26-G-5905
January 1962. Original caption: “Ignited thermite spews skyward a geyser of ice, steam, and smoke from a cave behind the 180 ft pinnacle of a mined iceberg 325 ft. long in Cape Bonavista Bay, Nfld. The charges were electronically detonated by Ice Patrol men from the Ice Patrol Cutter Evergreen after an unsuccessful try from a rubber raft. It was the second and final demolition test on this iceberg in which twenty 28-lb. charges of thermite were ignited. Thirteen 28-lb. thermite charges were tried the day before. Neither blast had any marked effect on the berg. The ice patrol followed as a basis for its iceberg thermite demolition tests, a theory of the late Professor H.T. Barnes of McGill University, Canada, who experimented with thermite in icebergs. His theory holds that the thermite’s high temperature explosion would produce a thermal shock wave that could rupture an iceberg along its planes of natural stres,s causing it to crumble and melt faster than normally.” NARA 26-G-5905