Sondrestrom Air Base
The Sondrestrom Air Base (originally Bluie West-8 ) was from 1941 to 1992 an air base of the United States in West greenland . Today the base is home to Kangerlussuaq Airport .
location
The Sondrestrom Air Base was 97 km north of the Arctic Circle and about 140 km from the northeast end of the Kangerlussuaq Fjord .
history
As early as the 1920s, the construction of an airfield on Kangerlussuaq Fjord was considered; the meteorologist William Herbert Hobbs (1864–1953) from the University of Michigan operated a weather station here from 1927 to 1928 .
After the occupation of Denmark in World War II , responsibility for the security of Greenland was passed to the United States by an agreement on April 9, 1941. This then began with the construction of numerous bases on Greenland, including the Narsarsuaq Air Base and the Sondrestrom Air Base , which at that time was still called Bluie West-8 . Originally intended as a waypoint in an airlift route between North America and Europe, the base was used as an alternative landing point, radar and weather station and base for rescue missions inland during World War II.
In 1950 Denmark briefly took control of the base before the Cold War caused the United States to sign the base again by treaty. The base was then opened as Sondrestrom Air Base to serve as a transit station for building materials for Thule Air Base - Sondrestrom itself rarely hosted a permanent presence of the Air Force after the Thule Air Base was built. Instead, the base was used for transatlantic flights by the US Air Force and the refueling of tankers . In the 1950s and 1960s, Sondrestrom was the starting point for the construction of the four radar stations as part of the Distant Early Warning Line (DEW) program.
With the beginning of the 1950s, airlines also used the base as a stopover on transatlantic flights . The SAS flew to Sondrestrom on the polar route from Scandinavia to North America. After the development of new aircraft and the associated greater range, this benefit also ceased in the 1960s. Only in the 1970s were here Boeing 707 of Dan-Air en route from London Gatwick to Vancouver refueled. At this time, operations in Greenland began to take off, and regular flight connections to Copenhagen were offered.
The United States Air Force continued to use the base only occasionally, except for the annual supply flights to DEW stations inland. In the summer months, the base was also the starting point for scientific excursions.
After the collapse of the Soviet Union and the discontinuation of the DEW system, the base became meaningless to the United States. The last US Air Force crew left the base on September 30, 1992. Greenland bought the base from the US for 15 cents . Since then, Kangerlussuaq Airport has been located at the base, which is still an important hub for Greenland air traffic.
Incidents
- On August 29, 1961, a de Havilland Canada DHC-3 Otter of Eastern Provincial Airways (CF-MEX) , which was operated for Greenlandair , took off from Sondrestrom Air Base on a charter flight to Aasiaat Airport . When the machine reached an altitude of 3,500 feet, a serious fire developed on board, triggered by a leak in the carburetor. The pilots, who sustained severe burns in the incident, managed to make an emergency landing on a lake, causing the machine to slide onto the bank and burn out. The four passengers were uninjured. During the events, the flight captain was thrown out of the cockpit and trapped under a floating skid. He suffered severe burns from which he died on September 9, 1961 (see also Greenlandair's flight accident near Kangerlussuaq 1961 ) .
Web links
- Private documentation on the base in the 1980s
Individual evidence
- ^ Dawn Alexandrea Berry: Governing the North American Arctic: Sovereignty, Security, and Institutions . Springer, 2016, ISBN 978-1-137-49391-0 , pp. 115 .
- ↑ Air Force Leaves Greenland Base After 50 Years , LA Times article , Oct. 18, 1992
Coordinates: 67 ° 0 ′ 38 " N , 50 ° 42 ′ 33" W.