Hello, and welcome back to another episode of “let’s figure out what’s wrong with
this airport.”
Ahem.
There’s a farm in the middle of it.
There’s a man living in it.
One of the runways has a road going through it for some reason.
Sucks.
Crosses the US-Canada border.
Crosses the—okay, wait a minute, why do so many airports cross the US Canada border?
Well, these airfields date back, like half of the weird things we talk about on this
channel, to World War II.
Specifically, the lame part of World War II before the US declared war on Germany and
tore Hitler apart with their legion of sword-wielding war eagles.
You see, from 1939 to 1941, the US was a neutral nation—a fact I learned from this official
Canadian government website where they call Americans stupid with not one but two exclamation
marks.
The reasons for American neutrality aren’t that important for this video, but just try,
if you can, to imagine that a megalomaniac world leader has just invaded a European nation
and—oh, you can imagine that?
Okay, so, basically, the reason you don’t want to die in a war right now is the same
reason people didn’t want to die in a war 80 years ago.
As things began heating up in 1935, the United States passed the Neutrality Act, prohibiting
the export of all weapons, ammunition, or other implements of war, and inspiring that
famous FDR quote, “get your mitts off my guns.”
That position, of course, didn’t last very long, because it was becoming increasingly
clear that Hitler was secretly a Nazi.
So, with a few more acts in 1937 and 1939, the US added some legal loopholes to their
neutrality policy that would allow them to sell planes to England without officially
choosing sides, because, y’know, that would probably hurt Hitler’s feelings.
The policy they came up with was this: any country could purchase arms from the United
States, but only on two conditions: one, they paid upfront in cash; and two, they transported
the goods themselves—basically, your standard drug dealer’s policy.
If these rules sound a little random to you, it’s because they were; the only reason
they were chosen was to make it almost impossible for Nazi Germany to take advantage of the
US’ not-so-neutral neutrality.
You see, if the Nazis were notorious for one thing, it was their inability to pay for military
equipment upfront.
Their economy was mainly held up by deficit financing on the premise that they would eventually
take over the entire world, kind of like how Amazon works except Amazon actually pulled
it off.
Given their relatively low cash reserves, the Nazis wouldn’t have been able to pay
for the planes upfront, and even if they did scrape together enough dough to buy the planes,
transporting them to Europe all by themselves would be a no-go given that they didn’t
have the ships to do it, and England controlled pretty much the entire Atlantic.
The only countries that could’ve realistically taken advantage of this “cash and carry”
policy were England and France, at least until France surrendered 9 months later.
“Now Sam,” you might be saying, “I’ve been sitting here very politely, listening
to you talk about 1930s US foreign policy, but I don’t pay you to talk about 1930s
US foreign policy, I pay you to talk about weird little airports.”
And, well, first of all, no you don’t, but second of all, I’m getting there.
By the end of 1939, England and France were both desperate for those zoomy-boomy boys,
but sending aircraft carriers all the way to the United States was a waste of time and
money, especially considering that most of the planes were capable of flying to Europe
on their own—they just couldn’t legally take off from US soil.
So, the US did what the US does best: came up with a legal loophole for their legal loophole.
It turns out that there’s actually this whole other country right up here called…
Can-a…da?
It sounds wild, I know, but they have their own Wikipedia page and everything.
Since Canada had already declared war on Germany, planes could legally be flown from Canada
to other Allied countries, but the US still needed a way to get the planes across the
border into Canada.
Technically, they could’ve dismantled the planes and shipped them to Canada via train,
but that would’ve cost extra time and money and the planes really struggled to kill Nazis
when they were in three hundred pieces.
So, instead, the manufacturers found two airfields—one in Sweetgrass, Montana, and one in Coutts,
Alberta; the only things separating them were a fence and an international border, so they
went ahead and tore down the fence, accidentally admitting Canada into the union as the 51st
state.
From then on out, planes could be flown right into Sweetgrass, emptied of fuel, and left
right at the edge of the US-Canada border.
Neither country’s military was allowed to move the planes over the border themselves,
so Canadian citizens would hitch the empty planes to horses or tractors and drag them
to the Canadian side of the airfield, where the Canadian air force could then legally
refuel them, fly them to Calgary, and then finally deliver them to Europe.
If that’s not bureaucratic efficiency, I don’t know what is.
Really, I don’t know what is.
I have no idea what bureaucratic means.
The Coutts-Sweetgrass airfield ended up being such a hit that the US and Canada set up a
bunch of other border-crossing airfields, 6 of which are still in use today.
Although as far as I can tell, this one actually had nothing to do with transporting warplanes—they
just somehow ran out of room in Northern Minnesota sometime in the 1970s and Canada very politely
let them borrow some of Manitoba.
But, uh… that’s a way less cool story, so we’ll keep that our little secret.
Now, hey, what if I told you that you could help the ongoing Ukrainian war effort by dragging
planes across international borders, just like the Canadians did during World War II?
Well you can’t, obviously, for like a hundred reasons.
But that’s okay, because I found a way better way to support the victims of this crisis
without getting up from your computer or spending a dime—it’s our sponsor, “Tab for a
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Well, it’s pretty simple—every time you open up a new tab, instead of a blank page,
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