Hi, I'm the History Guy. I love history and if you love history too this is the channel for you.
Large public works from ancient pyramids to modern super highways have transformed the world,
and why these projects are amazing in their own right, they often have unintended consequences
that go far beyond the original scope of the project and that is particularly true of one
massive public works project that occurred in the middle of the 1950's. Between February of
1954 and July of 1957, the United States and Canadian governments cooperated on one of the
largest and most ambitious construction projects in the history of the world,
and in doing so they transformed Canada, they changed its culture, its economy,
its governance, it's very geography. It is history that deserves to be remembered.
The realities of the Second World War first brought the US and Canada to the realization
that we had much to gain by mutual military cooperation. The early risk that England may
fall to Nazi Germany suggested that Canada, with its vast natural resources and a relatively small
population, might be the next target. Officials in both the United States and Canada recognize
the value of joint cooperation in defense of the continent. In August of 1940, Canadian Prime
Minister Mackenzie King, and US President Franklin Roosevelt signed the Ogdensburg Agreement which
created the permanent Joint Board on Defense. The Board includes both Canadian and American
military and civilian representatives, with the task of providing policy level consultation on
bilateral Defense matters. The existence of the Joint Board position the countries for
further cooperation during the tense times of the Cold War, as both nations became concerned about
continental defense or the protection of North America from the threat of attack by long-range
bombers. The obvious idea was to build a line of rader installations that could detect incoming
bombers early, giving time to direct fighter aircraft to attack the bomber formations,
but both nations were also facing a public demand to reduce defense spending and increasing demands
to meet their NATO commitments in Europe. And radar technology at the time had its limitations,
it was expensive, it was relatively short range that required large support teams and
if you put your radar installations farther out on the frontier where they could detect Soviet
bombers earlier that magnified the difficulty of building and maintaining such installations.
Plans for a Joint Early Warning System started as early as 1946, but it took the first Soviet test
of a nuclear bomb, called First Lighting in August 29th of 1949, to finally compel the US Congress to
appropriate funds. The first continental radar defense line was called the Pine Tree Line,
the joint project was constructed around the 50th parallel under the philosophy that a
Soviet attack would likely Center on major population and industrial centers, but even
as it became operational in 1954 it was in many ways outdated. The line used classic pulsed mode
radar which was relatively short ranged imprecise and often unable to detect objects flying close to
the ground. Additionally, the location of the stations close to the population centers they
were protecting, provided only limited warning time. While parts of the Pine Tree Line remained
in service into the 1990s, it was clear from the beginning that the Pine Tree Line would provide
insufficient protection from bomber attack. In 1956, construction began on a new line of radar
stations across the 55th parallel, this line used newer forward scattered by static radar
technology with greater range in automation. The so-called Mid Canada Line was seen more as
a supplement for the Pine Tree Line than a replacement, and unlike the Pine Tree Line,
was wholly funded by Canada and staffed by Royal Canadian Air Force personnel, but despite the
new technology, the Mid Canada line also had technological limitations. While the by static
radar technology meant that the radar could detect to higher altitudes and longer ranges,
it was not able to determine the exact locations and as such was more of a tripwire than a useful
tool for vectoring fighter interceptors. Just as problematic the radar signal could be overwhelmed
by flocks of birds during migration season. Like the Pine Tree Line, the Mid Canada Line
was largely outdated before it was operational and another more capable line was being planned even
as the mid Canada Line was being constructed. The final line was by far the most capable,
utilizing newer technologies and placed much farther towards the North Pole, as the pole
was the shortest route that Soviet bombers would take if attacking into North America.
While improved radar technology and automation made it more practical to staff a line so far
north, the Distant Early Warning Line, or DEW Line, was nonetheless an ambitious feat
of engineering. It planned to take some of the world's most advanced technologies and place
them into some of the world's most remote and inhospitable environments. The DEW Line would
be placed along the 69th parallel, 2 to 300 kilometers north of the Arctic Circle. The
DEW Line stations included two types of radar, the long range detection system
had two back-to-back antennas, one with a pencil beam for long-range precision detection and one
with the square beam for general search with a wider beam. Those antennas would be flanked by
shorter ranged by static gap-filler radars which would detect any aircraft trying to sneak between
the long-range radar, that system was similar to the one that was used on the Mid Canada line but
used the Doppler effect which allowed it to filter out some moving objects and avoid the issues with
migrating birds blocking the radar. The two systems provided a more comprehensive barrier
than the previous to echelon and location at the edge of the Arctic offered far greater warning
of the attack allowing better time to plan and ready both defensive interceptors and strategic
bombers that would allow counter attack. The stations were connected to each other and
commanded control through a communication network called the White Alice Communication System,
or WAX, that required large parabolic antennas. Because of the remoteness and inaccessibility
of the locations the station's need to be designed for both self-sufficiency and for
mutual support. Designs had to include extensive port storage facilities, repair and maintenance
capabilities and multiple system redundancies. Merely doing the survey to identify the 63 sites
that stretch from Alaska to the Baths and Islands was an epic feat, there was no infrastructure
in the north of Canada. Survey teams operated in primitive conditions and extreme weather to try to
identify locations that you could access via water for construction and resupply, that had room for
airfields that had ground where you could build an installation or if not enough gravel nearby
that they could literally build ground to build an installation and of course most importantly that
had an unobstructed radar view to the north. The construction process was massive,
involving some 25,000 people. 3,000 members of the US Army transportation Corps managed the
sea lift during the brief summers, materials were airlifted by massive US Air Force ski
equipped Lockheed L C-130s as well as Douglas C-124 Globemaster and Fairchild C-119 flying
boxcars. The rugged conditions for construction and supply created a market for short takeoff
and landing bush planes like the de Havilland Canada DHC-2 beaver, whatever could not be moved
by plane or boat would be dragged in cat trains as sledges dragged by cats and bulldozers. In
all some 460 thousand tons of material was moved from the US in southern Canada to the Arctic, in
some of the most difficult to reach locations and brutal weather conditions on earth. Subcontractors
then used thousands of workers to transform those into bases, building housing, air strips,
aircraft hangars, outdoor and covered antennas and antenna towers. Often in the dark and in the
sub-zero temperatures. Despite the challenges the line was constructed quickly and in 1957
two years and eight months after the decision to build was made, the line was operational.
The 63 stations came in different sizes, some were unmanned and only required maintenance
during the presummers, others had crews of just three people, larger stations might have as many
as a hundred personnel, all those people so far up north, that in the dead of winter the
temperature outside might be as low as minus sixty degrees Fahrenheit. The construction and operation
and what was previously and almost completely undeveloped part of the world did offer some
economic and scientific benefits, small bush plane operations that got supply contracts got so much
business that they grew to major airlines with both Canadian Airlines and Eastern Provincial
Airlines deriving from such operations. Likewise, Canadian electronic contractors with supply
contracts gained substantial business and grew as an industry. The DEW Line provided opportunities
for research and scientific development, the experience of the construction provided
valuable insights into building and maintaining materials and bases in remote locations and
extreme environments and the stations offered an unprecedented opportunity for the study of Arctic
weather and oceanographic study, but the DEW Line also offered unique challenges in environmental
impacts. Building and maintaining the station's required roads that cut through the permafrost,
damaging watersheds and wildlife migration routes, as the bases required significant
storage due to the difficulty of resupply they had many tanks both above and below ground with
which time have leaked millions of gallons of fuel and dangerous chemicals. A Canadian project
to remediate the environmental damage from 21 DEW Line sites that were decommissioned in the 1960s
conducted between 1996 and 2014, was the largest environmental cleanup in Canadian history and cost
575 million dollars. The scope of the project was staggering, with hundreds of thousands of
cubic meters of contaminated soils and debris. Some soil was so contaminated that it had to be
removed to facilities in the south, others were buried in specifically constructed landfills,
but one of the most significant effects of the manufacturer of the Line was on Canadian culture
and the native peoples of Canada's north. While there was a concern about the effect
on these remote populations from the start, Canada appointed northern resource officers to represent
their interest, the impact on culture proved to be beyond management. While offered a pipeline
of government services to populations which previously had been largely ignored and offered
economic educational and health care opportunities that were barely existent previously, DEW line
operations also had an irreparable impact of the hunter-gatherer peoples of Canada's north. As one
Canadian university professor noted, “In all of recorded human history there is no group of
people who went from hunting and gathering culture to a modern one in such a short period of time”.
The resulting of people left the Inuit with deep social scars and the concurrent risks of a new
sedentary wage economy including new health risks and challenges like alcohol-related violence.
Like the Pine Tree Line and the Mid Canada Line, the DEW Line, one of the most ambitious
construction projects in world history was largely outdated before it was even completed. The advent
of nuclear missiles made these sites that detected only incoming bombers less important. In 1985 the
United States and Canada came to an agreement to dismantle the DEW Line, some stations were
upgraded with better radar other stations were simply decommissioned and the last official DEW
Line station was decommissioned in 1993. What is left is now called the North Warning System and
unlike the DEW Line, those stations that are in Canada are meant exclusively by Canadian personnel
while the United States man's those stations that are in the United States and helps to fund the
entire system. The project was extraordinary in its scope, it was a marvel of its time and
it was part of that system that purports to have prevented nuclear Armageddon via mutual deterrence
but like every great project it had implications far beyond its intent and it transformed the north
of Canada both physically and culturally, and it might have offered lessons that will be useful in
the future as the world faces new challenges. It is history that deserves to be remembered
I'm the History Guy, I hope you enjoyed addition of my series of short snippets
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