DEW Line ~ 1957 US Army; Distant Early Warning System; “The Big Picture” TV-359
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‘The complex, far-flung network of preparedness by which America keeps itself ready to fend off attack is the story behind this THE BIG PICTURE film presentation. Beyond the United States, far to the North, stretches the latest link in the gigantic network of sight and sound, the remote radar stations of the Distant Early Warning System which we call the DEW Line. To erect these stations in regions few men had ever seen a short decade ago was an achievement of great proportions. To man them, to keep them operating, to bring in adequate food, clothing, and equipment is another gigantic task — and a continuous one. The job of carrying supplies and equipment to those remote arctic stations belongs to the Army Transportation Corps. “DEW Line” was filmed by two camera crews whose members followed the East and West Coast Task Forces through their special DEW Line training at Fort Eustis; departure in convoy from Hampton Roads, Virginia, and Seattle; rigors of the trip through the Arctic ice pack; preparations for discharge; and the difficult and diversified conditions encountered at the actual unloading sites. Today the frozen Arctic is a link in our vast chain of defense — a chain kept strong by many hardworking individuals, not least of whom are the much traveled men of the Army Transportation Corps.’
“The Big Picture” episode TV-359
Public domain film from the US National Archives, slightly cropped to remove uneven edges, with the aspect ratio corrected, and mild video noise reduction applied.
The soundtrack was also processed with volume normalization, noise reduction, clipping reduction, and equalization (the resulting sound, though not perfect, is far less noisy than the original).
The Distant Early Warning Line, also known as the DEW Line or Early Warning Line, was a system of radar stations in the far northern Arctic region of Canada, with additional stations along the North Coast and Aleutian Islands of Alaska, in addition to the Faroe Islands, Greenland, and Iceland. It was set up to detect incoming Soviet bombers during the Cold War, and provide early warning of a land based invasion.
The DEW Line was the northernmost and most capable of three radar lines in Canada; the joint Canadian-US Pinetree Line ran from Newfoundland to Vancouver Island, and the Mid-Canada Line ran somewhat north of this.
Introduction
The DEW Line was a significant achievement among Cold War initiatives in the Arctic. A successful combination of scientific design and logistical planning of the late 1950s, the DEW Line consisted of a string of continental defence radar installations, ultimately stretching from Alaska to Greenland. In addition to the secondary Mid-Canada Line and the tertiary Pinetree Line, the DEW Line marked the edge of an electronic grid controlled by the new SAGE (Semi Automatic Ground Environment) computer system and was ultimately centred on the Colorado command hub of the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD).
The construction of the DEW Line was made possible by bilateral agreement between the Canadian and American governments and by an alliance between the U.S. Department of Defense and the Bell system of communication companies. It grew out of a detailed study made by a group of the nation’s foremost scientists in 1952, the Summer Study Group at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The subject of the study was the vulnerability of the U.S. and Canada to air attack, and its concluding recommendation was that a distant early warning line of search radar stations be built across the Arctic border of the North American continent as rapidly as possible.
Improvements in Soviet technology rendered the Pinetree Line and Mid-Canada Line inadequate to provide enough early warning and on February 15, 1954, the Canadian and American governments agreed to jointly build a third line of radar stations (Distant Early Warning), this time running across the high Arctic. The line would run roughly along the 69th parallel north, 200 miles or 300 kilometers north of the Arctic Circle.
Before the job was completed, men with the necessary knowledge, skills and experience were drawn from Bell telephone companies in every state in the U.S. Much of the responsibility was delegated under close supervision to a vast number of subcontractors, suppliers, and U.S. military units…
Radar system
In Point Lay, Alaska, the main AN/FPS-19 search radar is in the dome, flanked by two AN/FRC-45 lateral communications dishes (or AN/FRC-102, depending on the date). To the left are the much larger southbound AN/FRC-101 communications dishes. Not visible is the AN/FPS-23 “gap filler” Doppler antenna.
The DEW Line was upgraded with fifteen new AN/FPS-117 phased-array radars between 1985 and 1994, and renamed the North Warning System…
