The Coldest Front: Cold War Military Properties in Alaska Revised and Expanded ______
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1 United States Department of Defense Legacy Resource Management Program _________ The Coldest Front: Cold War Military Properties in Alaska Revised and Expanded _________ Prepared in Cooperation with the Alaska State Historic Preservation Officer February 1996, August 2012 Stewardship ● Leadership ● Partnership 2 Legacy The Legacy Resource Management Program was established by the Congress of the United States in 1991 to provide the Department of Defense with an opportunity to enhance the management of stewardship resources on over 25 million acres of land under DoD jurisdiction. Legacy allows DoD to determine how to better integrate the conservation of irreplaceable biological, cultural and geophysical resources with the dynamic requirements of military missions. To achieve this goal, DoD gives high priority to inventorying, protecting, and restoring biological, cultural and geophysical resources in a comprehensive, cost-effective manner, in partnership with federal, state and local agencies and private groups. Legacy activities help to ensure that DoD personnel better understand the need for protection and conservation of natural and cultural resources and that the management of these resources will be fully integrated with and support DoD mission activities and the public interest. Through the combined efforts of the DoD components, Legacy seeks to achieve its legislative purposes with cooperation, industry and creativity, to make the DoD the federal environmental leader. ________________________________________________________________________ This document was prepared in partnership with Alaska State Historic Preservation Officer Judith E. Bittner Colorado State University Center for the Environmental Management of Military Lands Prepared by William J. Siedler Office of History and Archaeology Alaska Department of Natural Resources 550 W. 7th Ave. Suite 1310 Anchorage, Alaska 99501–3565 Updated and with New Material by Leighton M. Quarles Natalie K. Thomas Colorado State University Center for the Environmental Management of Military Lands Fort Wainwright, Alaska Special thanks to Joe B. Orr, Historian, USAF John H. Cloe, Historian, USAF Dr. Colt Denfeld, COE Alaska District Alaska Cold War Working Group This document is a Legacy Resource Management Program work project and does not reflect the policy, practices, or doctrine of the Department of Defense or the United States Government. 3 Contents Introduction ..................................................................................................... The Military Situation in 1946 .................................................................... Impacts on Alaska ................................................................................... The Coldest Front ................................................................................... Detect and Monitor ........................................................................................... Aircraft Control and Warning System ........................................................... Distant Early Warning (DEW) Line ............................................................. Ballistic Missile Early Warning Site ............................................................. Missile Defense Alarm System ............................................................. Space Detection and Tracking System ............................................................. Solid State Phased Array Radar System ............................................................. Over the Horizon Backscatter Radar ............................................................. Cobra Dane Radar ................................................................................... Communicate ................................................................................................... White Alice Communications System ........................................................... Intercept and Respond ........................................................................................ Nike Missile System ............................................................. Elmendorf Air Force Base ............................................................. Ladd Air Force Base ............................................................. Eielson Air Force Base ............................................................. Forward Operating Bases .......................................................................... Shemya Air Force Base ............................................................. Guard and Defend ............................................................. Army Bases ............................................................. Fort Richardson ............................................................. Fort Wainwright ............................................................. Naval Bases ............................................................. Naval Air Station Adak/Naval Complex Adak ........................... Naval Operating Base Kodiak ........................... Tomorrow’s War ............................................................. The Atomic Alaska ............................................................. Project Chariot ............................................................. Amchitka Nuclear Test Site, 1966–1971 ............................................................. Fort Greely SM-1A Nuclear Plant ............................................................. Cold Weather Testing and Arctic Research ............................................................. Fort Greely ............................................................. Naval Arctic Research Laboratory ............................................................. Conclusion ...................................................................................................... Timeline ......................................................................................................... Glossary of Acronyms ........................................................................................ Annotated Bibliography ...................................................................................... 4 The Coldest Front: Cold War Military Properties in Alaska Figures *See the attached image guide 5 Introduction From the late 1940s through 1989, Alaska served as America’s Cold War sentinel and important air defense shield against the threat of Soviet attack over the North Pole. A threat of global proportion, the Cold War consumed $12 trillion from the U.S. Treasury and spanned nearly the lifetime of a generation of Americans.1 In the course of the Cold War, America amassed a vast standing army, a global intelligence network, and a military-industrial economic complex. By general convention, 1946 was the year the Cold War began. It was the year of George F. Kennan’s Long Telegram2 and former British Prime Minister Winston Churchill’s Iron Curtain speech at Fulton, Missouri.3 In November 1989, the Berlin Wall came down, and, in December 1991, the Soviet Union dissolved, officially ending the Cold War. The advent of atomic weapons in the 1940s revolutionized the way American military planners thought about how future wars might be fought. Within weeks after the end of World War II, American strategic military planners had identified 20 Soviet cities as potential atomic targets.4 By 1949, the Soviets also had the bomb. With the advances in aircraft and missile technologies, delivery of nuclear weapons to one’s enemy over the pole became a major threat. This “polar concept” marked a sea change in military strategy.5 British historian Sir John Keegan observed that 99% of the world’s wars were waged between the tropics of Cancer and Capricorn.6 The Cold War was the first to feature major theaters of operations above the Arctic Circle, assuring a prominent role for Alaska. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, the United States and its erstwhile enemy, the newly formed post-Soviet states, had enormous defense infrastructures focused on central Europe and the Arctic. Nearly every permutation of the Cold War, from the early years of George Kennan’s containment policy through Eisenhower’s “massive retaliation,” through détente and the “winnable nuclear war,” saw either an increase in arctic manpower—most notable during the 1950s—or an advance in or modification of the weapons and communications systems distributed across the circumpolar North.7 Following the Cold War, substantial components of the West’s northern military establishment were taken offline, and the future of a few Alaskan bases is currently in doubt. Nonetheless, the U.S. maintains a military presence in Alaska, serving a global response role first employed in Vietnam and now expanded to support operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. The Military Situation in 1946 The end of World War II saw the German and Japanese threats extinguished and British and French capacity badly diminished, leaving the United States and the Soviet Union as the preeminent powers in the world, with Soviet and Western forces facing each other in central Europe and across the Bering Strait. The United States, following its bombing of the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, had proven the world’s clear leader in military technology. U.S./Soviet relations rapidly cooled due to arguments over the fate of Europe and a growing sense on both sides of the incompatibility of communism and capitalism. Soviet leader Joseph Stalin 1 Betts, Richard K. Military Readiness: