British Salmoa Times

  Murmansk By Richard Hardenburg  British Salmoa Times Correspondent, on board USCGC Healy, Arctic Ocean As the Polar Night settles over the Arctic Ocean, the USCGC Healy holds steady against the dark. From its deck, I look back on the extraordinary days of the Severnaya Zemlya Expedition. To make sense of them, I must set them down in order. On November 8th, we flew to Murmansk aboard a Russian Il-96, shadowed by a Sukhoi Su-35S in blue digital camouflage. Passengers pressed to the windows, uneasy at the fighter’s presence, a reminder that even at thirty-five thousand feet, we were never beyond reach. Minutes before landing, a woman in a navy-blue uniform stepped to the front of the cabin, picked up the aircraft’s microphone, and spoke. “Good evening. My name is Senior Lieutenant Ludmilla Smirnov, and I am a coordinator for the expedition. Due to recent events, the expedition’s directors have made changes to accommodations in Murmansk, and we will be temporarily staying at th...

The Iranian Connection By late 1944, the German leadership understood that the war was irretrievably lost. Allied and Soviet forces were closing in on Berlin, and the collapse of the Reich was no longer a question of  if , but  when . In those final months, alongside frantic military withdrawals, a quieter effort unfolded: the evacuation of materials deemed too important to be surrendered, captured, or explained. One such operation involved a small team—no more than five operatives—tasked with transporting sealed lead coffers containing a substance known only by its internal designation:  Aten-Khem . The men traveled under civilian cover, posing as merchants dealing in medical and industrial equipment. Their cargo, listed on manifests as machinery components, was designed to invite minimal scrutiny. In late 1944, the containers were transported by submarine to Spain. From there, the operation continued aboard a civilian vessel bound for Turkey. By the time the ship reache...