Iceberg Reconnaissance 

 and Communications 



During the 1992 Ice Patrol year, 167 

 aircraft sorties were flown in support of IIP, 68 

 were transit flights to St. John's, Newfound- 

 land, MP's base of operations since 1 989, and 

 65 were ice observation flights made to locate 

 the southwestern, southern, and southeast- 

 ern limits of icebergs. 34 logistics flights were 

 required to support and maintain the patrol 

 aircraft. Tables 3 and 4 show aircraft use 

 during the 1992 ice year. 



Aerial ice reconnaissance was con- 

 ducted with SLAR-equipped U. S. Coast Guard 

 HC-1 30H and HU-25B aircraft. The HC-1 30H 

 aircraft deployed from Coast Guard Air Station 

 Elizabeth City, North Carolina, and HU-25B 

 aircraft deployed from Coast Guard Air Station 

 Cape Cod, Massachusetts. 



During the 1992 season, IIP success- 

 fully deployed 128Air-deployableeXpendable 

 BathyThermographs (AXBTs). The AXBT 

 measures temperature with depth and trans- 

 mits the data back to the aircraft. Temperature 

 data from the AXBTs were sent to the Cana- 



dian Meteorological and Oceanographic Cen- 

 ter (METOC) in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada, 

 the U.S. Naval Eastern Oceanography Center 

 (NEOC) in Norfolk, Virginia, and FNOC for use 

 as inputs into ocean temperature models. IIP 

 directly benefits from its AXBT deployments 

 by having improved ocean temperature data 

 providedto its iceberg deterioration model. To 

 further enhance the quality of environmental 

 data used in its iceberg models, IIP also pro- 

 vided weekly drifting buoy sea surface tem- 

 perature (SST) and drift histories and SLAR 

 ocean feature analyses to METOC and NEOC 

 for use in water mass and SST analyses. 

 Canada's Maritime Command/ Meteorologi- 

 cal and Oceanographic Centre provided the 

 AXBT probes for IIP use, significantly increas- 

 ing the temperature data IIP could obtain. 



On April 19, 1992, IIP paused to re- 

 memberthe 80th anniversary of the sinking of 

 the RMS TITANIC. During an ice reconnais- 

 sance patrol, two memorial wreaths were 

 placed near the site of the sinking to com- 

 memorate the neariy 1500 lives lost. 



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