Dye 3 - Distance Early Warning Line

Distance Early Warning Line

Dye-2 and 3 were among 58 Distant Early Warning (DEW) Line radar stations built by the United States of America (USA) between 1955 and 1960 across Alaska, Canada, Greenland and Iceland at a cost of billions of dollars.

After extensive studies in late 1957, the US Air Force (USAF) selected sites for two radar stations on the ice cap in southern Greenland. The DYE stations were the eastern extension of the DEW Line. DYE-1 was on the West Coast at Holsteinsborg; DYE-4 on the East Coast at Kulusuk. Dye 2 (66°29'30"N 46°18'19"W, 2338 masl) was built approximately 100 miles east of Sondrestrom AB and 90 miles south of the Arctic Circle at an altitude of 7,600 feet. Dye 3 was located approximately 100 miles east of Dye 2 and slightly south at an elevation of 8,600 feet, contrary to USAF map above.

The new radar sites were found to receive from three to four feet of snow each year. The snow was formed into large drifts by winds constantly blowing as much as 100 mph. To overcome this, the Dye sites were elevated approximately 20 feet above the ice cap surface. Dye 3 was completed in 1960. Due to snow accretion, the station was "jacked up" again in the late 1970s, but by the 1990s needed further elevation.

Instead, Dye 3 was closed as a radar station in the years 1990/1991.

Read more about this topic:  Dye 3

Famous quotes containing the words distance, early, warning and/or line:

    After climbing a great hill, one only finds that there are many more hills to climb. I have taken a moment here to rest, to steal a view of the glorious vista that surrounds me, to look back on the distance I have come. But I can rest only for a moment, for with freedom comes responsibilities, and I dare not linger, for my long walk is not yet ended.
    Nelson Mandela (b. 1918)

    Long before I wrote stories, I listened for stories. Listening for them is something more acute than listening to them. I suppose it’s an early form of participation in what goes on. Listening children know stories are there. When their elders sit and begin, children are just waiting and hoping for one to come out, like a mouse from its hole.
    Eudora Welty (b. 1909)

    What I am now warning the People of is, That the News-Papers of this Island are as pernicious to weak Heads in England as ever Books of Chivalry to Spain; and therefore shall do all that in me lies, with the utmost Care and Vigilance imaginable, to prevent these growing Evils.
    Richard Steele (1672–1729)

    We have not passed that subtle line between childhood and adulthood until we move from the passive voice to the active voice—that is, until we have stopped saying “It got lost,” and say, “I lost it.”
    Sydney J. Harris (b. 1917)