The Lashup Radar Network was a United States

Cold War The Cold War was a period of global Geopolitics, geopolitical rivalry between the United States (US) and the Soviet Union (USSR) and their respective allies, the capitalist Western Bloc and communist Eastern Bloc, which lasted from 1947 unt ...

radar netting system for air defense surveillance which followed the post-

World War II World War II or the Second World War (1 September 1939 – 2 September 1945) was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War II, Allies and the Axis powers. World War II by country, Nearly all of the wo ...

"five-station radar net" and preceded the "high Priority Permanent System".

ROTOR ROTOR was an elaborate air defence radar system built by the British Government in the early 1950s to counter possible attack by Soviet bombers. To get it operational as quickly as possible, it was initially made up primarily of WWII-era syst ...

was a similar expedient system in the

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Background

United States electronic attack warning began with a 1939 networking demonstration at Twin Lights station NJ, and 2 SCR-270 radar stations during the August 1940 " Watertown maneuvers" (NY). When "Pearl Harbor was attacked, here were 8 CONUSearly-warning stations" (ME, NJ, & 6 in CA), and Oahu's Opana Mobile Radar Station had 1 of 6 SCR-270s. CONUS "Army Radar Station" deployments for World War II were primarily for coastal anti-aircraft defense, e.g., L-1 at Oceanside CA, J-23 at Seaside OR ( Tillamook Head), and B-30 at Lompoc CA; and "the AAF...inactivated the aircraft warning network in April 1944." In 1946 the Distant Early Warning Line was "first conceived—and rejected". By 1948 there were only 5 AC&W stations, e.g., Twin Lights in June and Montauk's "Air Warning Station #3 on July 5 (

cf. The abbreviation cf. (short for either Latin or , both meaning 'compare') is generally used in writing to refer the reader to other material to make a comparison with the topic being discussed. However some sources offer differing or even contr ...

SAC radar stations, e.g., at

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Bomb Plots).

Radar Fence

The Radar Fence was a planned U.S.

air defense "warning and control system" for $600 million (including $388 million for radars and other equipment) proposed in a report by Maj. Gen. Francis L. "Ankenbrandt and his communications officers" and which was approved by the USAF Chief of Staff on November 21, 1947. The "Radar Fence Plan (

code name A code name, codename, call sign, or cryptonym is a code word or name used, sometimes clandestinely, to refer to another name, word, project, or person. Code names are often used for military purposes, or in espionage. They may also be used in ...

d Project SUPREMACY)" was to be complete by 1953 with 411 radar stations and 18 control centers in the continental United States.

Air Defense Command Aerospace Defense Command was a major command (military formation), command of the United States Air Force, responsible for air defense of the continental United States. It was activated in 1968 and disbanded in 1980. Its predecessor, Air De ...

(ADC) rejected Supremacy since "no provision was made in it for the Alaska to Greenland net with flanks guarded by aircraft and picket ships equiredfor 3 to 6 hours of warning time", and "Congress failed to act on legislation required to support the proposed system." In the spring and summer of 1947, 3 ADC Aircraft Control and Warning (AC&W) plans had gone unfunded.

Lashup planning

In November 1947 ADC "decided to go ahead with implementation singAC&W assets…ADC possessed." The January 1, 1948, Finletter Commission report "while recognizing the need for a radar early-warning system, cautioned against the extraordinary expense of such a system, if constructed, to provide total coverage." The ADC commander "was ordered on 23 April 1948 to establish with his current resources he initial networks withAC&W systems in the Northwestern United States, the Northeastern United States, and the Albuquerque, New Mexico, areas, in that priority." The "first air defense division organization", the 25th Air Division, was established October 25, 1948, "at Silver Lake (Everett), Washington", the 26th Air Division was activated at Mitchell Field NY on November 16, and both were transferred to ADC on April 1, 1949.

Lashup deployment

"Lashup I" was a stopgap $561,000 program approved in October 1948 by the ADC commander to expand "the five-station radar net then in existence". Preliminary work began by the end of 1948, and L-1 at Dow Air Force Base was complete in June 1949. In the fall of 1949 a 2nd stage of "additional Lashup stations and heavy radar equipment asauthorized", and after completed in April 1950 the "Lashup net went into operation" on June 1, 1950. (cited by Volume I, p. 132) After a mid-July direct telephone line was installed between CONAC headquarters and the 26th Air Division HQ ("the beginning of the Air Force air raid warning system"); in August "President Truman had a direct telephone line installed between the Air Force Pentagon post and the

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Sites in the network

The 44 Lashup radar stations in April 1950 were 23 in the Northeast/Great Lakes areas, 10 in the

Pacific Northwest The Pacific Northwest (PNW; ) is a geographic region in Western North America bounded by its coastal waters of the Pacific Ocean to the west and, loosely, by the Rocky Mountains to the east. Though no official boundary exists, the most common ...

, 5 in/near Southern California, 3 at Albuquerque, 2 at San Francisco, and 1 in Tennessee (Alaska radars were in a separate network.) (Figure 3 in History of Strategic Air and Ballistic Missile Defense, Volume I 1945-1955) Stations were geographically grouped by Air Divisions which each had a ground-controlled intercept (GCI) center (e.g., Roslyn Air Warning Station's Manual Control Center in New York). Palermo Air Force Station
Portland Air National Guard Base
Fort Meade radar station

Highlands Air Force Station Highlands Air Force Station was a military installation in Middletown Township near the borough of Highlands, New Jersey. The station provided ground-controlled interception radar coverage as part of the Lashup Radar Network and the Semi-Autom ...

Selfridge AFB radar station
Snelling Air Force Station
Fort Williams
Cape Charles Air Force Station

Lashup equipment

Lashup used improved systems that included the Western Electric AN/TPS-1B Radar, which was first used in 1948 (a -1B was at Portland L-33 in March 1948 for warning the nuclear Hanford Site.) L-17 began using a 1949 Bendix AN/CPS-5 radar, to which a height finder MIT AN/CPS-4 Radar was added by March 9, 1950. Also developed was the General Electric AN/CPS-6 Radar which was at L-12 in 1949. The Bendix AN/FPS-3 Radar used in the Lashup network was ready for installation in late 1950.

Replacement planning

The Interim Program and its First Augmentation were planned to replace Lashup with a larger radar network "until the Supremacy plan network could be approved and constructed", and an $85,500,000 March 1949 Congressional bill funded both the Interim Program "for 61 basic radars and 10 control centers to be deployed in 26 months, with an additional ten radars and one control station for Alaska" and the augmentation's additional 15 radars ("essentially Phase II of Supremacy"). The USAF reallocated $50 million to instead implement the program as a "permanent Modified Plan" (modified from Supremacy) to "start construction on the high Priority Permanent System of radars in February 1950 with the first 24 radar sites to be constructed by the end of 1950"—operating in 1951 were P-1 in WA (opened June 1, 1950) and TM-187 in TX. Early June 1950 exercises "in the 58th Air Division bd Lashup sitesindicated insufficient low-altitude coverage," and Maj Gen Morris R. Nelson identified on June 12 that ADC could employ "an American version of CDS", the British command and control system. Congress subsequently passed a "supplemental appropriation" in September 1950 of nearly $40 million for new radar stations and search/height-finder equipment." By November 1950,

Ground Observation Corps The Ground Observer Corps (GOC), sometimes erroneously referred to as the Ground ''Observation'' Corps, was the name of two American civil defense organizations during the middle 20th century. World War II organization The first Ground Observer ...

filter centers (7 in the west, 19 in the east) were being installed, and by November 10 a separate Air Defense Command headquarters at Ent AFB was approved (the

Federal Civil Defense Administration The Federal Civil Defense Administration (FCDA) was organized by President Harry S. Truman on December 1, 1950, through Executive Order 10186, and became an official government agency via the Federal Civil Defense Act of 1950 on 12 January 1 ...

was created in December 1950.) On June 13, 1951, the government released $20 million for construction of permanent radar stations, and the "original construction program for the Permanent System" was completed in May 1952.

Lashup phaseout

Phaseout of Lashup radar stations began in January 1952 at Larson AFB (L-29) & Richland (L-30) in Washington that were replaced by Othello AFS (P-40). On December 1, 1953, a few Lashup stations became part of the subsequent "75-station, permanent net", e.g., the Montauk USAF facility was named an Air Force Station when designated LP-45"On 1 December 1953, the site designation was changed to LP-45 and the Air Force facilities were renamed Montauk Air Force Station. Montauk AFS was incorporated into the permanent ADC network of General Surveillance Radar Stations. (unsourced claim at Montauk Air Force Station wikipage) (the Palermo AFS L-14 reportedly became permanent site LP-54 in 1951.) One station of the Lashup Radar Network remained in 1957 at the end of which ADC operated 182 radar stations (

135 SAGE CDTS sites in 1963, 66 "long-range radars" in 1981, and 41 JSS stations in 1985).. Airforce-magazine.com. Retrieved on 2013-09-18.

References

{{Reflist , refs= {{Cite book , author=Air Defense Command , title=Organization and Responsibility for Air Defense, March 1946–September 1955 , publisher= CONAD , number=ADC Historical Study No. 9, author-link=Air Defense Command (cited by Volume I, p. 132)

Arlington WA
Palos Verdes Estates CA*
B-5 La Jolla CA {{aka Mount Soledad*
B-30 Lompoc CA probably Point Arguelo
B-78 Mill Valley CA a.k.a. Mt Tamalpais
B-85 Carmel CA a.k.a. Point Sur
J-23 Seaside, OR a.k.a. Tillamook Head
J-41 Santa Catalina Island CA a.k.a. Camp Cactus
J-42 San Nicolas Island CA
J-55 Neah Bay WA a.k.a. Bahokus Peak
J-77 Olema CA a.k.a. Point Reyes
J-77 Gualala CA a.k.a. Point Arena
J-80 Montara CA a.k.a. Point Montara
L-1 Oceanside CA
L-6 Otay Mesa CA a.k.a. Border Field 6
L-35 Point Hueneme CA
L-82 Half Moon Bay CA * not operational but in "guard" (probably caretaker) status{{dead link, date=October 2023 {{Cite report , last=Schaffel , first=Kenneth , year=1991 , title=Emerging Shield: The Air Force and the Evolution of Continental Air Defense 1945-1960 , url=https://archive.org/details/TheEmergingShield , format=45MB

pdf Portable document format (PDF), standardized as ISO 32000, is a file format developed by Adobe Inc., Adobe in 1992 to present documents, including text formatting and images, in a manner independent of application software, computer hardware, ...

, work=General Histories , publisher= Office of Air Force History , isbn=0-912799-60-9 , accessdate=2011-09-26 , url-access=registration {{Cite book , chapter=Chapter 3: Planning for Air Defense in the Postwar Era , title=Emerging Shield , pages=47-81 (pdf pp. 62-96) {{Cite book , title=History of Strategic and Ballistic Missile Defense, 1945-1955: Volume I , url=http://www.history.army.mil/html/books/bmd/BMDV1.pdf , quote=Stations were undermanned, personnel lacked training, and repair and maintenance were difficult. This stop-gap system later would be replaced by a 75-station, permanent net authorized by Congress and approved by the President in 1949 … To be closer to ConAC, ARAACOM moved to Mitchel AFB, New York on 1 November 1950. , archive-date=10 November 2013 , access-date=1 February 2013 , archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20131110121813/http://www.history.army.mil/html/books/bmd/BMDV1.pdf , url-status=dead {{Cite book , chapter=Chapter II: American Strategy for Air and Ballistic Missile Defense , title=History of Strategic Air and Ballistic Missile Defense, 1945–1955: Volume I , pages=37–68 {{Cite report , last1=Winkler , first1=David F , last2=Webster , first2=Julie L , date=June 1997 , title=Searching the Skies: The Legacy of the United States Cold War Defense Radar Program , url=https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/pdfs/ADA331231.pdf , archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20121201202922/http://www.dtic.mil/cgi-bin/GetTRDoc?Location=U2&doc=GetTRDoc.pdf&AD=ADA331231 , url-status=live , archive-date=December 1, 2012 , publisher=U.S. Army Construction Engineering Research Laboratories , accessdate=2012-03-26 Cold War military installations of the United States Telecommunications equipment of the Cold War Air defence radar networks