CFB North Bay - NORAD and The Underground Complex - The NORAD Regions

The NORAD Regions

Over its 43-year span in air defence operations, the Underground Complex was home to three successive NORAD regions. Each region was the largest in the NORAD organization. The first was the Northern NORAD Region (NNR) -- which transferred to North Bay from RCAF Station St. Hubert, Quebec, in 1963. St. Hubert, just south of Montreal, had been home to the Northern NORAD Region while the Underground Complex was under construction. The NNR's area of responsibility comprised the north, Atlantic and east-central airspace of Canada—the frontline "trenches" of North America with respect to the Soviet Union. American NORAD regions oversaw air security of the rest of the country.

Everything that flew into this region had to be detected and identified within two minutes by Underground Complex air defence operators. If an aircraft was still unknown at two minutes, fighters would be scrambled to intercept it, to find out why the aircraft could not be identified. If necessary, the fighters would force the aircraft down to the nearest landing field, and the aircraft met by authorities.

From receiving notification to scramble, jet fighters had to be airborne within five minutes. Under certain conditions fifteen minutes or even one hour was permitted, but five minutes was the norm. This meant at air bases across Canada jet fighters were fully fuelled and armed, and ready to start engines, 24 hours a day/seven days per week. They, and their pilots, were housed in special Quick Reaction Alert hangars (abbreviated "QRA"), at the end of runways. When North Bay called a fighter base for a scramble (for example, at Chatham, New Brunswick), simultaneously air traffic control would halt or move aside activity on the airfield; pilots would strap into and start their jets; and the QRA doors opened—then the jets would taxi out to the runway and take off.

The constant Sword of Damocles threat of nuclear air attack on North America made the speed of identifying aircraft and scrambling to make an interception, in the Northern NORAD Region, absolutely crucial. The scramble time plus the two-minute identification 'window' meant that, during the Cold War, the Northern NORAD Region's reaction time, from the moment it detected an aircraft to interceptor take-off, was seven minutes. Anything longer without a good reason was deemed unacceptable, resulting in admonishment by NORAD's high command to the Northern NORAD Region.

To assist in defending this massive territory, about half the size of Europe, the Northern NORAD Region had three subordinate units: Ottawa NORAD Sector, which was also situated in the Underground Complex; Bangor NORAD Sector (centralized around Bangor, Maine); and Goose NORAD Sector (centralized around Goose Bay, Labrador). In 1966, the three sectors were re-designated, respectively, as the 41st, 36th and 37th NORAD Divisions.

In July 1969, NORAD underwent a continent-wide revamping of its organization. The Northern NORAD Region was redesignated as the 22nd NORAD Region (22nd NR), but its area of responsibility—north, Atlantic and east-central Canada—remained unaltered.

On 1 July 1983, the famous SAGE computer network was officially switched off at North Bay, and air defence operations taken over by the Underground Complex's Regional Operations Control Center/Sector Operations Control Center (ROCC/SOCC) computer system. The ROCC/SOCC system was incorporated throughout NORAD, and caused another wholesale re-arranging of North American air defences. In particular to Canada, the 22nd NORAD Region was replaced by the Canadian NORAD Region (CANR), and the Underground Complex's area of responsibility expanded to standing watch over the skies of the entire country, an area equal to all of Europe.

The Canadian NORAD Region still exists. Its headquarters moved to Winnipeg, Manitoba, in April 1997, but air defence operations remained in North Bay.

In October 2006, Canadian NORAD Region air defence operations moved out of the Underground Complex into a new state-of-the-art installation built on the Earth's surface, named the Sgt David L. Pitcher Building after a Canadian NORAD serviceman who was killed in the crash of a United States Air Force AWACS patrol plane, in 1995. More about this installation is described below.