Distant Early Warning Line
The Distant Early Warning Line, also known as the DEW Line or Early Warning Line, was a system of radar stations in the northern Arctic region of Canada, with additional stations along the north coast and Aleutian Islands of Alaska, in addition to the Faroe Islands, Greenland, and Iceland. It was set up to detect incoming bombers of the Soviet Union during the Cold War, and provide early warning of any sea-and-land invasion.
The DEW Line was the northernmost and most capable of three radar lines in Canada and Alaska. The first of these was the joint Canadian-United States Pinetree Line, which ran from Newfoundland to Vancouver Island just north of the Canada–United States border, but even while it was being built there were concerns that it would not provide enough warning time to launch an effective counterattack. The Mid-Canada Line was proposed as an inexpensive solution using bistatic radar. This provided a "trip wire" warning located roughly at the 55th parallel, giving commanders ample warning time, but little information on the targets or their exact location. The MCL proved largely useless in practice, as the radar return of flocks of birds overwhelmed signals from aircraft.
The DEW Line was proposed as a solution to both of these problems, using conventional radar systems that could both detect and characterise an attack, while being located far to the north where they would offer hours of advance warning. This would not only provide ample time for the defences to prepare, but also allow the Strategic Air Command to get its active aircraft airborne long before Soviet bombers could reach their targets. The need was considered critical and the construction was given the highest national priorities. Advance site preparation began in December 1954, and the construction was carried out in a massive logistical operation that took place mostly during the summer months when the sites could be reached by ships. The 63-base line reached operational status in 1957. The MCL was shut down in the early 1960s, and much of the Pinetree Line was given over to civilian use.
In 1985, as part of the "Shamrock Summit", the United States and Canada agreed to transition DEW to the new North Warning System. Beginning in 1988, most of the original DEW stations were deactivated, while a small number were upgraded with all-new equipment. The official handover from DEW to NWS took place on 15 July 1993.
Introduction
The shortest, or great circle, route for a Soviet air attack on North America was through the Arctic, across the area around the North Pole. The DEW Line was built during the Cold War to give early warning of a Soviet nuclear strike, to allow time for United States bombers to get off the ground and land-based intercontinental ballistic missile to be launched, to reduce the chances that a preemptive strike could destroy the United States' strategic nuclear forces. The original DEW line was designed to detect bombers and was unable to detect ICBMs. To give warning of this threat, in 1958 a more sophisticated radar system was constructed, the Ballistic Missile Early Warning System.The DEW Line was a significant achievement among Cold War initiatives in the Arctic. A successful combination of scientific design and logistical planning of the late 1950s, the DEW Line consisted of a string of continental defence radar installations, ultimately stretching from Alaska to Greenland. In addition to the secondary Mid-Canada Line and the tertiary Pinetree Line, the DEW Line marked the edge of an electronic grid controlled by the new Semi-Automatic Ground Environment computer system and was ultimately centred at the Cheyenne Mountain Complex, Colorado, command hub of the North American Aerospace Defense Command.
The construction of the DEW Line was made possible by a bilateral agreement between the Canadian and United States governments, and by collaboration between the United States Department of Defense and the Bell System of communication companies. The DEW Line grew out of a detailed study made by a group of the nation's foremost scientists in 1952, the Summer Study Group at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The subject of the study was the vulnerability of the United States and Canada to aerial bombing attacks, and its concluding recommendation was that a distant early warning line of search radar stations be built across the Arctic region of the North American continent as rapidly as possible.
Development and construction
Improvements in Soviet technology rendered the Pinetree Line and Mid-Canada Line inadequate to provide enough early warning and on 15 February 1954, the Canadian and United States governments agreed to jointly build a third line of radar stations, this time running across the high Arctic. The line would run roughly along the 69th parallel north, about north of the Arctic Circle.Before this project was completed, men and women with the necessary knowledge, skills, and experience were drawn from Bell Telephone companies in every state in the United States, and many Canadian provinces. Much of the responsibility was delegated under close supervision to a vast number of subcontractors, suppliers, and United States military units.
The initial contract with the United States Air Force and the Royal Canadian Air Force provided for the design and construction of a small experimental system to determine at the beginning whether the idea was practicable. The designs of communication and radar detection equipment available at the time were known to be unsuited to the weather and atmospheric conditions to be encountered in the Arctic.
Early efforts were aided when, by happenstance, the US Navy terminated its oil exploration activities in Alaska. The associated infrastructure that had been established in the arctic was quickly repurposed to serve early development of the DEW line. Material converted from Navy use included 1,200 tons of supplies, with many Caterpillar D8 tractors, heavy duty cranes, diesel generators, and radio equipment. Most fortunately, the surplus included sixty equipped wannigans - enough to permit setup of field camps at all construction sites.
Prototypes of several stations were designed and built in Alaska in 1953. A prototype built for training purposes was chosen to be located in Streator, Illinois in 1952. The Streator DEW-Line Training Center became operational in 1956 and closed when operations were moved to Colorado Springs, Colorado in 1975. While few of the original designs for either buildings or equipment were retained, the trial installations did prove that the DEW Line was feasible, and they furnished a background of information that led to the final improved designs of all facilities and final plans for manpower, transportation, and supply.
With the experimental phase completed successfully, the Air Forces asked the Western Electric Company to proceed as rapidly as possible with the construction of the entire DEW Line. That was in December 1954, before the route to be followed in the eastern section had even been determined. The locations were surveyed out by John Anderson-Thompson. Siting crews covered the area – first from the air and then on the ground – to locate by scientific means the best sites for the main, auxiliary, and intermediate stations. These crews lived and worked under primitive conditions. They covered vast distances by airplanes, snowmobiles, and dog sleds, working in blinding snowstorms with temperatures so low that ordinary thermometers could not measure them. They completed their part of the job on schedule and set the stage for the crews and machines that followed. The line consisted of 63 stations stretching from Alaska to Baffin Island, covering nearly. The United States agreed to pay for and construct the line, and to employ Canadian labour as much as possible.
A target date for completing the DEW Line and having it in operation was set for 31 July 1957. This provided only two short Arctic summers adding up to about six months in which to work under passable conditions. Much of the work would have to be completed in the long, dark, cold, Arctic winters, including over a month of polar night.
Construction process
From a standing start in December 1954, many thousands of skilled workers were recruited, transported to the polar regions, housed, fed, and supplied with tools, machines, and materials to construct physical facilities – buildings, roads, tanks, towers, antennas, airfields, and hangars – in some of the most hostile and isolated environments in North America. The construction project employed about 25,000 people.Western Electric and Alaska Freightlines, with the help of the United States Army Transportation Research and Development Command, contracted to have a pair of off-road overland trains, the TC-264 Sno-Buggy, designed specifically for Arctic conditions, to be built by LeTourneau Technologies, owned by R. G. LeTourneau. The TC-264 Sno-Buggy was the longest off-road vehicle ever built at the time, with its six cars measuring a total of. Each car was driven by four tall wheels and tires. The 24-wheel-drive was powered by two 400 horsepower Cummins diesel engines connected to a hub motor. It had a payload capacity of, and could traverse nearly any terrain. It had a very successful first season hauling freight to the DEW Line. Later, military and civilian airlifts, huge sealifts during the short summers, barges contributed to the distribution of vast cargoes along the length of the Line to build the permanent settlements needed at each site. Much of the job of carrying mountains of supplies to the northern sites fell to military and naval units. More than 3,000 United States Army Transportation Corps soldiers were given special training to prepare them for the job of unloading ships in the Arctic. They went with the convoys of United States Navy ships and they raced time during the few weeks the ice was open to land supplies at dozens of spots on the shores of the Arctic Ocean during the summers of 1955, 1956, and 1957.
Four DYE stations were constructed as an extension of the DEW line across the Greenland ice cap with an entry point by NAS Keflavík at Rockville Air Station in Iceland.
Scores of military and commercial pilots, flying everything from small bush planes to four-engined turboprops, were the backbone of the operation. The Lockheed LC-130, a ski-equipped version of the C-130 Hercules, owned by the United States Air Force and operated by the 139th Airlift Squadron, provided a significant amount of airlift to sites that were out on ice caps such as DYE-3 in Greenland. Transport planes such as the C-124 Globemaster and the C-119 Flying Boxcar also supported the project. Together, these provided the only means of access to many of the stations during the wintertime. In all, of materials were moved from the United States and southern Canada to the Arctic by air, land, and sea.
As the stacks of materials at the station sites mounted, construction went ahead rapidly. Subcontractors with a flair for tackling difficult construction projects handled the bulk of this work under the direction of Western Electric engineers. Huge quantities of gravel were produced and moved. The construction work needed to build housing, airstrips, aircraft hangars, outdoor and covered antennas, and antenna towers was done by subcontractors. In all, over 7,000 bulldozer operators, carpenters, masons, plumbers, welders, electricians, and other tradesmen from the United States and southern Canada worked on the project. Concrete was poured in the middle of Arctic winters, buildings were constructed, electrical service, heating, and fresh water were provided, huge steel antenna towers were erected, airstrips and hangars were built, putting it all together in darkness, blizzards, and subzero temperatures.
After the buildings came the installation of radar and communications equipment, then the thorough and time-consuming testing of each unit individually and of the system as an integrated whole. Finally all was ready, and on 15 April 1957 – just two years and eight months after the decision to build the Distant Early Warning Line was made – Western Electric turned over to the Air Force on schedule a complete, operating radar system across the top of North America, with its own communications network. Later, the system coverage was expanded even further: see Project Stretchout and Project Bluegrass.
The majority of Canadian DEW Line stations were the joint responsibility of the Royal Canadian Air Force and the United States Air Force. The USAF component was the 64th Air Division, Air Defense Command. The 4601st Support Squadron, based in Paramus, New Jersey, was activated by ADC to provide logistical and contractual support for DEW Line operations. In 1958, the line became a cornerstone of the new North American Aerospace Defense Command organization of joint continental air defence.
USAF personnel were limited to the main stations for each sector and they performed annual inspections of auxiliary and intermediate stations as part of the contract administration. Most operations were performed by Canadian and United States civilian personnel, and the operations were automated as much as was possible at the time. All of the installations flew both the Canadian and United States flags until they were deactivated as DEW sites and sole jurisdiction was given to the Government of Canada as part of the North Warning System in the late 1980s and early 1990s.