![]() This part of the line was completed by 1954. This required radar stations in eastern Canada, and an agreement in 1951 lead to the construction of the Pinetree radar stations across southern Ontario, Quebec, British Columbia and Atlantic Canada. The US desired a double screen of overlapping radars to provide earlier and more reliable warning of air attack on the eastern heartland, and to direct fighter interceptors. By 1957 the Corps has 350,000 volunteers in the US and 80,000 in Canada (Air Force 1957). The Ground Observer Corps was formed in 1950 to provide visual identification of aircraft spotted by the radars. These stations received updated search radars in 1950, and during 19 a further 85 stations were added (Grant 1957). Temporary radar networks, using obsolescent equipment, were set up at 44 sites in the US in 1949 and early 1950 to protect potential targets in the industrial northeast and Great Lakes areas, Washington and California. But, with the development of Soviet thermo-nuclear weapons and of long-range aircraft capable of carrying them to inland targets, some sort of early warning screen was needed. That year the two or three stations in Arctic and sub-Arctic Canada (Goose Bay, Labrador and probably Frobisher Bay, Baffin Island and Whitehorse, Yukon) were not in a search and warning mode. The search and warning functions of these stations ended in 1945 when several were abandoned.īy 1948 potential cold war airborne threats from Siberia were watched in Alaska by one full-time radar in the northwest, and four other sets operated a few hours a day (North American Air Defense Command 1973). For example, a self-contained 50 man radar station was constructed on Tigalda Island in the Aleutians to provide early warning of possible Japanese air attacks on Dutch Harbor 100 km to the west and Cold Bay to the east. These search radars gave target distance, speed and direction. ![]() Rotating surveillance radars were installed at military bases near the Atlantic and Pacific coasts of Anglo-America during World War II to provide navigational assistance to allied aircraft and, in Alaska, to warn of enemy attack. When declassified it usually is difficult to find unless the researcher has access to military libraries such as those of the Department of Defence in Ottawa. Much information on existing and even abandoned stations remains secret. There are many, rather dated, non-technical articles dealing with the radars in Arctic Canada and Northern Alaska (for example Morenus 1957 and La Fay 1958) but very little is known of those elsewhere in North America. ![]() Though general descriptions of their character and continent-scale maps of their locations have been published (Jockel 1987), little information on individual military stations, including radars, is available for public inspection. This article describes the ground-based radar defence lines of northern North America over the past four decades. From the early 1950s isolated stations were constructed in Canada, Alaska and Greenland in order to identify unfriendly aircraft (search or surveillance radars) and to direct the fighters that would intercept them (search and height-finding radars). The ballistic missile early warning radars installed in the early 1960s in Alaska and Greenland received major improvements in the late 1980s.ĭuring the Cold War the Soviet Union, western Europe and North America placed great reliance on radar networks to provide early warning of airborne nuclear attack (Dose 1983 Jockel 1987). Very long-range over the horizon radars at three locations will be completed by the early 1990s to monitor aircraft in the vicinity of Alaska and the east and west coasts of Canada. ![]() Alaskan radar facilities were upgraded in the mid-1980s, and in 19 similar radars were installed at the 14 stations of the North Warning Line, built along the abandoned DEW and Pine-Gap sites from northwestern Alaska to Southern Labrador. The Pinetree and DEW lines ceased operation in 1988. The Mid-Canada Line closed in 1965 and the Pine-Gap stations were dismantled nine years later. Alaska gained an inner and an outer arc of radar stations, and Canada the Pinetree Line, Mid-Canada Line, Distant Early Warning (DEW) Line and the little-known Pine-Gap radars of the east coast, from Newfoundland to Baffin Island. Fear of Nuclear attack from the USSR led to the installation of numerous radar stations between 19. Northern Canada and Alaska from 1945 to 1951 had only a minor military presence and no radar surveillance of airborne threats. Military Radar Defence Lines of Northern North America: An Historical Geographyĭepartment of Geography, University of Lethbridge,ĪBSTRACT. Military Radar Defence Lines of Northern North America 1989 – An Historical Geography – Roy J Fletcher 1989 - Military Radar Defence Lines of Northern North America - Roy J Fletcher
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