Big Picture: Arctic Night

Year Published: 1972-07-01

Creator: Department of Defense.

Format: 16mm/video file

Description: National Archives and Records Administration ARC Identifier 2569606 / Local Identifier 111-TV-337 Big Picture: Arctic Night DVD Copied by IASL Master Scanner Liz Pruszko. Exercise Arctic Night was designed to provide training in extreme cold weather for paratroopers of the famed 82nd Airborne Division: "THE BIG PICTURE" to tell of "Artic Night;" Army's TV series now in sixth year -- Official weekly TV program of the Department of the Army, THE BIG PICTURE will release its first program of the '56 - '57 season this week. Keynote of the sixth consecutive season for this series, will be "Arctic Night," a film documentary made in icy Greenland. "Exercise Arctic Night" was designed to provide training in extreme cold weather for paratroopers of the famed 82nd Airborne Division. Seven hundred man hit the silk and dropped onto the frozen ice of a bay near Greenland's Thule Air Base. The jump made history for the Airborne Infantry; it was the largest, and, in fact, the first tactical drop ever made this far north. One of the scenes in the program depicts a road sign which reads: "North Pole -- 80 miles. An Army Signal Corps camera team of three sturdy volunteers braved temperatures of more than 40 degrees below zero to bring back the story for the TV audience. Host-narrator of the program, Master Sergeant Stu Queen, whose normal habitat is some 3,000 miles (and 70 degrees warmer) south of the North Pole, joined the Airborne Unit at their home, Fort Bragg, N.C. and flew with them to report the story. Queen opens the program from Bragg, will be seen in the air with the troopers and, finally, wades through the drifts of the far north, for another firsthand THE BIG PICTURE account. "Exercise Arctic Night" was filmed with the cooperation of the Royal Danish Government, on whose Greenland territory the drop was performed. THE BIG PICTURE is the most widely distributed documentary program in TV today. Seen on over 350 stations weekly, the show is produced by the Army Pictorial Center, New York, for the Army TV Office in Washington, which distributes it.