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Investigations on leveling and thickening floating ice sheets by surface flooding at Point Barrow, Alaska, between 1958 and 1960, resulted in the development of a free-flooding technique for improving relatively smooth, natural sea ice. In this technique, the flood water is discharged around the pump and allowed to seek its own boundary. An elevated diesel-enginedriven pump was used to test this technique at Point Barrow; its disadvantages resulted in the development of an experimental 1600-gpm, 15-foot-head, 16-foot-long, 16-inch-diameter, electric-motor-driven submersible pump for free flooding. Tests on the experimental pump at North Star Bay near Thule, Greenland, showed that a submersible pump was well suited for free flooding. It was simple to install and recover, it required no priming and it was easy to keep ice-free during periods of non-use. These tests resulted in the development of an improved submersible pump for free flooding; currently, a prototype of this pump is being fabricated for field testing. (Author)