In May 1961, a U.S. Navy aircraft was flying a routine submarine patrol over the Arctic Ocean when it spotted something unusual on the pack ice below: a small cluster of plywood buildings. This was the remains of the Soviet drifting ice station NP-9, hastily abandoned when an ice ridge began destroying the station’s runway. This discovery immediately piqued the interest of U.S. Naval Intelligence, who recognized the abandoned station as a potential intelligence bonanza. But how to get to it? Floating nearly 1,000 kilometres from the nearest American military base at Thule, Greenland, NP-9 was beyond the range of any helicopter and could not be reached by icebreakers before the ice beneath it broke up and melted. Fixed wing aircraft could reach the station and drop men by parachute, but then there was the matter of recovering them afterward. Thankfully, the Navy had a trick up its sleeve, a gadget so outlandish it looked like something straight out of a James Bond movie - and indeed would later be featured in one: the Fulton Surface-to-Air Recovery System. This is the story of Project COLDFEET, one of the most badass intelligence missions of the Cold War.

Author Gilles Messier
Host: Simon Whistler
Editor: Daven Hiskey
Producer: Samuel Avila