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Fletcher's Ice Island

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Discovered by U.S. Air Force Colonel Joseph Fletcher, the iceberg was named T-3 or Fletchers Ice Island. Between 1952 and 1978 it was used as a manned scientific research station that included huts, a power plant, and a runway for wheeled aircraft[1]. It was a 6 km by 15 km and 25 m thick tabular sheet of glacial ice drifting around in the central Arctic Ocean. The island drifted under the influence of winds and currents. T-3 was first occupied during the International Geophysical Year in 1957 and manned until 1974. It exited through the Fram Strait sometime around 1984[2]. Fletcher's Ice Island, and the research station that was located on it, rotated in circles in the Arctic Ocean, floating aimlessly along in the Arctic currents in a clockwise direction. The station was inhabited mainly by scientists along with a few military crewmen and was resupplied during its existence primarily by military planes operating from Barrow, Alaska[3].