Schmidt Island

Schmidt Island
	Location of the island ; (in the Severnaya Zemlya archipelago )
Waters	Arctic Ocean
Archipelago	Severnaya Zemlya
Geographical location	81 ° 5 ′ N , 90 ° 25 ′ E Coordinates: 81 ° 5 ′ N , 90 ° 25 ′ E
length	26 km
width	18 km
surface	467 km²
Highest elevation	Schmidt ice cap ; 325 m
Residents	uninhabited

The Schmidt Island ( Russian Остров Шмидта , Ostrow SmithA ) belongs to the archipelago Severnaya Zemlya in the Russian Arctic .

The approximately 467 km² island is located in the northwest of the archipelago. It is almost completely covered by an ice cap and is named after the Russian scientist Otto Juljewitsch Schmidt , the leader of the expedition that discovered the island in 1930 on board the icebreaker Georgi Sedov .

In 1952, during the Cold War , a Soviet air force base was established here, which would have allowed modified Tupolev Tu-4 bombers to attack US bases in Canada and Greenland with nuclear weapons .

Schmidt Island
Schmidt Island

literature

Evgeny Pospelow: Geografitscheskie naswanija Rossii . AST, 2008, p. 501. ISBN 978-5-17-054966-5 . (Russian)

Web links

Article Schmidt-Insel in the Great Soviet Encyclopedia (BSE) , 3rd edition 1969–1978 (Russian)
topographic map on a scale of 1: 500,000