Secrets of the Arctic and Antarctic to read. Secret expeditions to the Arctic

Small secret bases of Germany on the territory of the Soviet Arctic Since 1938, the Kriegsmarine has implemented a plan for the phased creation of small bases of covert underground basing in the Soviet Arctic. All approaches to the places of deployment were mined. The Nazis remained true to their

GS Kurganov and PM Kurennov MYSTERIES OF THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION AND THE FUTURE OF RUSSIA (Secrets of world politics) As for Russia, everything depends on 20 million Masonic soldiers. (G.S. Kurganov). Even before the Second World War, G. S. Kurganov said: “Either I will lie down alive in a coffin, or I will find out

A Russian expeditionary team found a secret Nazi base in the Arctic called Schatzgraber. It is possible that the weather station built to control the region was looking for ancient artifacts.

A team of researchers have found more than 500 objects of historical value in the ruins of a Nazi base on the Franz Josef Land archipelago.

Presumably, the meteorological base is one of the complexes of the famous institute. Probably, the Nazis intended to use the base as a staging post for deep exploration of the Arctic in search of artifacts of ancient civilizations.

The discovered station with pillboxes and military bunkers is believed not to be the only Arctic site built by the Nazis in fulfillment of ambitious plans for world domination. Speaking more specifically about the find, which confirms the numerous rumors about the influence of the Nazis in the Arctic, we note: the find occurred on Alexander Island, 1000 kilometers from the North Pole.

Researchers made the discovery a few months ago, providing video footage from the site showing artifacts and the base of the collapsed base—strong evidence of Nazi exploration activities in the region.

Officially, the appointment of this weather station was required to support combat exits of cruisers and submarines along the Northern Sea Route. To carry out the operation under the symbolic name "Wonderland", a meteorological station "Treasure Detector" with defensive lines was erected on Alexandra's Land.

The arctic secret base of the Nazis "Schatzgraber" (Treasure Hunter / Treasure Hunter), was built in 1942 - a year after the invasion of the forces of the Third Reich into the territory of the Soviet Union.

About 500 items were found on the remains of the base: gasoline cans, paper documents, household items, personal belongings of employees, and many other items recovered by Russian researchers. The find is in relatively good condition, partly due to severe frost conditions.

The base is believed to have been evacuated in 1944 due to an outbreak of illness caused by eating polar bear meat. True, some admit the reason is somewhat far-fetched, implying a big secret in the hastily abandoned station. The base itself was dismantled in 1950; in other cases, targeted destruction is mentioned.

However, it is one of the most mysterious details surrounding the secret projects of the Nazis, which is why the weather station was named "Treasure Hunter". From this base, German scientists monitored the climate of the Arctic, tried to track the movements of ships, but is that all?

What if the Nazis were looking for real treasure? If so, why in the Arctic? What exactly did the Nazis expect to find in such an inhospitable area? Station 211 in Antarctica is said to have been similar to the Schatzgraber base in the Arctic.

Many people believe that the Nazis built several bases not only in the Arctic, but also in. It is well known that during the Second World War, the Nazis carried out a number of strange experiments with technologies unknown to the rest of the world, submitting to the desire to rule the world.

Researchers of the Ahnenerbe Institute searched for the lands of mythical artifacts, otherworldly technology, in the hope of finding access to the supreme power that allowed them to defeat the invincible. The Arctic and Antarctic were extremely important to the Nazis' plans, as they expected to find "the power of ancient technology" in two of Earth's most inhospitable regions.

Many authors claim that in 1946-47, Admiral Byrd, the famous American polar explorer, was looking for secret Nazi bases. Indeed, the Admiral's operation "High Jump" (High Jump) had at its disposal a real expeditionary force.

Never in history has Antarctica been explored by such a large military force capable of invading any coast. But even despite such bulky forces, the operation ended in complete failure - the researchers hastily retreated from the ice desert to no avail.

Artifacts found at the Treasure Detector base in the Arctic are currently being transported to Arkhangelsk for analysis. Specialists will try to unravel the mystery and the true purpose of an abandoned Nazi base in the Arctic.

There are many hypotheses from, intertwined with the secret research of the Third Reich. In particular, it is assumed that by the end of the Second World War, the Nazis made a powerful innovative leap in physics and aeronautics. Allegedly, they got significant help from the records of ancient civilizations.

According to an intriguing theory, Nazi scientists have developed technologies that enable them to build "flying saucers" and establish serious underground bases. The Nazis were developing weapons of mass destruction at the level of the Manhattan Project even before the Americans.
It may be a mixture of fact and fiction as to what Hitler and his henchmen achieved, but who among the eyewitnesses of the events of those years can tell the truth ...

The very history of Russia is truly paradoxical. Not only did everything heroic and glorious be accompanied by tragedy and shame for decades - we managed not to notice the great, we did not know how to be proud of what was worthy of both pride and admiration. The history of the Arctic in this regard is a bitter and instructive example, from which it is never too late to learn.

Everything that happened in the Arctic in the 20-30s of the XX century was perceived by the inhabitants of the mainland with great interest and admiration. The very word "polar explorer" became a symbol of everything heroic in the Land of Soviets, and the biographies of those who were called the conquerors of the pole, the Central Arctic, the Northern Sea Route were printed on the front pages of newspapers with no less detail than later - the biographies of the first cosmonauts.

It is hardly possible to establish with great accuracy when exactly the Arctic was "closed" from the eyes of mere mortals. Who did this, of course, is not a secret: the "friend" and "father" of Soviet polar explorers, who undoubtedly loved his Arctic "children" - Joseph Stalin. Now we are not talking about the closure of the North from foreigners - it began back in the ancient tsarist era, in the 17th - 18th centuries. True, Stalin made one curious indulgence precisely in this: in navigation in 1940. The route of the Northern Sea Route to the east was secretly crossed by the German auxiliary cruiser Komet. He was accompanied by our icebreakers, on board the German, there were the best Soviet Arctic pilots, ice reconnaissance was looking for safe passages in the ice for him. Such was the result of the treacherous conspiracy between Stalin and Hitler, which was especially sinister because, upon entering the Pacific Ocean, the Komet became a warship that threatened our future allies in the anti-fascist coalition. But now we are talking about something else - about a direct ban on publications about the Arctic, about what happened every day in high latitudes, including the brightest, heroic events that would glorify our fatherland and strengthen its prestige.

They did not write about the passage of warships along the Northern Sea Route.

They did not write about the upcoming landing of the Papaninites on the Pole, reporting this after the fact, the next day. Later, this vicious practice was repeated during the polar voyage of the Arktika nuclear-powered icebreaker - as, we add, during all space launches up to the 80s.

During the war of 1941 - 1945, the coast of the Arctic Ocean became the front line, and, naturally, for all four years, almost no information about how the Soviet Arctic lives, lives in poverty, buries its defenders, our people did not receive (except for reports of high-profile victories of the sailors of the Northern fleet in the Barents Sea). As if by inertia, all information about what was happening in the Far North, about weather and ice, about expeditions and finds, gains and losses, also remained under lock and key for a good ten post-war years. History was taken away from us, the right to know names and events, dates and biographies! The whole country was plunging into the darkness of self-isolation, having fenced off the world with an invisible but impenetrable "iron curtain". Meanwhile, in the Arctic, discoveries and exploits were being made on a scale quite comparable to what the famous pioneers of past eras did in the polar seas and the polar sky. Every year, large expeditions "North" were supplied to high latitudes, which comprehensively studied the nature of the Central Arctic. And in the spring of 1960, the second ever drifting station "North Pole" was landed on the ice.

The fact that there was such a drift, the public of our country and the foreign world learned only four years later, when the stations "SP-3" and "SP-4" began their work in the polar ice. A year after Stalin's death, there was a "landslide" declassification of the Far North and a belated desire to restore justice appeared. It turned out that the SP-2 station lived in the ice of the Eastern Arctic for 376 days, much longer than Papaninskaya, that 11 winterers experienced ice breaks, repeated camp evacuations, a fire in the radio operators’ tent, and summer floods, and cases of polar bear attacks on person, not to mention all sorts of hardships.

But the main thing: they worked in an atmosphere of incredible, insane secrecy, without the right to be themselves, like scouts abandoned in an enemy lair. Even at the Arctic Institute, where that expedition was being prepared, even the relatives of those who went to the ice for a whole year knew nothing and instead of the spectacular “SP” they were forced to put down the number of a faceless mailbox on the envelopes. They were awarded by a secret Decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Council, according to which the leader of the drift, Mikhail Mikhailovich Somov, became a Hero of the Soviet Union, and the rest received the Order of Lenin.

And only recently it turned out that the station chief had an order to burn the documentation and blow up all the buildings if the “American enemy” approached the ice floe. One of the most important secrets of the Arctic was the creation in the mid-50s of a nuclear test site on the Novaya Zemlya archipelago. For more than 30 years, monstrous hydrogen weapons have been tested there, and today Novaya Zemlya is wounded, seriously injured. It is impossible, even in the first approximation, to compile a list of irretrievable losses suffered by its nature - blue and white glaciers, huge bird colonies on coastal cliffs, tundra vegetation, the number of seals, walruses, polar bears.

Perhaps one of the latest in a row was the declassification of the Plesetsk cosmodrome in the Arkhangelsk region. It was only in 1992 that it was first openly discussed. Now we know about its creation in 1959, and about the terrible disaster on March 18, 1980, when almost 60 people died as a result of a powerful explosion. It also became known that it was from here, from the cosmodrome near the city with the obligatory name Mirny, that the leaders were going to attack the overseas enemy with deadly missiles during the so-called Caribbean (Cuban) crisis of 1962.

Circumstances that were very far from considerations of common sense or at least reasonable secrecy of a military-strategic nature gave the Far North a special "closedness", the reason for this was massive political repressions.

The Great Terror that raged on the mainland in the 1920s and 1950s echoed loudly in high latitudes. There was not a single sphere of human activity in the Arctic, not a single bearish corner, which would not have been reached by the punitive authorities, from where polar explorers of various specialties - sailors, pilots, scientists, geologists, winterers, would not have been taken to trial and reprisal, economic and party workers, port workers, builders, teachers, doctors, including representatives of the small indigenous peoples of the North (there are at least about 30 of them).

As in the mainland, in the North, in due proportions, "enemies of the people" were found: wreckers and saboteurs, Trotsky-Zinoviev, Bukharin-Rykov mercenaries, kulaks and sub-kulakists. They were discovered on the basis of denunciations, slanderous slanders, created an unthinkable atmosphere of general suspicion, surveillance and mutual denunciation, arrested, imprisoned, sent to disastrous exile, destroyed.

It would seem, who could be prevented by people living in the Arctic in conditions of constant deprivation, danger, and mortal risk? How did they annoy the Stalinist regime, icebreaker sailors, employees of polar stations, geologists who were looking for gold and tin, oil and coal?

Yes, that's right, from the Arctic to the Arctic, to the terrible northern camps, romantic enthusiasts were transported, who devoted their lives to the study and development of these free, boundless, attracting lands. They were transported along the glorious route of the Northern Sea Route, in the holds of steamships, on open barges, and these boats got stuck in the ice, went to the bottom along with their live cargo, which brave pilots did not fly to rescue, mighty icebreakers did not rush at full steam.

One of the first who was arrested at the very beginning of the 1930s was the venerable professor-geologist Pavel Vladimirovich Wittenburg, a well-known explorer of Svalbard, the Kola Peninsula, Yakutia, and Vaigach Island. It was there, to Vaigach, where he had managed to make major discoveries before that, and they took the scientist to the lead-zinc mines. Fortunately, he managed to survive and after many years to return to his native Leningrad. But how many of his colleagues, friends, associates were not destined to do this.

Professor R. L. Samoilovich was shot in 1939. The same fate befell his good friend, the Consul General of the USSR in Svalbard and the father of the future famous ballerina (who wintered with her parents in the Arctic as a girl) Mikhail Emmanuilovich Plisetsky. Professor Pavel Alexandrovich Molchanov, who participated together with Samoilovich in the expedition on the airship Graf Zeppelin, died. The Chelyuskin heroes Aleksey Nikolaevich Bobrov, Ilya Leonidovich Baevsky, Pavel Konstantinovich Khmyznikov, the radio fanatic Nikolai Reingoldovich Schmidt, the first to hear distress signals from the Red Tent of Nobile, the veteran of the Northern Sea Route, the builder of the city and port of Igarka Boris Vasilievich Lavrov fell victim to repression.

In the Hydrographic Department of the Main Northern Sea Route alone, more than 150 employees were arrested and dismissed from work, declared "foreign elements." This was done with polar hydrographers, pioneers of the ice route, experts in its formidable dangers, lighthouse keepers - with people without whom the normal life of the Northern Sea Route is impossible!

The scientists of the Arctic Institute, which was headed by Samoylovich, were respectfully called the "USSR team" in those years. This unique "team" of like-minded, selfless patriots of their country was almost completely exterminated in a matter of months. Of the leading scientists, only Professor Vladimir Yulievich Vize was not touched, but how he was defamed, how he was insulted, how he was threatened for many, many years. The famous geologist and geographer Mikhail Mikhailovich Ermolaev, the leading connoisseur of ice and sea currents Nikolai Ivanovich Evgenov, the legendary polar explorer Nikolai Nikolayevich Urvantsev went to prisons and camps for huge, unthinkable periods.

It was Urvantsev who, back in the 1920s, discovered the richest deposits of copper, nickel, coal, graphite, cobalt in Taimyr, in the region of the future Norilsk. And, according to the “good” tradition established by the punitive authorities, in 1940 he was forcibly sent there, to the place of his former (and future!) Glory. Even in prison, he continued to work as a geologist, went on expeditions, wrote scientific papers, but they all ended up in the bowels of the “special depository” (this word denoted top-secret archives and book depositories, which contained priceless works of people declared “enemies of the people” who had lost the right to given name).

Even against such a background, the repressions of the times of the Patriotic War look absolutely monstrous. Right at sea, the most eminent Arctic captains were arrested, presenting them with ridiculous accusations of sabotage and treason.

The Arkhangelsk navigator Vasily Pavlovich Korelsky spent eight years in the camps, and his namesake, the captain of the icebreaker Sadko, Alexander Gavrilovich Korelsky, was sentenced to death because his ship ran aground in stormy weather in the Kara Sea.

The famous polar pilots Fabio Brunovich Farikh and Vasily Mikhailovich Makhotkin were arrested during the war years, after the war several more aviators were added to them, as well as the famous Arctic captain Yuri Konstantinovich Khlebnikov, who was awarded the Order of Nakhimov, which is rare for a sailor of the civil fleet. He was sent to the "Stalinist resort" - to Vorkuta, where the imprisoned Khlebnikov had to mine polar coal for ten years.

Polar explorers were also caught at the most distant winter quarters from the mainland. The head of the polar station on Franz Josef Land, Filipp Ivanovich Balabin, a young talented oceanologist, an employee of one of the Chukotka stations, Alexander Chausov, were arrested and disappeared. The head of wintering on Domashny Island in the Kara Sea, Alexander Pavlovich Babich, a well-known radio operator, one of the first honorary polar explorers in the country, was finished off for nine years on death row and in the Trans-Baikal camps, knocking out of him a confession that he wanted to "transfer our Arctic fleet to the enemy." In May 1950, two months before his death in a concentration camp, Babich sent his last letter to his family in Leningrad: “Sometimes I artificially convince myself that I continue wintering and simply due to circumstances I cannot return to the mainland. But after all, once this "wintering" will end?

Terrible "wintering" ended for the vast majority of innocently convicted, erased from history and people's memory of people only after 1956.

With global climate change, the eternal ice of the North and South Poles of the Earth is gradually melting, and ancient glaciers present us with new surprises every year. Some of the discoveries become delightful clues to the mysteries of the human past, return to us objects lost in time, or tell us about incredible anomalies that even the most famous scientists in the world cannot explain.

Recently, humanity has been increasingly directing its gaze into space, but there are still many unexplored corners on Earth, and one of such places rich in enchanting secrets is just the Arctic Circle and Antarctica. The eternal ice continues to melt, and this process allows for incredible discoveries that are both delightful and mysterious or even terrifying.

The ruthless north can be a very formidable and frightening place, because we still don't know so much about it. Scholars and conspiracy theorists are constantly arguing and ridiculing each other for differences of opinion about most of the mysteries of the Arctic. Whether it is traces of alien civilizations or inexplicable natural phenomena, areas of eternal cold continue to disturb the minds of researchers and theorists struggling to unravel the most interesting discoveries that appear from under the ice with enviable constancy.

Perhaps we will not get answers to all our questions soon, and most of the mysteries of the North will remain unsolved, but this is not a reason to turn a blind eye to them. Here is a selection of 15 of the most incredible, creepy and amazing discoveries made in the Arctic and Antarctica in recent years.

15 Giant Sea Spiders


Photo: Market Business News

Sea spiders, which in the scientific community are more often called pantopods, pycnogonids or multi-legged (pantopoda, pycnogonida), usually live in the Caribbean and the Mediterranean region, but the largest individuals of this species have even been found in some areas of Antarctica and the Arctic. These amazing creatures are a vivid example of polar gigantism, a phenomenon that scientists have been trying to explain for a very long time. No one is exactly sure why these spiders and many other creatures living in the coldest regions of our planet grow so large. One theory suggests that a lack of oxygen in the icy water may be the cause.

In the coldest seas, giant sea spiders grow up to 90 centimeters in length. However, despite their impressive size and eerie appearance, these creatures are completely harmless, and technically they belong to a separate class of marine chelicerae rather than arachnids.

14. Long-nosed chimera


Photo: Siberian Times

Rhinochimaeridae, better known as the long-nosed chimera, is one of the rarest fish species on Earth and has only been caught twice in history, the second time being caught by a fisherman in the icy waters of Davis Strait in northern Canada. So rarely this sea creature gets into the net for a rather simple reason - an amazing fish usually swims at depths from 200 to 1900 meters, and for a person this is not the most accessible environment.

It is not surprising that for her long nose, the rare chimera was nicknamed Pinocchio. In addition, it is often confused with the rhinoceros shark due to the similarity of their mouths and noses. That is why the long-nosed chimera is often mistakenly called a ghost shark. In fact, the deep-sea chimera belongs to the family of nosed chimeras from the class Cartilaginous. An interesting distinguishing feature is that an extremely poisonous spike grows in front of the first dorsal fin of the fish, which usually serves as protection from predators, and this dangerous process easily folds into a special recess when the chimera is not in danger.

13. Melting eternal ice can provoke new viral epidemics


Photo: Gizmodo

Global climate change has long been the cause of increased melting of the Arctic ice. The size of the glaciers in the Arctic Ocean is shrinking more and more every summer. As a result, due to unusually warm weather, melting glaciers release microbes that had previously been dormant for many centuries.

In August 2016, an unexpected outbreak of anthrax caused the death of a 12-year-old boy and the hospitalization of 72 villagers. The cause of the epidemic was the contamination of local groundwater with the cadaveric juices of thawed deer, who once died just from this dangerous infection. The Siberians suffered because all the drinking water in the village was poisoned.

And here is another precedent - in Norway, the bodies of 6 young men who died back in 1918 from the Spanish flu were discovered, and a perfectly preserved virus was found in the blood of the dead. There is fear among experts that the frozen graves of smallpox victims will also cause outbreaks of the deadly virus in the future.

12. These puppies are 12,000 years old.


Photo: redorbit.com

In 2001, researchers who traveled to the northeast of Yakutia in the hope of discovering the remains of ancient mammoths there found perfectly preserved remains of puppies from the Ice Age. Five years later, an employee of the World Mammoth Museum at the North-Eastern Federal University, Sergei Fedorov, went to the site of the discovery of an ancient puppy and found not one, but two well-preserved bodies of animals from the Ice Age.

Frozen puppies could theoretically help scientists find out when and where exactly dogs split into a separate subspecies of wolves and became the first tame animals in human history. The study of the finds showed that the puppies died at the age of about 3 months, and they died, most likely, having fallen under an avalanche. Scientists are going to use the remains of the discovered animals for research on the chronology of the domestication of this species, because so far there is still no consensus in the scientific community about the timing and place where dogs were first tamed by humans.

11. Secret base of the Nazis in the Arctic


Photo: Siberian Times

In October 2016, Russian scientists discovered a secret Nazi base in the Arctic. An object called Schatzbraber or "Treasure Hunt" was found on the island of Alexandra Land, and it was built about a year after the German invasion of Russia.

Apparently, the base was completely empty in 1944, when Nazi scientists poisoned themselves with polar bear meat. The second time people appeared here already as much as 72 years later. Russian polar explorers found about 500 different artifacts at the base, including rusty bullets and documents from the Second World War, and all these items were hidden in bunkers for many years. The base has been preserved in excellent condition due to extremely low temperatures.

There are versions that the object was created to search for some ancient relics and sources of power, in the existence of which Adolf Hitler himself believed. Although more skeptical experts believe that the secret base supplied the Nazis with information about weather conditions, which could give Germany significant advantages in planning the movement of its troops, ships and submarines. The Russians are now using this island to build their own military base.

10 Ancient Giant Virus


Photo: National Geographic

In 2014, in the eternal ice of Siberia, researchers discovered a virus called Pithovirus that had been lying untouched in the cold for almost 30,000 years, and it turned out to be a truly giant non-cellular infectious agent. The find is recognized as unique, because Pithovirus is the largest representative of viruses known to modern science.

In addition, the virions found in the Arctic are genetically much more complex than conventional viruses. Pitovirus contains 500 genes. By the way, discovered in 2013, Pandoravirus, now recognized as the second largest virus on the planet, has as many as 2,500 genes. For comparison, HIV contains only 12 genes. Even more eerie, after 30,000 years of dormancy, the giant virion is still active and capable of infecting amoeba cells.

Many scientists believe that it is extremely difficult to get infected with this prehistoric virus today, although such a danger is still possible under optimal conditions. For example, if you find the body of a person who died from this infection. Such a scenario is very unlikely, but the very idea that unknown and potentially dangerous microorganisms lurk in the eternal ice, waiting for their day of discovery, makes some experts seriously worried.

9. 100-year-old photographs from Antarctica


Photo: Heritage Trust

In 2013, specialists from the New Zealand Antarctic Heritage Trust were working on the restoration of an old research base and found a box with 22 undeveloped 100-year-old negatives there. The photographs were taken by famed explorer Ernest Shackleton on an expedition to the Ross Sea and have been waiting for almost a century to finally be rescued from the ice and developed. The famous exploration party intended to make a trip around the whole of Antarctica and drop in supplies for Shackleton. However, the mission was thwarted because several members of the expedition, including the eminent figure of the "heroic age of Antarctic exploration", unexpectedly got stuck on Ross Island, where they nearly died. Their ship was swept out to sea during severe bad weather, but the group was still saved then.

A photographer from Wellington (New Zealand city) took on the development of old negatives, and the result of his labors is right in front of you. Obviously, the old photographs have suffered a bit from extreme weather conditions, but they are still an amazing echo of the days of the legendary polar explorations and learn even more about the 100-year-old expedition.

8. Gravity anomaly discovered in Antarctica under the ice sheet


Photo: Ohio State University

In December 2016, scientists discovered a huge object hidden under the eternal ice of Antarctica. The discovery was made in the Wilkes Land region, and it is an anomalous area with a diameter of about 300 meters, lying at a depth of about 823 meters. The find was called the Wilkes Earth gravitational anomaly, and it was discovered in a crater with a diameter of 500 kilometers thanks to observations from NASA satellites in 2006.

Many researchers suggest that the huge anomaly is all that remains of a giant prehistoric asteroid. It was probably 2 times (or according to other sources 6 times) larger than the asteroid, because of which the dinosaurs once died out. Researchers also believe that it was this celestial body that caused the global catastrophe that provoked the Permian-Triassic extinction 250 million years ago, when 96% of marine life and about 70% of land creatures died.

As always, conspiracy theorists take a different view. Many of them believe that once this crater was either an underground base of aliens, or a secret refuge for fallen angels from the Bible, or even a portal to the inner part of the Earth, where there is a separate world (the hollow Earth hypothesis).

7 Mysterious Arctic Civilization


Photo: Siberian Times

In 2015, 29 kilometers south of the Arctic Circle, scientists discovered traces of a mysterious medieval civilization. Despite the fact that the find was made in the region of Siberia, archaeologists have established that this people was related to Persia.

The remains were wrapped in furs (presumably bear or wolverine skins), birch bark, and covered with copper objects. Under the conditions of permafrost, the bodies in such a “wrap” were literally mummified, and therefore have been perfectly preserved to this day. In total, researchers found 34 small graves and 11 bodies at the site of the medieval site.

Initially, it was believed that only men and children were buried there, but in August 2017, scientists discovered that among the mummies there is also a body that once belonged to a woman. Scientists have nicknamed her the Polar Princess. Researchers believe that this girl belonged to a high class, since she is so far the only representative of the fair sex discovered during these excavations. Work with artifacts is still ongoing, so it is possible that many more amazing discoveries await us ahead.

6. The mystery of the warships HMS Terror and HMS Erebus


Photo: mirror.co.uk

The bombardier ships HMS Terror and HMS Erebus were refitted specifically to take part in Sir John Franklin's infamous lost Arctic exploration expedition of 1845-1847. Both ships, under the command of Franklin, set off on a journey through the unexplored regions of the Far North, but in the area of ​​\u200b\u200bthe Canadian territories they were captured by ice, and none of the 129 crew members, including the captain himself, never returned home.

In 1981-1982, new expeditions were undertaken, the purpose of which was to explore the islands of King William and Beechey (King William Island, Beechey Island). There, scientists discovered the bodies of some of the members of the Franklin expedition, perfectly preserved to this day thanks to the process of natural mummification. According to the conclusion of forensic experts, the cause of death of these polar explorers was poisoning with low-quality canned food, tuberculosis and severe weather conditions incompatible with life. As a result of examining the remains, experts also concluded that the members of the Franklin expedition at some point literally went crazy with exhaustion and even began to eat each other - suspicious cuts and notches were found on their bodies, testifying in favor of cannibalism.

Then, on September 12, 2014, an expedition in the Victoria Strait area discovered the wreckage of HMS Erebus, and exactly 2 years later (September 12, 2016), members of the Arctic Research Foundation also found HMS Terror, and in almost perfect condition.

5 Unidentified Sounds From The Bottom Of The Arctic Ocean

Photo: Incredible Arctic

In 2016, near the Eskimo settlement of Iglulik, the territory of Nunavut (Igloolik, Nunavut), in the area of ​​​​the Canadian part of the Arctic, strange things were recorded, coming straight from the bottom, and frightening even wild animals living in these waters. A team of scientists sent by the Canadian military had to determine the source of the sounds and find out if a foreign submarine had swum into state territory. But in the end, all they found was a pod of whales and 6 walruses. After making sure that the suspicious signals did not pose any danger, the military curtailed the operation and left the place.

The origin of the mysterious sounds is still unknown, but conspiracy theorists believe in several fantastic versions at once, including messages from the inhabitants of the mythical Atlantis, signals from the underwater base of alien creatures, or even the voices of giant deep-sea animals, about which science is still unknown.

4. Blood Falls


Photo: National Geographic

Discovered back in 1911 by Australian geologist Griffith Taylor, the blood-red waterfall is a 15-meter stream that flows out of the Taylor Glacier (named after its discoverer) and flows into the ice-covered West Lake Bonnie (West Lake Bonney). The water of the waterfall is colored rusty due to the high content of iron oxide in it.

The study of samples from this waterfall showed the presence of 17 different types of microbes in it. The existence of living microorganisms in the extreme weather conditions of the McMurdo Dry Valleys, where Blood Falls is located, may indicate that life at the lowest temperatures can be found not only on Earth, but also on other planets with similar conditions, including Mars and the oceans of Europa (a moon of Jupiter).

Scientists still do not quite understand how the microorganisms of the Blood Falls manage to do with almost no light, partly without oxygen and other nutrients, while being content only with the processing of iron and sulfur. Researchers believe that the study of this amazing natural will be able to provide answers to many other scientific mysteries.

3. New species of bees


Photo: Siberian Times

The glacial bumblebee, also known as Bombus glacialis, was first discovered in 1902 on the island of Novaya Zemlya, and scientists believe it is the only creature to have survived the last ice age. In addition, DNA analyzes of this insect, conducted in 2017, showed that the glacial bumblebee is a completely separate insect species, different from all modern bumblebees.

The discovery of the Arctic bumblebee suggests that Novaya Zemlya was once either partially or completely free of glaciers, which now cover this place in a dense layer. Scientists also believe that these creatures lived on other Arctic islands, although no evidence of this version has yet been found.

But what if there are still many intriguing discoveries ahead of researchers, and eternal ice hides from us more than one species of hitherto unknown creatures? Glaciers continue to melt, and new sensations are probably just a matter of time.

2. Arctic funnels


Photo: NBC

Mysterious craters have been appearing in Siberia for a long time. One of the largest such craters was discovered in the 1960s and named the Batagayka crater. The funnel expands every year by about 15 meters in diameter. In addition, new craters began to appear on the eastern coast of the Yamal Peninsula. For example, on the morning of June 28, 2017, local reindeer herders noticed flames and columns of smoke near the village of Seyakha. In the same place, the researchers discovered 10 new Arctic funnels.

The thundering explosion was actually due to global warming. Eternal ice has recently been melting more and more actively, and because of this, here and there, previously sealed methane reserves are released from underground, which provokes the appearance of new failures.

But what about without fantastic versions of conspiracy theorists? In the case of funnels, conspiracy theorists also make some pretty interesting assumptions. For example, they believe that the funnels are the former bases of frozen UFOs that periodically leave the Earth, leaving behind mysterious holes in frozen soils. Another common version says that the Arctic craters are the gates to the other world.

1. Discovery of the missing ghost ship HMS Thames


Photo: Wikipedia

In August 2016, near the village of Goroshikha, south of the Arctic Circle, an abandoned British steamer HMS Thames was discovered, which was considered sunk back in 1877. The ship was found by two researchers from the Russian Geographical Society in the area of ​​the Northern Sea Route. This route was very popular among polar explorers in the early 19th century, but sailing along it was often unsuccessful until the early 20th century.

The ship was built to explore the Gulf of Ob and the Yenisei River, and to pave the best trade route to the shores of Russia. The crew abandoned this ship after wintering on the coast of the Yenisei, since HMS Thames was thoroughly frozen during the absence of the crew. The locomotive was, if possible, disassembled and sold in parts, and after that his team, led by Captain Joseph Wiggins (Joseph Wiggins), returned home to the UK. Agree, there is something terrible and sad about the discovery of the remains of a ship that has been drifting in the northern seas for the past 140 years ...

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In 1931, cooperation between the USSR and Germany was no longer as wide as two or three years ago, but it still continued very actively in many areas of science, technology and industrial production. The countries also cooperated in the military field. Therefore, the Soviet leadership and representatives of state security did not see anything reprehensible in the invitation received from the German aeronaut Eckener to a number of Soviet scientists to take part in the Arctic air expedition.

The famous German aeronaut and airship designer, who was then predicted to have a great future, Dr. Hugo Eckener (1868–1954) arrived in Leningrad on June 25, 1931 on a huge airship Graf Zeppelin. The northern capital of Russia met him and forty-two other German researchers with orchestras and great enthusiasm. Much was written about the upcoming expedition in the newspapers and broadcast on the radio.

Eckener planned to go from Leningrad over the ice of the Barents Sea to Franz Josef Land, from there to Severnaya Zemlya, then fly over the Taimyr Peninsula and Lake Taimyr, head for Novaya Zemlya, and from there return to Berlin. The Soviet leadership gave permission to fly over the territory of the USSR. In those years, there lay absolutely deserted, devoid of not only any industry, but even practically human habitation, wilderness. Moreover, the terrain is difficult to reach even for aviation and airships, and navigation in northern waters has always been a difficult and dangerous business. Therefore, in the USSR it was believed that no one could find out any secrets there, and geographical maps exist independently of the flights of the Graf Zeppelin.

The Germans invited the former head of the polar expedition on the Krasin icebreaker, which took place in 1928, the famous professor R.L. qualifications of E. T. Krenkel. All of them received the "go-ahead" from the Soviet authorities to cooperate with the Germans in the study of the Arctic - the country's leadership also had considerable interest in information about the remote northern area, fraught with many different riches in its bowels.

Before the flight, the Graf Zeppelin airship was quite thoroughly modified in Leningrad in order to prepare it for work in the Arctic. Part of the equipment was removed from the airship, but in order to be able to land on the water, the bottom of the gondola was made waterproof and additional floats were installed, as on seaplanes. In addition, they added scientific equipment and cameras for perspective and vertical aerial photography and installed additional radio navigation equipment, without which at that time there was simply nothing to do in the Arctic conditions.

Finally, all the work was completed and the Graf Zeppelin headed across the Barents Sea to Franz Josef Land, where the Malygin icebreaker was already waiting for the arrival of the airship in Tikhaya Bay to exchange mail - then this served as the most reliable way of communication in the vast Arctic expanses. The journey from Leningrad to Franz Josef Land took the airship about a day and a half. In Tikhaya Bay, he landed on the water for a very short time. Then he rose again and continued flying along a predetermined route: just in case, the Soviet authorities and state security agencies firmly insisted on strict adherence to a pre-agreed and laid route.

Later, Professor Samoylovich said and wrote that in almost five days of flying on the Graf Zeppelin airship, it was possible to do such scientific work and achieve results that, under normal conditions, would require expeditions on icebreakers for several years.

Below, under the airship, lay completely unexplored regions of the Arctic covered with non-melting snow, and the members of the expedition continuously conducted aerial photography of the coast, aerological and meteorological observations, measured geomagnetic anomalies, which is very important for navigation, and studied the patterns of ice movement. Previously completely unknown islands abandoned in the deserted expanses were drawn on the map. At the end of the expedition, without any incident, the airship arrived in Berlin.

Then there was the "International Society for the Exploration of the Arctic". On behalf of this international organization, the Germans soon published a scientific report on the air expedition, richly illustrated with many photographs. In the country of socialism, the results of the research of a joint scientific expedition with the Germans to the Arctic were practically not covered either in the general press or in scientific publications.

Now it is difficult to irrefutably prove that the expedition started by Eckener was not at all purely scientific and was not inspired by the German General Staff. However, with a high degree of probability it can be assumed that among the more than forty members of the crew of the Graf Zeppelin airship who arrived in Leningrad from Berlin, there were probably purely military specialists and intelligence officers who were extremely interested in obtaining information about the Arctic territories of the USSR. This is confirmed by the fact that the German General Staff, the naval forces and, in particular, Admiral Karl Dönitz, who was appointed commander of the German submarine fleet in 1939, did not fail to take advantage of the results of the German-Soviet Arctic "scientific" expedition in developing plans for military operations in the northern communications.

Here it is necessary to pay tribute to Soviet intelligence - although not in all details, however, the Center became aware of the developments of the General Staff of the Wehrmacht and the German naval forces, as well as the sources of their information. There was no longer any possibility to prevent the Germans, and Professor Samoylovich answered for the “expedition” before the Chekists: he was repressed as a spy for the Germans and an “enemy of the people”.

Meanwhile, Admiral Dönitz developed an original, bold and detailed doctrine of submarine operations in the northern seas. It should be noted that among the senior officers of the German Navy, Karl Dönitz was the only staunch National Socialist, loyal to the Fuhrer to the point of fanaticism and enjoying his full confidence: it was not for nothing that in 1945, before his death, Hitler appointed Grand Admiral Karl Dönitz as his successor .

The admiral also tirelessly built up the submarine fleet. In 1935, Germany had only eleven small submarines, and supporters of the "big" surface fleet with a certain amount of contempt and distrust treated the submarines. But the stubborn Dönitz saw a great future in them and, as time has shown, he was completely right. He reported personally to Adolf Hitler about his doctrines and received his approval and money. By the beginning of World War II, Germany already had fifty-seven well-armed submarines in service, and over the years of the war, the Germans managed to build one thousand one hundred and fifty-three submarines that sank three thousand allied ships and two hundred warships.

At the insistence of Dönitz, special submarines were built for warfare in the Arctic and navigation in the northern seas near the coast - they have their own specific navigation features. Quite naturally, these boats needed special reliable bases for refueling, resting crews, repairing the undercarriage and hull, as well as replenishing ammunition and ensuring stable communication with command and mail exchange. In the end, even with a significant - more than eight thousand miles! - the range of the German submarines, they still could not stay in the voyage indefinitely.

Dönitz put forward an extremely bold idea, based on the results of the "scientific" expedition of Eckener-Samoilovich to the Arctic: to create secret bases for German submarines on deserted islands in the mouths of the rivers of the Soviet northern territory. At that time, it was practically uninhabited and the border of the state was not actually guarded there - from whom to protect huge deserted spaces covered with eternal ice, terribly far from other powers?

The audacious idea of ​​the admiral became very relevant when convoys of the allies went to Murmansk, and the Nazis faced the task of cutting this artery at all costs, which supplied warring Russia with military equipment, food and strategic materials. The convoys were subjected to constant air attacks, they were guarded by German raiders and ... submarines hiding in secret Arctic bases, which put the sea hunters trying to destroy them to a standstill. Submarines disappeared, and no one could then understand - where?

Admirals Dönitz and Raeder were completely convinced that the secret submarine bases would not be discovered by Soviet aviation and sailors, and that the Abwehr should reliably cover them from enemy reconnaissance. The construction of the necessary structures - buried in ice or even in permafrost - was carried out by the Todt department. In 1942, Dönitz moved his headquarters to Paris and from there supervised work in the Arctic. It is clear that the German submariners could not manage with one super-secret base, several such objects were required, which, in the event of a sudden discovery and destruction of one or more of them, could duplicate each other. The builders were delivered to the place of work on submarines, as well as the materials necessary for the arrangement of facilities. And the Germans already had sufficient experience in building in snow and ice - during the First World War, German, Italian and Austrian troops waged war in the ice in the Alps, building tunnels, bunkers in glaciers and cutting through long galleries.

The discovery of such secret submarine bases was indeed a very difficult matter - in the Third Reich they knew how to reliably keep their secret secrets, and during the war period, Soviet aircraft practically did not fly over remote regions of the Arctic. Fuel was in short supply, everything went for the front and for victory, and what else could aircraft do where there were no shipping lanes and no housing?

Most likely, the Soviet state security agencies received data on the secret bases of German submarines in the Arctic only after the victory, while actively working with prisoners of war, who had nothing to hide, or they found out everything about this unexpected move by Admiral Karl Dönitz from captured secret trophy documents. However, the Soviet special services also know how to keep their secrets, and the presence of German bases in our northern rear dealt a terrible, almost irreparable blow to the prestige of state security: still, to miss this under your nose! Therefore, neither side officially acknowledged the existence of secret bases.

In the early 60s of the XX century, on one of the islands in the mouth of the Lena, local residents allegedly discovered a long-abandoned German secret base. They even planned to send an expedition there with the participation of journalists, but the collapse of the USSR began and everyone was not up to secret Nazi bases.

On the coast of the Kara and Barents Seas, in the vicinity of Tiksi and in Taimyr, they find many iron barrels left over from the time of the American Lend-Lease, but among them, no, no, and there are barrels with a white spread-eagle clutching a wreath with a swastika in its claws - Marking of the Nazi Wehrmacht. Where did they come from? Did the sea bring?

Geologists told how on the coast of Taimyr, in the permafrost, they found plaques with a swastika from German naval belts, spoons “decorated” with a swastika and other utensils made of aluminum: it was a very popular metal among the Germans. Has the sea also brought all this into the permafrost?

It is likely that somewhere, in the hitherto uninhabited regions of the Russian Arctic, the unknown treasures of the Third Reich that collapsed in the forty-fifth Reich, delivered there by the submarines of Admiral Dönitz, are hidden. However, the question of the existence of secret Nazi naval bases in the Arctic remains open, and their mystery has remained unsolved.