Blackhawk Vol 1 258

"The Death of Blackhawk Island": For the past six days and nights, five Blackhawks have been investigating a Nazi movement of heavy research supplies into a castle in the Keslavik Mountains, while Blackhawk has stayed on the island and monitored Stan's recovery from his bullet wound.

Blackhawk #258 is an issue of the series Blackhawk (Volume 1) with a cover date of May, 1983.

Synopsis for "The Death of Blackhawk Island"

For the past six days and nights, five Blackhawks have been investigating a Nazi movement of heavy research supplies into a castle in the Keslavik Mountains, while Blackhawk has stayed on the island and monitored Stan's recovery from his bullet wound.

Later that day, the 6-plane team arrives at the site in the Keslaviks, which triggers a ground-to-air rocket response and some equipment-destruction protocols among the German scientists, who then flee. The Blackhawks discover an opening in the ground which leads them to a gigantic tunneling vehicle, likely another Professor Merson invention, and some notes indicating that the Nazis have developed an atomic bomb. The squad dismantles Blackhawk's plane and reassembles most of it, in the tunnel made by the gigantic tunneling vehicle, which Blackhawk and Chop Chop then pursue. About a hundred miles, in some direction, from the castle in the Keslaviks, the mole machine returns along its own path, and wrecks the wingless Skyrocket, but Blackhawk and Chop Chop both dodge it, in that tunnel, for a second time. Blackhawk and Chop Chop then press ahead on foot and soon find, of all things, a ladder leading to a secret unguarded entrance to Himmler's personal office in his palace in Wewelsburg, in mid-Germany, where they arrive just as Himmler is murdering a key research scientist and securing for himself the sole copy of the secret recipe for an atom bomb.

In a scuffle with the guards, Bart and Chop escape with the bomb plans, in Himmler's personal courier's stolen BF-109, fly it to Blackhawk Island, without being followed or intercepted, they decode the plans, and find themselves standing on ground zero for the imminent A-bomb test, indeed a missile-launched A-bomb test. They evacuate the island, but the Allied nurse assigned to monitor Stanislaus is overlooked in the confusion, and killed in the blast, and the bomb plans are also destroyed, or so Blackhawk claims.

Appearing in "The Death of Blackhawk Island"

Featured Characters:

• Blackhawk Squadron
  • Andre Blanc-Dumont
  • Blackhawk
  • Chuck Wilson
  • Hans Hendrickson
  • Olaf Bjornson
  • Stanislaus Drozdowski
  • Chop-Chop

Supporting Characters:

• unnamed nurse (Dies)

Antagonists:

• Heinrich Himmler
• Hugo Merson

Other Characters:

• unnamed nurse

Locations:

• Keslavik Mountains
• First Blackhawk Island (Destroyed)
• Germany
  • Wewelsburg
    • Heinrich Himmler's personal office

Items:

• German ICBM

Vehicles:

• Grumman XF5F Skyrockets
• Merson's tunneling machine
  

Notes

• Blackhawk Island is destroyed by a Nazi nuclear missile. In the following issue, the nuclear fallout has an unusual effect on one character. After that, it's never mentioned again.
• Blackhawk makes reference to the efforts to destroy the heavy water plant at Rjukan, Norway and the Atomic research lab at Trondheim, Norway. While the Norwegian resistance tried to take out the Rjukan plant in 1940 the British didn't learn of its importance until the summer of 1941 and didn't target either location with bombers until 1942.
• Due to all the conflicting information not even the year can be established for this story.

Trivia

• The Rjukan was successfully taken off line in 1943 (Operation Gunnerside) and was abandoned by the Nazis in 1944.
• The cover of this issue is clearly inspired by the famous raising the flag on Iwo Jima.

See Also

• Cover gallery for the Blackhawk series

Links and References