Distant Early Warning Line - The Beginning of The Construction

The Beginning of The Construction

From a standing start in December 1954, many thousands of people with countless skills 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 — at some of the most isolated places in North America. The construction project employed about 25,000 people.

Military and civilian airlifts, huge sealifts during the short summers, snowcat trains and barges distributed vast cargoes along the length of the Line to build the permanent settlements needed at each site. It was to military and naval units that fell much of the job of carrying mountains of supplies to the northern sites. More than 3,000 U.S. 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 U.S. Navy ships and they raced time during the few weeks the ice was open to land supplies at dozens of spots on the Arctic Ocean shore during the summers of 1955, 56, and 57.

Scores of commercial pilots, flying everything from bush planes to four-engined aircraft, were the backbone of one of the greatest airlift operations in history. US Air Force C-124 Globemaster and C-119 Flying Boxcar transport planes also supported the project. Together these provided the only means of access to many of the stations during the wintertime. In all, 460,000 tons of materials were moved from the US 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 driection 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 US and southern Canada worked at high speed under conditions so difficult that it is a wonder the project was completed in such a short time. Concrete was poured in the middles 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, and putting it all together in darkness, blizzards and subzero cold.

After the building 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 complete communications network.

The majority of Canadian DEW Line stations were the joint responsibility of the Royal Canadian Air Force (the Canadian Forces) and the U.S. Air Force. The USAF component was the 64th Air Division, Air Defense Command. The 4601st Support Squadron, 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 NORAD organization of joint continental air defense.

USAF personnel were limited to the main stations for each sector and the performed annual inspections of auxiliary and intermediate stations as part of the contract administration. Most operations were performed by Canadian and US civilian personnel, and they were automated as much as was possible at the time. All of the installations flew both the Canadian and US flags until they were deactivated as DEW sites and sole jurisdiction was given to the Canadian Government as part of the North Warning System in the late 1980s and early 1990s.