaccessible. The next morning, we threw the last load, almost to the point of losing stability. Now the slightest mistake threatened to backfire. - Arsnaev's captain, Ruslan Zainigbadinov (on the left in the photo), managed to steer the ship through the eye of a needle and reach the last ice hole. When Futo and Siko emerged from the ice chips, they were greeted with applause. Carefully the whales moved towards the exit, followed by an enthusiastic crowd. That evening, President Reagan called Barrow and congratulated everyone on the successful completion of the operation.