According to the observations of the Ushakov Expedition (1930 to 1932), land icing reaches its 

 greatest volume on Komsomlets Island — the northern island of Sevemaya Zemlya. Here there are 

 several icecaps, from which glaciers fall into Krasnaya Armiya Strait. The winds and currents 

 carry the icebergs out of the strait into the Kara Sea and mainly into the Laptev Sea. 



Icebergs are evidently seldom seen near the northwest shores of Sevemaya Zemlya. At any 

 rate, during the voyage on theSadko in 1935, we did not see them. Along the southwest shores of 

 Sevemaya Zemlya, icebergs are found which have been carried mainly out from Shokalskii Strait. 



In the Laptev Sea near the Krasnaya Armiya Strait, the Sibiryaov counted 129 icebergs 

 standing here in the shallows and evidently carried from this strait. It is interesting to note that, 

 according to the observation of 1932, icebergs were seldom found in the area south of the 80th 

 parallel; only the Ermak in 1935, coimted 30 to 35 icebergs in its course from Vilkiskii Strait to 

 Cape Lavrov. 



Judging by all signs, in the areas adjacent to Sevemaya Zemlya on the southwest and the 

 southeast, the same "expulsion" of icebergs was observed, as was noted along the shores of 

 Murman in 1929. 



Laktlonov assumes that the icebergs found in 1940 near the eastern shores of Bolshevik Island 

 (in 1939 they were not there) were carried there from Krasnaya Armiya Strait, where they are 

 particularly numerous and where, bounded by breaking fast ice, they can accumulate during the 

 course of several years, and afterwards, during especially good conditions, are carried to the sea 

 at once in great numbers in the same way as it occurs in certain glaciers of northwest Greenland. 



Laktionov considers the positive anomalies of air temperatures observed in 1938 and 1939 at 

 Cape Chelluskln as one of the indicators of such good conditions. 



As Padalka informed me, during the 27 March, 1943, flight to the north along the Rudolf Island 

 meridian (Franz Joseph Land) between 84° and 84° 30' north, hundreds of icebergs were found, 

 while to the west of the course, the number decreased. It is noteworthy that not a single iceberg 

 was observed during the frequent flints of Soviet airplanes approximately along the same route 

 when the "North Pole" station was being organized. Padalka supposes that these icebergs were 

 carried toward Sevemaya Zemlya (see Section 135). 



The following fact is no less noteworthy. In October, 1943, within 3 km north-northwest 

 from Cape Cheliuskin, a table-top iceberg 1, 500 m long and 400 m wide and 10 m high above sea 

 level was found. Fliers have told me that during summer aerial-reconnaissance flights, they had 

 seen this unusual iceberg near the eastern shores of Sevemaya Zemlya. 



LITERATURE: 62, 77 96. 



Section 53. Icecap Islands 



Glaciers are a completely natural phenomena in many countries possessing high mountains. 

 The snow required for the formation of glaciers gathers here in extensive snowfall (nutrition) areas, 

 and then, changed by pressure into glacier ice, flows along one or several beds into the valleys or 

 to tiie sea. As has already been mentioned, the lower the summer melting and the more solid pre- 

 cipitation, the more likely is the formation of powerful glaciers. 



133 



