1957 Yukon Nuggets

DEW Line

To understand the Distant Early Warning line, you first have to understand the dawn of the nuclear age and the phrase "mutually assured destruction." In the early fifties, both the U.S. and Russia could deliver nuclear warheads to each other’s major cities. First nuclear strike was the biggest fear.

In December 1952, U.S. President Harry S. Truman approved the idea of an early warning system as one of his last acts in office. In December 1954, Western Electric got the contract to build, and complete, the DEW line by July 31, 1957.

It would be a chain of sixty-three integrated radar and communication systems, stretching 3,000 miles from the northwest coast of Alaska, across the northern Yukon coast to the eastern shore of Baffin Island at the 70th parallel.

The delivery of supplies and personnel amounted to the largest commercial airlift ever assembled. During the three years of construction, some 120 ships brought 42,000 tons of steel, millions of gallons of fuel, and many other supplies. More than 25,000 people were involved in construction. In all, more than 7,000 tradesmen from the U.S. and Canada worked at breakneck speed. Scores of commercial pilots, flying everything from bush planes to four-engine aircraft, worked in one of one of the greatest airlift operations in history.

Each main DEW station has its own airstrip, service buildings, garages, connecting roads, storage tanks, warehouses and, in some cases, an aircraft hangar. The cost of the DEW Line, excluding equipment, transportation and construction of the DEW East Section, exceeded $750 Million. There were three DEW Line stations in the northern Yukon: Shingle Point, Komakuk Beach and Stokes Point.

Despite the isolation, life at a DEW Line station was fairly comfortable, with private rooms, excellent food, modern indoor plumbing, and lots of spare time. DEW Liners enjoyed well-stocked libraries, current magazines and newspapers, first-run Hollywood movies and, of course, outstanding pay. It was common for an employee to be paid $3000 a month, a huge sum in the fifties and sixties.

If there was a front line to the Cold War, the DEW Line was it. The goal was to provide warning of nuclear attack, and then to think about how to dig the world out from under the ash heap of nuclear Armageddon. An unending topic of conversation at a DEW Line station was what would happen if the Russians really came.

By 1985 with technological advances, the United States decided to bring down the curtain on the DEW Line - almost. The U.S. and Canada began to transform the line into a highly automated version called the North Warning System.

A legacy of the DEW Line, that surfaced after the handover of stations to Canada, was the question of almost forty years of buried waste, PCBs, and other toxic chemicals seeping into the Arctic environment.

For a time, controversy raged over whether the U.S. or Canada was responsible for the cleanup and dismantling of the stations. Finally, an agreement was reached in 1996, with the United States contributing $100 million toward the cleanup.

Meanwhile, proposals have been made to preserve at least one DEW Line station as a museum.

 

A CKRW Yukon Nugget by Les McLaughlin.