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Anyone here remember the Dew Line Defences ? The USA Army's Land Trains


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I remember the DEW Line rather well, as my dad worked on installations at some of the base stations for a time in 1965/'66.  I believe it was ITT he subcontracted for as he gave me a sew-on jacket patch with nicely stitched globe and the ITT logo at the base of it.  He never had his camera with him, therefore, was unable to take photos of the equipment used there at the time, so thanks for this link. 

 

I am familiar with some LeTourneau-Westinghouse earthmoving equipment as I had a neighbor who gave me a big wall calendar from 1963 showing all their equipment on it.

 

Craig

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Thought the Distant Early Warning was the northernmost of three: DEW, Pine Tree, and I forget the third (could look up. Will leave that to the students). Think it was in a recent Svengoolie.

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I guess those Land Trains were not so good for the Permafrost.

 

 

A controversy also developed between the United States and Canada over the cleanup of deactivated Canadian DEW Line sites. The cleanup is now underway, site by site.[18] In assessing the cleanup, new research suggests that off-road vehicles damaged vegetation and organic matter, resulting in the melting of the permafrost, a key component to the hydrological systems of the areas.[19] The DEW Line has also been linked to depleted fish stocks and carelessness in agitating local animals such as the caribou, as well as non-seasonal hunting. These aspects are claimed to have had a devastating impact on the local native subsistence economies and environment.[19]

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My step dad worked on the Canada DEW Line back in the 60's. It's doubtful anyone at the time were concerned with ecological damage as the fear of USSR Cold War missiles occupied the front pages and fear mongering by the press made sure it stayed topical.

 

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 A friend of mine was stationed in Alaska in the early days of the cold war and one day he called me to tell me about a plane that they tracked on radar that was going faster than anything they had ever seen. ( first supersonic spy plane)

 They called NORAD and they said,"we got it, forget you ever seen it"

Edited by Roger Walling (see edit history)
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17 minutes ago, Roger Walling said:

 A friend of mine was stationed in Alaska in the early days of the cold war and one day he called me to tell me about a plane that they tracked on radar that was going faster than anything they had ever seen. ( first supersonic spy plane)

 They called NORAD and they said,"we got it, forget you ever seen it"

 

A long that line, I once worked for a company that made long range air search radar for a branch of the military. A little before my time there, way back when they started adding a computer onto the radar to automatically detect and track targets, a team was setup at a test and training site near the Pacific Ocean. Day time was for the military teams to be trained on the new system. Middle of the night was for the software team to be working bugs out of the system mostly using “targets of opportunity”. And they kept having this weird glitch many nights. Usually around the same time. They were picking up and tracking an impossible target at very high altitude moving at very high speed and almost always on the same course. Finally the decided that maybe it was real and started showing the powers that be the data and asking if there was anything real they might be seeing. They were told to shut up, pretend they hadn’t seen anything, etc. Quite a bit later they found out that it was the SR71 returning to Edwards from various missions.

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1 minute ago, ply33 said:

 

A long that line, I once worked for a company that made long range air search radar for a branch of the military. A little before my time there, way back when they started adding a computer onto the radar to automatically detect and track targets, a team was setup at a test and training site near the Pacific Ocean. Day time was for the military teams to be trained on the new system. Middle of the night was for the software team to be working bugs out of the system mostly using “targets of opportunity”. And they kept having this weird glitch many nights. Usually around the same time. They were picking up and tracking an impossible target at very high altitude moving at very high speed and almost always on the same course. Finally the decided that maybe it was real and started showing the powers that be the data and asking if there was anything real they might be seeing. They were told to shut up, pretend they hadn’t seen anything, etc. Quite a bit later they found out that it was the SR71 returning to Edwards from various missions.

 

The SR-71 ranks right up there with the moon landing as a technological achievement as far as I'm concerned. I wish we still let the smart people do amazing things like that. The "Skunkwerks" book describing the development of the SR-71 is a fantastic read and was written by one of the guys in charge of the project. If you like things mechanical and how serious guys solve serious problems, it's a very enjoyable book.

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1 hour ago, Matt Harwood said:

Didn't they just abandon these giant machines up there and leave them there when they were done? Or was that the Arctic explorer version?

 

You are thinking of the Arctic Snow Cruiser.

 

The Antarctic Snow Cruiser—Updated - The Atlantic

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The Snow Cruiser was developed for use in the Antarctic in the late 1930s, but, as mentioned by alsancle above, didn't work out so well and was abandoned in place.  The thing was uncovered in 1958, but again disappeared under the snow soon thereafter.  I guess it's still there ... somewhere.

 

For more information, here's a link to the Wikipedia article on the Snow Cruiser:

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antarctic_Snow_Cruiser

 

We don't have much snow here in Paisley, and that's the way I like it.

 

Cheers,

Grog

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