Deep Freeze members commemorate base's 50th anniversary

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HICKAM AIR FORCE BASE, Hawaii (AFNEWS) --  Members of Operation Deep Freeze participated in events to commemorate the base's 50th anniversary Jan. 20 at Scott Base on Ross Island in Antarctica.

Antarctica New Zealand sponsored the event, which invited U.S. and New Zealand diplomats and political leaders.

The National Science Foundation, as manager of the U.S. Antarctic Program, hosted the U.S. contingent, known as Joint Task Force, Support Forces Antarctica, Operation Deep Freeze.

A bulldozer and a party of Seabees from McMurdo Station leveled the site where Scott Base now stands Jan. 10, 1957, beginning 50 years of cooperative effort between the United States and New Zealand.

Sir Edmund Hillary, present at the weekend's events, was leader of the group who founded the base, and has always given a gracious debt of gratitude to U.S. Navy Adm. George J. Dufek, then-Operation Deep Freeze commander who assisted in the effort to establish the permanent residency by the New Zealanders.

JTF SFA is the U.S. Air Force-led joint task force conducting Operation Deep Freeze, a mission that has supported the National Science Foundation and U.S. Antarctic Program since 1955.

The current season of Operation Deep Freeze kicked off in August 2006, with the deployment of a C-17 Globemaster III from McChord Air Force Base, Wash., to Christchurch, New Zealand. This was followed in October by five LC-130 Hercules aircraft launched from the 109th Air Wing, New York Air National Guard.

To date, C-17s from Christchurch have flown 46 missions moving more than 3,650 passengers and 3.3 million pounds of cargo to McMurdo Station; LC-130s have flown 362 missions moving more than 8.8 million pounds of cargo and 600 passengers to the U.S. South Pole Station and various austere deep field camps throughout Antarctica. The U.S. Coast Guard Icebreaker Polar Sea has cut an ice channel 23 nautical miles long to allow access to McMurdo ice pier by the USNS Paul Buck, a fuel tanker; and the USNS American Tern, a cargo ship.

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