Balchen - World War II

World War II

In 1939, Balchen was in Helsinki, working on a contract to provide U.S. fighter aircraft to Finland, when the Soviet attack on Finland took place. Enlisting with the Norwegian Air Force, he made his way to the United States on a crucial mission to negotiate "matters pertaining to aircraft ordnance and ammunition with the question of the Norwegian Government's possible purchase of such materials in the United States of America." With his status of holding dual Norwegian and American citizenship and his extensive contacts in the aviation industry, his instruction from the Norwegian Government-in-exile in London changed to a new directive: to set up a training camp and school for expatriate Norwegian airmen and soldiers in Canada. Balchen negotiated directly with Canadian government officials to obtain an agreement to use available airport facilities at the Toronto Island airport on Lake Ontario known as "Little Norway". During the war, over 2,500 Norwegian aviators of all categories: pilots, navigators and mechanics, were trained in the various bases of "Little Norway".

During 1940, with the "Little Norway" facilities under construction and his administrative duties taken over by others, Balchen requested permission from the Norwegian Air Force to fly ferrying missions for the British, teaming with Clyde Pangborn, a contemporary record-breaking pilot of the era. In early 1941, while engaged in a ferrying mission, and on a layover in the Philippines, a representative of General Henry "Hap" Arnold sought out Balchen. Arnold asked Balchen to join the US Army Air Corps as a colonel to oversee the establishment of the USAAF polar airfields at Qaanaaq, and Sondre Stromfjord Greenland. These highly secretive bases would serve to ferry fighter aircraft across the Atlantic by air, rather than having to disassemble them and send them overseas by cargo ship. The airfields also served as bases from which long-range Consolidated B-24 Liberator patrol aircraft could fly far out over the North Atlantic Ocean in search of the German Kriegsmarine U-boats that were menacing American, British, and Canadian ships taking war supplies and troops across the ocean in preparation for the then undecided location of the cross-channel invasion of Europe. This latter air base had the code name "Bluie West Eight" during its operational life.

Between September 1941 and November 1943, Balchen trained his personnel in cold weather survival skills and rescue techniques which enabled them to carry out many rescues of downed airmen on the Greenland icecap. On 25 May 1943, flying in a Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress, Balchen led a bombing raid that destroyed the only German outpost remaining on Greenland, a forward station at Sabine Island on the eastern coast of that island. This destruction hindered the ability of the German armed forces to maintain a presence on Greenland that not only had been used to send deceptive radio messages to Allied aircraft as well as establishing a weather station required to provide accurate weather reports for the German forces operating in the North Atlantic.

Balchen then was posted to the European Theatre to run "Operation Where and When", based at Luleå-Kallax Air Base in northern Sweden. The base was set up for harassing and denying air superiority to Nazi Germany's Luftwaffe over Finland and occupied Norway. Balchen commanded a clandestine air transport operation, using 10 Douglas C-47s and helped to set up an escape route between the United Kingdom and Sweden that enabled numerous important diplomats and others to flee the Nazis. From March to December 1944, Balchen's "Operation Balder" using six B-24s manned with OSS crews, safely evacuated at least 2,000 Norwegians, 900 American internees and 150 internees of other nationalities from Sweden. Police troops (Norwegian refugees trained in Sweden) were also airlifted from Sweden to Finnmark.

The air operation also shipped strategic freight; from July to October 1944, 64 tons of operational supplies such as ammunition were transported from Scotland to the underground in occupied Norway. Life necessities like bales of hay and fodder for livestock were brought to areas in the north of Sweden and Norway, once even paradropping a hospital complete with a doctor and nurse. Between November 1944 and April 1945, Balchen also transported 200 tons of Arctic equipment and operational supplies from England to Sweden that were used to make secret overland transport from Sweden to Norway possible. During winter 1945, Balchen shipped communications equipment into northern Norway that was of inestimable value to the Allied Expeditionary Force's intelligence operations. The leading Norwegian wartime ace Sven Heglund was acting military attaché and served with Balchen, later writing about his time at Kallax. Another Norwegian at Kallax during the same period, who became a good friend, was marine biologist and explorer-to-be Thor Heyerdahl, later of Ra I and II and Kon-Tiki fame.