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111-417: Pituffik Space Base ( / b iː d uː ˈ f iː k / bee-doo- FEEK ; Greenlandic: [pitufːik] ; IATA : THU , ICAO : BGTL ), formerly Thule Air Base ( / t uː l iː / or / t uː l eɪ / ), is a United States Space Force 's base located on the northwest coast of Greenland . It is the northernmost installation of the U.S. Armed Forces , 1,210 km (750 mi) north of

222-609: A British overseas territory of the United Kingdom , albeit also claimed by Argentina (in Spanish Islas Tule del Sur ). The Southern Thule islands were occupied by Argentina in 1976. The occupation was not militarily contested by the British until the 1982 Falklands War , during which time British sovereignty was restored by a contingent of Royal Marines . Currently the three islands are uninhabited. In 1910,

333-401: A B-52G bomber carrying four nuclear weapons crashed just outside Thule – see below. Thule is the location where the fastest recorded sea level surface wind speed in the world was measured, when a peak speed of 333 km/h (207 mph) was recorded on 8 March 1972, immediately prior to the instrument's destruction. Thule became an Air Force Space Command base in 1982. Today Thule is home to

444-415: A dispersal base for B-36 Peacemaker and B-47 Stratojet aircraft during the 1950s, as well as providing an ideal site to test the operability and maintainability of these weapon systems in extreme cold weather. Similar operations were also conducted with B-52 Stratofortress aircraft in the 1950s and 1960s. In 1954, the 378 m (1,240 ft) Globecom Tower , a tower for military radio communication,

555-461: A hundred years hermits sailing from our country, Ireland, have lived. But just as they were always deserted from the beginning of the world, so now because of the Northman pirates they are emptied of anchorites, and filled with countless sheep and very many diverse kinds of sea-birds. I have never found these islands mentioned in the authorities". The British surveyor Charles Vallancey (1731–1812)

666-544: A missionary and trading post in north-western Greenland, which he named "Thule" (later Qaanaaq ). Thule formerly gave its name to the northernmost United States Air Force base, Thule Air Base in northwest Greenland. With the transfer of the base to the US Space Force , its name was changed to Pituffik Space Base on April 6, 2023. The Greek explorer Pytheas of the Greek city of Massalia (now Marseille , France)

777-487: A mountain-top perhaps the sun would never have been hidden from them. In the middle of that moment of time it is midnight at the equator, and thus, on the contrary, I think that at the winter solstice and for a few days about it dawn appears only for the smallest space at Thule, when it is noon at the equator. Therefore those authors are wrong and give wrong information, who have written that the sea will be solid about Thule, and that day without night continues right through from

888-567: A new airport is built, replacing the old one, leaving the city's new "major" airport (or the only remaining airport) code to no longer correspond with the city's name. The original airport in Nashville, Tennessee, was built in 1936 as part of the Works Progress Administration and called Berry Field with the designation, BNA. A new facility known as Nashville International Airport was built in 1987 but still uses BNA. This

999-478: A research rocket firing site. It also was essential in the construction and resupply of High Arctic weather stations, including CFS Alert ( Alert Airport ) and Station Nord . In 1818, Sir John Ross 's expedition made first contact with nomadic Inuktun in the area. James Saunders 's expedition aboard HMS North Star was marooned in North Star Bay in 1849–50 and named landmarks. Robert Peary built

1110-636: A secret airborne nuclear alert crashed and burned on the ice near Thule Air Base. The impact detonated the high explosives in the primary units of all four of the B28 nuclear bombs it carried, but nuclear and thermonuclear reactions did not take place due to the PAL and fail-safe mechanisms in the weapons, thus preventing the actual detonation of the weapons themselves. The resulting fire caused extensive radioactive contamination . More than 700 Danish civilians and US military personnel worked under hazardous conditions,

1221-521: A smaller aboriginal tribe of Britain which the people on Thule had encountered. Petrarch , in the fourteenth century, wrote in his Epistolae familiares ("Familiar Letters") that Thule lay in the unknown regions of the far north-west. A madrigal by Thomas Weelkes , entitled Thule (1600), describes it with reference to the Icelandic volcano Hekla : Thule, the period of cosmography, Doth vaunt of Hecla , whose sulphureous fire Doth melt

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1332-516: A sort of mixture of all three of the consistency of a jellyfish in which one can neither walk nor sail, holding everything together, so to speak." The first century BC Greek astronomer Geminus of Rhodes claimed that the name Thule went back to an archaic word for the polar night phenomenon – "the place where the sun goes to rest". Dionysius Periegetes in his De situ habitabilis orbis also touched upon this subject, as did Martianus Capella . Avienius in his Ora Maritima added that during

1443-526: A supply station for the DYE bases. In 1957 construction began on four Nike Missile sites around the base, and they and their radar systems were operational by the end of 1958. In 1961, a Ballistic Missile Early Warning System (BMEWS) radar was constructed at "J-Site", 21 km (13 mi) northeast of main base. BMEWS was developed by the RCA Corporation in order to provide North America warning of

1554-513: A support station by a protected harbor at the foot of iconic Mount Dundas in 1892. It served as a base camp for his expeditions and attracted a permanent population. In 1910 explorer Knud Rasmussen established a missionary and trading post there. He called the site "Thule" after classical ultima Thule ; the Inuit called it Umanaq ("heart-shaped"), and the site is commonly called "Dundas" today. The United States abandoned its territorial claims in

1665-584: A transpolar missile attack from the Russian mainland and submarine-launched missiles from the Arctic and North Atlantic oceans. At this time, Thule was at its peak with a population of about 10,000. Starting in July 1965, there was a general downsizing of activities at Thule. The base host unit, the 4683d Air Defense Wing , was discontinued. By January 1968, the population of Thule was down to 3,370. On 21 January 1968,

1776-489: A two-hour head start, a B-47 would catch up with them at the northeast coastline of Greenland where two would offload fuel to top off the B-47's tanks (the third was an air spare). The B-47 would then fly seven hours of reconnaissance, while the tankers would return to Thule, refuel, and three would again fly to rendezvous with the returning B-47 at northeast Greenland. The B-47 averaged ten hours and 4,500 km (2,800 mi) in

1887-477: A wild weird clime, that lieth, sublime, Out of Space – out of Time. John Henry Wilbrandt Stuckenberg wrote on the subject in 1885: What is the mind’s ultima Thule ? What substance must be regarded as first, and therefore as the seed of the universe? What is the eternal Something, of which the temporal is but a manifestation? Matter? Spirit? Matter and Spirit? Something behind both and from which they have sprung, neither Matter nor Spirit, but their Creator? Or

1998-509: Is GSN and its IATA code is SPN, and some coincide with IATA codes of non-U.S. airports. Canada's unusual codes—which bear little to no similarity with any conventional abbreviation to the city's name—such as YUL in Montréal , and YYZ in Toronto , originated from the two-letter codes used to identify weather reporting stations in the 1930s. The letters preceding the two-letter code follow

2109-640: Is a U.S. Space Force installation in Greenland, near the base, and has a Remote Tracking Station (callsign: Polar Orbiting Geophysical Observatory (POGO)) of the Satellite Control Network. It was originally the classified 6594th Test Wing 's Operating Location 5 designated by Air Force Systems Command on 15 October 1961: the station was operational on 30 March 1962, with "transportable antenna vans parked in an old Strategic Air Command bomb assembly building." The permanent RTS equipment

2220-476: Is a phonological similarity between Thule and the root tule- "of fire" in Estonian (and other Finnic languages ). A crater lake named Kaali on the island appears to have been formed by a meteor strike in prehistory. This meteor strike is often linked to Estonian folklore which has it that Saaremaa was a place where the sun at one point "went to rest". Nazi Germany leadership considered Iceland to be

2331-514: Is also host to Detachment 1 of the 23rd Space Operations Squadron , part of the 50th Space Wing 's global satellite control network, as well as operating many new weapons systems. In addition, the airfield boasts a 3,047 by 42 m (9,997 by 138 ft) asphalt runway, with 3,000 US and international flights per year. A delegation from the NATO Parliamentary Assembly visited Thule in early September 2010 and were told by

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2442-528: Is also host to Detachment 1 of the 23rd Space Operations Squadron , part of the Space Delta 6 's global satellite control network. The airfield's 3,000 m (10,000 ft) runway handles more than 3,000 US and international flights per year. The base is also home to the northernmost deep water port in the world. To assist with port operations, Pituffik is home to the only tugboat in the Department of

2553-617: Is available. However, many railway administrations have their own list of codes for their stations, such as the list of Amtrak station codes . Airport codes arose out of the convenience that the practice brought pilots for location identification in the 1930s. Initially, pilots in the United States used the two-letter code from the National Weather Service (NWS) for identifying cities. This system became unmanageable for cities and towns without an NWS identifier, and

2664-523: Is different from the name in English, yet the airport code represents only the English name. Examples include: Due to scarcity of codes, some airports are given codes with letters not found in their names: The use of 'X' as a filler letter is a practice to create three-letter identifiers when more straightforward options were unavailable: Some airports in the United States retained their NWS ( National Weather Service ) codes and simply appended an X at

2775-513: Is in conjunction to rules aimed to avoid confusion that seem to apply in the United States, which state that "the first and second letters or second and third letters of an identifier may not be duplicated with less than 200 nautical miles separation." Thus, Washington, D.C. area's three airports all have radically different codes: IAD for Washington–Dulles , DCA for Washington–Reagan (District of Columbia Airport), and BWI for Baltimore (Baltimore–Washington International, formerly BAL). Since HOU

2886-468: Is no true power thine." In the early seventh century, Isidore of Seville wrote in his Etymologies that: Ultima Thule ( Thyle ultima ) is an island of the Ocean in the northwestern region, beyond Britannia, taking its name from the sun, because there the sun makes its summer solstice, and there is no daylight beyond ( ultra ) this. Hence its sea is sluggish and frozen. Isidore distinguished this from

2997-543: Is not followed outside the United States: In addition, since three letter codes starting with Q are widely used in radio communication, cities whose name begins with "Q" also had to find alternate codes, as in the case of: IATA codes should not be confused with the FAA identifiers of U.S. airports. Most FAA identifiers agree with the corresponding IATA codes, but some do not, such as Saipan , whose FAA identifier

3108-456: Is provided by Schuyler Line Navigation Company, a US flag ocean carrier. Schuyler Line operates under government contract to supply sustainment and building supplies to the base. Pituffik has a tundra climate ( ET ) with long, severely cold winters lasting most of the year and short and cool summers. Precipitation is very low year round, but peaks during summer. The structures of the base are built on permafrost which makes them vulnerable to

3219-400: Is the first to have written of Thule, after his travels between 330 and 320 BC. Pytheas mentioned going to Thule in his now lost work , On The Ocean Τὰ περὶ τοῦ Ὠκεανοῦ ( ta peri tou Okeanou ). L. Sprague de Camp wrote that "the city of Massalia... sent Pytheas to scout northern Europe to see where their trade-goods were coming from." Descriptions of some of his discoveries have survived in

3330-533: Is the most northerly location mentioned in ancient Greek and Roman literature and cartography . Modern interpretations have included Orkney , Shetland , Northern Scotland , the island of Saaremaa (Ösel) in Estonia, and the Norwegian island of Smøla . In classical and medieval literature , ultima Thule (Latin "farthest Thule") acquired a metaphorical meaning of any distant place located beyond

3441-509: Is there in reality neither Matter nor Spirit, but only an agnostic Cause of the phenomena erroneously assigned by us to body and mind? After spending many years in profoundly investigating this problem, I have at last struck bottom. Unhesitatingly and unconditionally I adopt materialism, and declare it to be the sole and all-sufficient explanation of the universe. This affords the only thoroughly scientific system; and nowhere but in its legitimate conclusions can thought find suitable resting-place,

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3552-416: Is used for William P. Hobby Airport , the new Houston–Intercontinental became IAH. The code BKK was originally assigned to Bangkok–Don Mueang and was later transferred to Suvarnabhumi Airport , while the former adopted DMK. The code ISK was originally assigned to Gandhinagar Airport (Nashik's old airport) and later on transferred to Ozar Airport (Nashik's current airport). Shanghai–Hongqiao retained

3663-743: The Anglo-Saxon monk the Venerable Bede in De ratione temporum , the Landnámabók , by the anonymous Historia Norwegie , and by the German cleric Adam of Bremen in his Deeds of Bishops of the Hamburg Church , where they cite both ancient writers' use of Thule as well as new knowledge since the end of antiquity. All these authors also understood that other islands were situated to

3774-730: The Arctic Circle and 1,524 km (947 mi) from the North Pole . Pituffik's Arctic environment includes icebergs in North Star Bay , two islands ( Saunders Island and Wolstenholme Island ), a polar ice sheet, and Wolstenholme Fjord – the only place on Earth where four active glaciers join. The base is home to a substantial portion of the global network of missile warning sensors of Space Delta 4 , and space surveillance and space control sensors of Space Delta 2 , providing space awareness and advanced missile detection capabilities to North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD),

3885-555: The Army Air Forces set up weather stations Scoresbysund (Bluie East-3) on the east coast around the southern tip of Greenland, and Thule ( Bluie West-6) to be operated by Danish personnel. Many other sites were set up, but BW-6, isolated in the far North, was then of very minor importance. After liberation, Denmark ratified the Kauffmann treaty but began efforts to take over US installations. Nonetheless, in summer 1946,

3996-571: The Canadian transcontinental railroads were built, each station was assigned its own two-letter Morse code : When the Canadian government established airports, it used the existing railway codes for them as well. If the airport had a weather station, authorities added a "Y" to the front of the code, meaning "Yes" to indicate it had a weather station or some other letter to indicate it did not. When international codes were created in cooperation with

4107-760: The Geats ( Gautoi ) in present-day Sweden and the Sami people ( Scrithiphini ). He also writes that when the Herules returned, they passed the Warini and the Danes and then crossed the sea to Thule, where they settled beside the Geats. The Irish monk Dicuil in his "Liber De Mensura Orbis Terrae" (written circa 825) after quoting various classical sources describing Thule, says "It is now thirty years since clerics, who had lived on

4218-621: The Kuiper belt object 486958 Arrokoth , a fly-by target of the NASA probe New Horizons , was nicknamed "Ultima Thule". The fly-by took place on 1 January 2019, and was the most distant encounter between a spacecraft and a planetary body. An official name for the body has since been assigned by the International Astronomical Union . In the metaphorical sense of a far-off land or an unattainable goal, Virgil coined

4329-640: The Orcades "ran red with Saxon slaughter; Thule was warm with the blood of Picts ; ice-bound Hibernia [Ireland] wept for the heaps of slain Scots ". This implies that Thule was Scotland . But in Against Rufinias , the Second Poem , Claudian writes of "Thule lying icebound beneath the pole-star". Jordanes in his Getica also wrote that Thule sat under the pole star . The "known world' of

4440-539: The "borders of the known world". By the Late Middle Ages and the early modern period , the Greco-Roman Thule was often identified with the real Iceland or Greenland . Sometimes Ultima Thule was a Latin name for Greenland, when Thule was used for Iceland. By the late 19th century, however, Thule was frequently identified with Norway. In 1910, the explorer Knud Rasmussen established

4551-512: The 821st Air Base Group, which exercises air base support responsibilities within the Thule Defense Area. The base hosts the 12th Space Warning Squadron (21st Operations Group, 21st Space Wing), a Ballistic Missile Early Warning Site designed to detect and track ICBMs launched against North America. Missile warning and space surveillance information flows to NORAD command centers located at Peterson Space Force Base , Colorado . Thule

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4662-492: The Air Force. In the summertime, the 71-foot tugboat escorts fuel tankers and cargo ships, aligns them with the pier, and moves icebergs out of the way as vessels enter North Star Bay. The tugboat is also used for sightseeing tours of the surrounding bays and fjords during the summer. In the winter, it is hauled onto shore. In 2020, the tugboat was used to save a sinking ship and its crew of six 50 kilometers south of base, towing

4773-453: The Danish government again relocated 130 inhabitants of "Old Thule", settling them 97 km (60 mi) north in a newly constructed village also named Thule (colloquially "New Thule", now Qaanaaq ). In a Danish Supreme Court judgment of 28 November 2003 the move was considered an expropriative intervention. During the proceedings it was recognized by the Danish government that the movement

4884-791: The Defense of Greenland in Washington, D.C. , on the symbolically chosen date of 9 April 1941. The treaty, denounced by the Danish government, allowed the United States to operate military bases in Greenland "for as long as there is agreement" that the threat to North America existed. Beginning in the summer of 1941, the US Coast Guard and the War Department established weather and radio stations at Narsarsuaq Airport ( Bluie West-1 ), Sondrestrom Air Base (Bluie West-8), Ikateq ( Bluie East Two ), and Gronnedal (Bluie West-9). In 1943

4995-704: The Elder published his Natural History in which he also cites Pytheas' claim (in Book II, Chapter 75) that Thule is a six-day sail north of Britain. Then, when discussing the islands around Britain, he writes: "The farthest of all, which are known and spoke of, is Thule; in which there be no nights at all, as we have declared, about mid-summer, namely when the Sun passes through the sign Cancer; and contrariwise no days in mid-winter: and each of these times they suppose, do last six months, all day, or all night." Finally, in refining

5106-535: The Europeans came to be viewed as bounded in the east by India and in the west by Thule, as expressed in the Consolation of Philosophy (III, 203 = metrus V, v. 7) by Boethius . "For though the earth, as far as India's shore, tremble before the laws you give, though Thule bow to your service on earth's farthest bounds, yet if thou canst not drive away black cares, if thou canst not put to flight complaints, then

5217-670: The Thule area and the birthplace of the ancient Aryan race , with senior Nazi leader Heinrich Himmler even sending an expedition team to Iceland in 1938 with hopes of finding a temple for Nordic godds like Thor and Odin . In 2010, scientists from the Institute of Geodesy and Geoinformation Science at Technische Universität Berlin claimed to have identified persistent errors in calculation that had occurred in attempts by modern geographers to superimpose geographic coordinate systems upon Ptolemaic maps. After correcting for these errors,

5328-570: The U.S. For example, several airports in Alaska have scheduled commercial service, such as Stebbins and Nanwalek , which use FAA codes instead of ICAO codes. Thus, neither system completely includes all airports with scheduled service. Some airports are identified in colloquial speech by their IATA code. Examples include LAX and JFK . Thule Thule ( / ˈ θ j uː l iː / ‹See Tfd› Greek : Θούλη , translit.   Thúlē ; Latin : Thūlē also spelled as Thylē )

5439-597: The United States Space Force, and joint partners. Pituffik Space Base is also home to the 821st Space Base Group and is responsible for space base support within the Pituffik Defense Area for the multinational population of "Team Pituffik". The base hosts the 12th Space Warning Squadron (12 SWS) which operates a Ballistic Missile Early Warning System (BMEWS) designed to detect and track ICBMs launched against North America. The base

5550-481: The United States, because "Y" was seldom used in the United States, Canada simply used the weather station codes for its airports, changing the "Y" to a "Z" if it conflicted with an airport code already in use. The result is that most major Canadian airport codes start with "Y" followed by two letters in the city's name (for example, YOW for O tta w a , YWG for W innipe g , YYC for C algar y , or YVR for V ancouve r ), whereas other Canadian airports append

5661-489: The air, unless unpredictable weather closed Thule. In that case the three tankers and the B-47 had to additionally fly to one of three equidistant alternates: England, Alaska , or Labrador . All of this sometimes took place in moonless, 24-hour Arctic darkness , December through February. These flights demonstrated the capabilities of the US Strategic Air Command to Soviet Anti-Air Defense . In 1959,

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5772-498: The airbase was the main staging point for the construction of Camp Century , some 240 km (150 mi) from the base. Carved into the ice, and powered by a nuclear reactor , PM-2A Camp Century was officially a scientific research base, but in reality was the site of the top secret Project Iceworm . The camp operated from 1959 until 1967. In the late 1950s, the DEW 1 to 4 were built as "weather stations". Thule Air Base would act as

5883-440: The airport itself instead of the city it serves, while another code is reserved which refers to the city itself which can be used to search for flights to any of its airports. For instance: Or using a code for the city in one of the major airports and then assigning another code to another airport: When different cities with the same name each have an airport, they need to be assigned different codes. Examples include: Sometimes,

5994-418: The airport's former name, such as Orlando International Airport 's MCO (for Mc C o y Air Force Base), or Chicago's O'Hare International Airport , which is coded ORD for its original name: Or char d Field. In rare cases, the code comes from the airport's unofficial name, such as Kahului Airport 's OGG (for local aviation pioneer Jimmy H ogg ). In large metropolitan areas, airport codes are often named after

6105-593: The area in 1917 in connection with the purchase of the Virgin Islands . Denmark assumed control of the village in 1937. A cluster of huts known as Pituffik ("the place the dogs are tied") stood on the wide plain where the base was built in 1951; a main base street was named Pituffik Boulevard. The population was forcibly relocated to Thule. Later in 1953, the USAF planned to construct an air defense site near that village, and in order to limit contact with soldiers,

6216-404: The base commander that, at that time (summer), approximately 600 personnel were serving at Thule, a mix of mostly US and Danish active duty personnel and contractors. There is only a brief period each year in the summer when sea ice thins sufficiently to send supply ships to the base. The US sends one heavy supply ship each summer in what is called Operation Pacer Goose . In 2020, Thule Air Base

6327-439: The clock. The workers lived on board the ships until quarters were built. Once they moved into the quarters, the ships returned home. On 16 June 1951, the base was accidentally discovered by French cultural anthropologist and geographer Jean Malaurie and his Inuit friend Kutikitsoq, on their way back from the geomagnetic North Pole. Originally established as a Strategic Air Command installation, Thule would periodically serve as

6438-576: The close-packed ranks in his scythe-bearing chariot", implying a link to the Picts (whose exonym is derived from the Latin pictus "painted"). Martial (AD 40 – 104) talks about "blue" and "painted Britons", just like Julius Caesar . Claudian (AD 370 – 404) also believed that the inhabitants of Thule were Picts. A work of prose fiction in Greek by Antonius Diogenes entitled The Wonders Beyond Thule appeared c. AD 150 or earlier. (Gerald N. Sandy, in

6549-502: The code SHA, while the newer Shanghai–Pudong adopted PVG. The opposite was true for Berlin : the airport Berlin–Tegel used the code TXL, while its smaller counterpart Berlin–Schönefeld used SXF; the Berlin Brandenburg Airport has the airport code BER, which is also part of its branding. The airports of Hamburg (HAM) and Hannover (HAJ) are less than 100 nautical miles (190 km) apart and therefore share

6660-716: The crown jewel owing to its location across the Pole from the USSR , as well as its merit of being the northernmost port to be reliably resupplied by ship. Thule became a key point in American nuclear retaliation strategy. Strategic Air Command (SAC) bombers flying over the Arctic presented less risk of early warning than using bases in the United Kingdom. Defensively, Thule could serve as a base for intercepting bomber attacks along

6771-709: The details of the accident are still classified, some information was released by the US authorities under the Freedom of Information Act . After reviewing these files, an investigative reporter from BBC News claimed in May 2007 that the USAF was unable to account for one of the weapons. In 2009, the assertions of the BBC were refuted by a Danish report after a review of the available declassified documentation. As of 2010, one airline provided commercial service to Pituffik. Ocean transportation

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6882-400: The distressed ship back to the port at Pituffik. Pituffik Space Base has served as the regional hub for nearby installations, including Cape Atholl ( LORAN station), Camp Century (Ice Cap Camp), Camp TUTO (Ice Cap Approach Ramp and Airstrip), Sites 1 and 2 (Ice Cap Radar Stations), P-Mountain (radar and communications site), J-Site (BMEWS), North and South Mountains (research sites), and

6993-764: The effects of climate change . IATA airport code The assignment of these codes is governed by IATA Resolution 763, and it is administered by the IATA's headquarters in Montreal , Canada. The codes are published semi-annually in the IATA Airline Coding Directory. IATA provides codes for airport handling entities, and for certain railway stations. Alphabetical lists of airports sorted by IATA code are available. A list of railway station codes , shared in agreements between airlines and rail lines such as Amtrak , SNCF , and Deutsche Bahn ,

7104-886: The end. Examples include: A lot of minor airfields without scheduled passenger traffic have ICAO codes but not IATA codes, since the four letter codes allow more number of codes, and IATA codes are mainly used for passenger services such as tickets, and ICAO codes by pilots. In the US, such airfields use FAA codes instead of ICAO. There are airports with scheduled service for which there are ICAO codes but not IATA codes, such as Nkhotakota Airport/Tangole Airport in Malawi or Chōfu Airport in Tokyo, Japan. There are also several minor airports in Russia (e.g., Omsukchan Airport ) which lack IATA codes and instead use internal Russian codes for booking. Flights to these airports cannot be booked through

7215-409: The explorer Knud Rasmussen established a missionary and trading post, which he named Thule (Inuit: Avannaa ) on Greenland. The Thule people , the predecessor of modern Inuit Greenlanders , were named after the Thule region. In 1953, Avannaa became Thule Air Base , operated by United States Air Force . The population was forced to resettle to New Thule (Qaanaaq), 110 kilometres (67 mi) to

7326-557: The first three letters of the city in which it is located, for instance: The code may also be a combination of the letters in its name, such as: Sometimes the airport code reflects pronunciation, rather than spelling, namely: For many reasons, some airport codes do not fit the normal scheme described above. Some airports, for example, cross several municipalities or regions, and therefore, use codes derived from some of their letters, resulting in: Other airports—particularly those serving cities with multiple airports—have codes derived from

7437-425: The following format: Most large airports in Canada have codes that begin with the letter "Y", although not all "Y" codes are Canadian (for example, YUM for Yuma, Arizona , and YNT for Yantai , China), and not all Canadian airports start with the letter "Y" (for example, ZBF for Bathurst, New Brunswick ). Many Canadian airports have a code that starts with W, X or Z, but none of these are major airports. When

7548-545: The form of " YYZ ", a song by the rock band Rush , which utilizes the Morse code signal as a musical motif. Some airports have started using their IATA codes as brand names , such as Calgary International Airport (YYC) and Vancouver International Airport (YVR). Numerous New Zealand airports use codes that contain the letter Z, to distinguish them from similar airport names in other countries. Examples include HLZ for Hamilton , ZQN for Queenstown , and WSZ for Westport . Predominantly, airport codes are named after

7659-452: The former without protective gear, to clean up the nuclear waste . In 1987, nearly 200 of the Danish workers tried unsuccessfully to sue the United States. Kaare Ulbak, chief consultant to the Danish National Institute of Radiation Hygiene, said Denmark had carefully studied the health of the Thule workers and found no evidence of increased mortality or cancer. The Pentagon maintained that all four weapons had been destroyed. Although many of

7770-414: The frozen clime and thaw the sky; Trinacrian Etna 's flames ascend not higher ... The English poet Ambrose Philips began, but did not complete, a poem concerning The Fable of Thule which he published in 1748. Thule is referred to in Goethe 's poem " Der König in Thule " (1774). The King and Kingdom of Thule referenced in the poem have no historical basis, nor did Goethe claim such. Goethe's poem

7881-428: The heart complete satisfaction, and life a perfect basis. Unless it accepts this system, philosophy will be but drift-wood, instead of the stream of thought whose current bears all truth. Materialism, thorough, consistent, and fearless, not the timid, reserved, and half-hearted kind, is the hope of the world. Kelly Miller , addressing the Hampton Alumni Association in 1899, explained that "Civilization may be defined as

7992-430: The international air booking systems or have international luggage transferred there, and thus, they are booked instead through the airline or a domestic booking system. Several heliports in Greenland have 3-letter codes used internally which might be IATA codes for airports in faraway countries. There are several airports with scheduled service that have not been assigned ICAO codes that do have IATA codes, especially in

8103-553: The introduction to his translation of Photius ' ninth century summary of the work, notes that this Thule most closely matches Iceland.) Cleomedes referenced Pytheas' journey to Thule, but added no new information. Early in the fifth century AD Claudian , in his poem, On the Fourth Consulship of the Emperor Honorius , Book VIII , rhapsodizes on the conquests of the emperor Theodosius I , declaring that

8214-413: The island from the first of February to the first of August, told me that not only at the summer solstice, but in the days round about it, the sun setting in the evening hides itself as though behind a small hill in such a way that there was no darkness in that very small space of time, and a man could do whatever he wished as though the sun were there, even remove lice from his shirt, and if they had been on

8325-576: The island's location, he places it along the most northerly parallel of those he describes: "Last of all is the Scythian parallel, from the Rhiphean hills into Thule: wherein (as we said) it is day and night continually by turns (for six months)." The Roman historian Tacitus , in his book chronicling the life of his father-in-law, Agricola , describes how the Romans knew that Britain (in which Agricola

8436-605: The islands of Britannia, Thanet ( Tanatos ), the Orkney ( Orcades ), and Ireland ( Scotia or Hibernia ). Isidore was to have a large influence upon Bede , who was later to mention Thule. By the Late Middle Ages , scholars were linking Iceland and/or Greenland to the name Thule and/or places reported by the Irish mariner Saint Brendan (in the 6th century) and other distant or mythical locations, such as Hy Brasil and Cockaigne . These scholars included works by Dicuil (see above),

8547-583: The men who have seen Britain and Ireland do not mention Thule, though they speak of other islands, small ones, about Britain". Strabo adds the following in Book 5: "Now Pytheas of Massilia tells us that Thule, the most northerly of the Britannic Islands, is farthest north, and that there the circle of the summer tropic is the same as the Arctic Circle. But from the other writers I learn nothing on

8658-612: The name of the airport itself, for instance: This is also true with some cities with a single airport (even if there is more than one airport in the metropolitan area of said city), such as BDL for Hartford, Connecticut 's B ra dl ey International Airport or Baltimore's BWI, for B altimore/ W ashington I nternational Airport ; however, the latter also serves Washington, D.C. , alongside Dulles International Airport (IAD, for I nternational A irport D ulles) and Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport (DCA, for D istrict of C olumbia A irport). The code also sometimes comes from

8769-601: The name of the king" with the United States, authorizing the United States to defend the Danish colonies on Greenland from German aggression – this agreement faced Kauffmann with a charge of high treason by the protectorate Government . The first US-sponsored installations at Thule were established after the US Secretary of State Cordell Hull and the defected Danish Minister to the United States Henrik Kauffmann signed The Agreement relating to

8880-567: The north ( 76°31′50.21″N 68°42′36.13″W  /  76.5306139°N 68.7100361°W  / 76.5306139; -68.7100361 only 840 NM from the North Pole ). The Scottish Gaelic for Iceland is Innis Tile , which literally means the "Isle of Thule". Thule lends its name to the 69th element in the periodic table , thulium . Ultima Thule is the name of a location in the Mammoth Cave system in Kentucky, United States. It

8991-416: The north of Britain which can be reached from the northern islands of Britain in a direct voyage of two days and nights with sails filled with a continuously favourable wind. A devout priest told me that in two summer days and the intervening night he sailed in a two-benched boat and entered one of them. There is another set of small islands, nearly all separated by narrow stretches of water; in these for nearly

9102-449: The north of Britain. Eustathius of Thessalonica , in his twelfth-century commentary on the Iliad , wrote that the inhabitants of Thule were at war with a tribe whose members dwarf-like, only 20 fingers in height. The American classical scholar Charles Anthon believed this legend may have been rooted in history (although exaggerated), if the dwarf or pygmy tribe were interpreted as being

9213-518: The northeastern approaches to Canada and the US. A board of Air Force officers headed by Gordon P. Saville made a recommendation to pursue a base at Thule in November 1950. It was subsequently supported by the Joint Chiefs of Staff and approved by President Truman . To replace the agreement entered into during World War II between the US and Denmark, a new agreement with respect to Greenland

9324-416: The one they are located in: Other airport codes are of obscure origin, and each has its own peculiarities: In Asia, codes that do not correspond with their city's names include Niigata 's KIJ , Nanchang 's KHN and Pyongyang 's FNJ . EuroAirport Basel Mulhouse Freiburg , which serves three countries, has three airport codes: BSL, MLH, EAP. Some cities have a name in their respective language which

9435-460: The original 1946 airstrip and across the bay from the historical Thule settlement, to which it is connected by an ice road. The joint Danish-American defense area, designated by treaty, also occupies considerable inland territory in addition to the air base itself. After the German occupation of Denmark on 9 April 1940, Henrik Kauffmann , Danish Ambassador to the United States, made an agreement "In

9546-403: The people get their beverage, also, from them. As for the grain, he says, since they have no pure sunshine, they pound it out in large storehouses, after first gathering in the ears thither; for the threshing floors become useless because of this lack of sunshine and because of the rains". The mid-first century Roman geographer Pomponius Mela placed Thule north of Scythia . In AD 77, Pliny

9657-782: The project was made public in September 1952. Construction for Thule Air Base began in 1951 and was completed in 1953. The construction of Thule is said to have been comparable in scale to the enormous effort required to build the Panama Canal . The United States Navy transported the bulk of men, supplies, and equipment from the naval shipyards in Norfolk, Virginia . On 6 June 1951 an armada of 120 ships sailed from Naval Station Norfolk . On board were 12,000 men and 300,000 tons of cargo. They arrived at Thule on 9 July 1951. Construction, aided by continuous daylight in summer, took place around

9768-550: The radio and weather station was enhanced with a gravel airstrip and an upper-air (balloon) observatory. This was part of an American-Canadian initiative to construct joint weather stations in the High Arctic. This station was under joint US-Danish operation. The location changed from the civilian village at Thule (Dundas) to mainland Pituffik. In 1946–1951, the airstrip played an important role in Arctic resupply, aerial mapping, research, and search-and rescue. The ratification of

9879-506: The same first and middle letters, indicating that this rule might be followed only in Germany. Many cities retain historical names in their airport codes, even after having undergone an official name/spelling/transliteration change: Some airport codes are based on previous names associated with a present airport, often with a military heritage. These include: Some airports are named for an administrative division or nearby city, rather than

9990-595: The scientists claimed, Ptolemy's Thule could be mapped to the Norwegian island of Smøla . In 1775, during his second voyage, Captain Cook named an island in the high southern latitudes of the South Atlantic Ocean , Southern Thule . The name is now used for a group of three southernmost islands in the South Sandwich Islands , one of which is called Thule Island . The island group became

10101-500: The station code of Malton, Mississauga , where it is located). YUL is used for Montréal–Trudeau (UL was the ID code for the beacon in the city of Kirkland , now the location of Montréal–Trudeau). While these codes make it difficult for the public to associate them with a particular Canadian city, some codes have become popular in usage despite their cryptic nature, particularly at the largest airports. Toronto's code has entered pop culture in

10212-616: The subject – neither that there exists a certain island by the name of Thule, nor whether the northern regions are inhabitable up to the point where the summer tropic becomes the Arctic Circle ." Strabo ultimately concludes, "Concerning Thule, our historical information is still more uncertain, on account of its outside position; for Thule, of all the countries that are named, is set farthest north." The inhabitants or people of Thule are described in most detail by Strabo (citing Pytheas): "the people (of Thule) live on millet and other herbs, and on fruits and roots; and where there are grain and honey,

10323-447: The summer on Thule night lasted only two hours, a clear reference to the midnight sun . Strabo , in his Geographica (c. AD 30), mentions Thule in describing Eratosthenes ' calculation of "the breadth of the inhabited world" and notes that Pytheas says it "is a six days' sail north of Britain, and is near the frozen sea". But he then doubts this claim, writing that Pytheas has "been found, upon scrutiny, to be an arch falsifier, but

10434-459: The term Ultima Thule ( Georgics , 1. 30) meaning "farthermost Thule". Seneca the Younger writes of a day when new lands will be discovered past Thule. This was later quoted widely in the context of Christopher Columbus ' voyages. The Roman poet Silius Italicus (AD 25 – 101) wrote that the people of Thule were painted blue: "the blue-painted native of Thule, when he fights, drives around

10545-579: The treaty in 1951 did not change much, except that the Danish national flag must be side by side with the US national flag on the base. In 1949, Denmark joined NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization) and abandoned its attempt to remove the United States bases. By the outbreak of the Korean War next year, the USAF embarked on a global program of base-building in which Thule (at the time) would be considered

10656-568: The two-letter code of the radio beacons that were the closest to the actual airport, such as YQX in Gander or YXS in Prince George . Four of the ten provincial capital airports in Canada have ended up with codes beginning with YY, including: Canada's largest airport is YYZ for Toronto Pearson (as YTZ was already allocated to Billy Bishop Toronto City Airport , the airport was given

10767-529: The use of two letters allowed only a few hundred combinations; a three-letter system of airport codes was implemented. This system allowed for 17,576 permutations, assuming all letters can be used in conjunction with each other. Since the U.S. Navy reserved "N" codes, and to prevent confusion with Federal Communications Commission broadcast call signs , which begin with "W" or "K", the airports of certain U.S. cities whose name begins with one of these letters had to adopt "irregular" airport codes: This practice

10878-410: The vernal to the autumnal equinox, and that vice versa night continues uninterrupted from the autumnal to the vernal equinox, since these men voyaged at the natural time of great cold, and entered the island and remaining on it had day and night alternately except for the period of the solstice. But one day's sail north of that they did find the sea frozen over. There are many other islands in the ocean to

10989-401: The works of later, often skeptical, authors. Polybius in his work The Histories (c. 140 BC), Book XXXIV, cites Pytheas as one "who has led many people into error by saying that he traversed the whole of Britain on foot, giving the island a circumference of forty thousand stadia , and telling us also about Thule, those regions in which there was no longer any proper land nor sea nor air, but

11100-494: Was famously set to music by Franz Schubert (D 367, 1816), Franz Liszt (S.531) and Robert Schumann (Op.67, No.1), and in the collection Ultima Thule (1880) by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow . Edgar Allan Poe 's poem " Dream-Land " (1844) begins with the following stanza: By a route obscure and lonely, Haunted by ill angels only, Where an Eidolon, named Night, On a black throne reigns upright. I have reached these lands but newly From an ultimate dim Thule – From

11211-476: Was Iceland. Solinus (d. AD 400) in his Polyhistor , repeated these descriptions, noting that the people of Thule had a fertile land where they grew a good production of crop and fruits. In the writings of the historian Procopius , from the first half of the sixth century, Thule is a large island in the north inhabited by 25 tribes. It is believed that Procopius is really talking about a part of Scandinavia , since several tribes are easily identified, including

11322-418: Was Roman commander) was an island rather than a continent, by circumnavigating it. Tacitus writes of a Roman ship visiting Orkney and claims the ship's crew even sighted Thule. However their orders were not to explore there, as winter was at hand. Some scholars believe that Tacitus was referring to Shetland . The third-century Latin grammarian Gaius Julius Solinus wrote in his Polyhistor that "Thyle, which

11433-461: Was a serious interference and an unlawful act against the local population. The Thule tribe was awarded damages of 500,000 kroner , and the individual members of the tribe who had been exposed to the transfer were granted compensation of 15,000 or 25,000 each. A Danish radio station continued to operate at Dundas, and the abandoned houses remained. The USAF only used that site for about a decade, and it has since returned to civilian use. Knud Rasmussen

11544-550: Was built at Northmountain. At the time of its completion it was the third tallest human-made structure on earth and the tallest structure north of the Arctic Circle in the Western hemisphere. In the winter of 1956/57 three KC-97 tankers and alternately one of two RB-47H aircraft made polar flights to inspect Soviet defenses. Five KC-97s prepared for flight with engines running in temperatures of −46 °C (−50 °F) in order to ensure three could achieve airborne status. After

11655-639: Was distant from Orkney by a voyage of five days and nights, was fruitful and abundant in the lasting yield of its crops". The 4th century Virgilian commentator Servius also believed that Thule sat close to Orkney: "Thule; an island in the Ocean between the northern and western zone, beyond Britain, near Orkney and Ireland; in this Thule, when the sun is in Cancer, it is said that there are perpetual days without nights..." Other late classical writers such as Orosius (384–420) describe Thule as being north and west of both Ireland and Britain, strongly suggesting that it

11766-539: Was emplaced in 1964, and a communications terminal was emplaced on Pingarssuit Mountain—Thule Site N-32 (moved to Thule Site J in 1983. Notable units based at Pituffik Space Base: Space Operations Command In 1954 a Douglas C-124C Globemaster II operated by the US Air Force crashed on approach to the air base, killing ten people. On 21 January 1968, a B-52G Stratofortress from the 380th Strategic Aerospace Wing , Plattsburgh Air Force Base , New York, on

11877-557: Was formally transferred to the United States Space Force . On 6 April 2023, Thule was renamed Pituffik Space Base, reflecting its status as a Space Force base and the native name for the region. Sources for major commands and major units assigned: Thule Tracking Station (TTS) is operated by Pituffik Space Base, using the callsign POGO. The station 76°30′57″N 68°36′0″W  /  76.51583°N 68.60000°W  / 76.51583; -68.60000 )

11988-542: Was formerly the terminus of the known-explorable southeastern (upstream) end of the passage called "Main Cave", before discoveries made in 1908 by Ed Bishop and Max Kaemper showed an area accessible beyond it, now the location of the Violet City Entrance . The Violet City Lantern tour offered at the cave passes through Ultima Thule near the conclusion of the route. In March 2018, following a naming competition,

12099-505: Was one of many antiquarians to argue that Ireland was Thule, as he does in his book An essay on the antiquity of the Irish language . Scottish historian W.F. Skene identified Thule as Kintyre peninsula in 1876 based upon a description given by Solinus. Another hypothesis, first proposed by Lennart Meri in 1976, holds that the island of Saaremaa (which is often known by the exonym Ösel) in Estonia , could be Thule. That is, there

12210-526: Was ratified on 27 April 1951 (effective on 8 June 1951). At the request of NATO, the agreement became a part of the NATO defense program. The pact specified that the two nations would arrange for the use of facilities in Greenland by NATO forces in defense of the NATO area known as the Greenland Defense Area. Thule Air Base was constructed in secret under the code name Operation Blue Jay , but

12321-465: Was the first to recognize the Pituffik plain as ideal for an airport. USAAF Colonel Bernt Balchen , who built Sondrestrom Air Base , knew Rasmussen and his idea. Balchen led a flight of two Consolidated PBY Catalina flying boats to Thule on 24 August 1942 and then sent a report advocating an air base to USAAF chief Henry "Hap" Arnold . However, the 1951 air base site is a few kilometers inland from

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