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ALSIB: the Alaska-Siberia Air Route project
In 1940 the US Army Air Corps (USAAC) ‘s Cold Weather Experiment Station was established at the newly-built Ladd Field, near Fairbanks in Alaska. Created to test aircraft to the very extremes of their operability, the Cold Weather Test Detachment played a vital role during World War Two and beyond.
According to the bookazine Second World War Stories by Mortons Books, in 1942 Ladd Field became the busy bilingual hub for an alternative “back-door” delivery route to the Soviet Union for desperately needed American Lend-Lease aircraft, which up until that point had been transferred along a Miami-South America- Africa-Iran-Russia air-sea route. Ladd would be at the centre of the Alaska-Siberia delivery route, known to the Americans as the Alaska-Siberia (ALSIB) Air Route project and to the Russians as the Alaska-Krasnoyarsk route.
8,000 Lend-Lease aircraft delivered
American pilots would ferry brand new aircraft from their factories to the route’s starting point at Great Falls, Montana, from where they would continue their journeys through western Canada along the pre-war Northwest Staging Route, into the Alaskan interior, At Ladd the aircraft would be handed over to Soviet pilots who would fly them on to Galena, Moses Point and Nome and across the Bering Sea to Uelkal, from where they would continue through Siberia to Markova on the Anadyr River. From there they would then be sent to their front-line units.
The first delivery of Douglas A-20 Havoc light bombers for the Soviet Union arrived at Ladd in September 1942 and were handed over to Russian pilots once their “squawk sheets” had been cleared as per Russian specifications.
By the end of the war, more Lend-Lease aircraft had been delivered via the ALSIB route than by all other routes combined; nearly 8,000 aircraft – including Bell P-39s and P-63s, Curtiss P-40s and (one) C-46, Douglas A-20s and C-47s, North American B-25s and AT-6s and Republic P-47s – had been transferred by September 1945.
Ice fog
One of the biggest single challenges of operating in Ladd’s sub-zero temperatures was working around the minuscule moisture-generated ice crystals that float in still air, creating “ice-fog”, demonstrated during joint USAAF-Army “aggressor-defender” exercises, designated as Task Force Frigid, around Fairbanks in 1947.
With the outside temperature hovering around -60°F (-51°C), Army troops rapidly burned up calories slogging through deep snow while attempting to defend their positions. One unit called for air support to strafe” an attacking aggressor force In response, four P-51 Mustangs were quickly pushed out of a warm hangar at Ladd Field along with four heavily bundled-up pilots, who were squeezed into tight-fitting cockpits to perform a brief flilghtline warm-up.
The engine exhausts generated so much moisture it turned into ice-fog. By the time they had taxied to the runway for take-off, visibility had reduced to zero and the air-support mission was cancelled.
Second World War Stories is published by Mortons Books and is available to order here.
Photo credit: U.S. Air Force
