Bluie West One, later known as Narsarsuaq Air Base and

Narsarsuaq Airport Narsarsuaq Airport ( kl, Mittarfik Narsarsuaq) is an airport located in Narsarsuaq, a settlement in the Kujalleq municipality in southern Greenland. Along with Kangerlussuaq Airport, it is one of two airports in Greenland capable of serving l ...

, was built on a glacial

moraine A moraine is any accumulation of unconsolidated debris (regolith and rock), sometimes referred to as glacial till, that occurs in both currently and formerly glaciated regions, and that has been previously carried along by a glacier or ice shee ...

at what is now the village of

Narsarsuaq Narsarsuaq (lit. ''Great Plan'';''Facts and History of Narsarsuaq'', Narsarsuad Tourist Information old spelling: ''Narssarssuaq'') is a settlement in the Kujalleq municipality in southern Greenland. It had 123 inhabitants in 2020. There is a thri ...

, near the southern tip of

Greenland Greenland ( kl, Kalaallit Nunaat, ; da, Grønland, ) is an island country in North America that is part of the Kingdom of Denmark. It is located between the Arctic and Atlantic oceans, east of the Canadian Arctic Archipelago. Greenland is t ...

. Construction by the

United States Army The United States Army (USA) is the land service branch of the United States Armed Forces. It is one of the eight U.S. uniformed services, and is designated as the Army of the United States in the U.S. Constitution.Article II, section 2, cla ...

began in June 1941. The first aircraft landed there in January 1942, as a link in the

North Atlantic air ferry route in World War II The North Atlantic air ferry route was a series of Air Routes over the North Atlantic Ocean on which aircraft were ferried from the United States and Canada to Great Britain during World War II to support combat operations in the European Theater ...

. The base had a peak population of about 4,000 American servicemen, and it is estimated that some 10,000 aircraft landed there en route to the war in Europe and North Africa. Soon after the United States entered the war, the War Department decided to deploy Major General Carl Spaatz's

Eighth Air Force The Eighth Air Force (Air Forces Strategic) is a numbered air force (NAF) of the United States Air Force's Air Force Global Strike Command (AFGSC). It is headquartered at Barksdale Air Force Base, Louisiana. The command serves as Air Force ...

to Britain, putting the North Atlantic ferry route facilities constructed by the Corps to an early test. Radioing from Bluie West 1, while crossing the Atlantic in mid-June 1942, Spaatz ordered the movement to begin. The

P-38 The Lockheed P-38 Lightning is an American single-seat, twin piston-engined fighter aircraft that was used during World War II. Developed for the United States Army Air Corps by the Lockheed Corporation, the P-38 incorporated a distinctive twi ...

and

P-39 The Bell P-39 Airacobra is a fighter produced by Bell Aircraft for the United States Army Air Forces during World War II. It was one of the principal American fighters in service when the United States entered combat. The P-39 was used by the ...

fighters, piloted by combat crews who had been given special training in long-distance flying, were escorted by the longer-range

B-17 The Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress is a four-engined heavy bomber developed in the 1930s for the United States Army Air Corps (USAAC). Relatively fast and high-flying for a bomber of its era, the B-17 was used primarily in the European Theater ...

bombers. With stops at the Canadian-built base at Goose Bay in

Labrador , nickname = "The Big Land" , etymology = , subdivision_type = Country , subdivision_name = Canada , subdivision_type1 = Province , subdivision_name1 ...

, Bluie West 1 in Southern Greenland, and Reykjavik or Keflavik in

Iceland Iceland ( is, Ísland; ) is a Nordic island country in the North Atlantic Ocean and in the Arctic Ocean. Iceland is the most sparsely populated country in Europe. Iceland's capital and largest city is Reykjavík, which (along with its s ...

, the aircraft could fly from the new Presque Isle Army Airfield in northern

Maine Maine () is a state in the New England and Northeastern regions of the United States. It borders New Hampshire to the west, the Gulf of Maine to the southeast, and the Canadian provinces of New Brunswick and Quebec to the northeast and north ...

Prestwick Airport Glasgow Prestwick Airport () is an international airport serving the west of Scotland, situated northeast of the town of Prestwick in South Ayrshire and southwest of Glasgow. It is the less busy of the two airports serving the western part of ...

Scotland Scotland (, ) is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. Covering the northern third of the island of Great Britain, mainland Scotland has a border with England to the southeast and is otherwise surrounded by the Atlantic Ocean to the ...

with no leg of the journey longer than . Other important bases in Greenland were Bluie West Eight near the present-day town of

Kangerlussuaq Kangerlussuaq (; ; da, Søndre Strømfjord), is a settlement in western Greenland in the Qeqqata municipality located at the head of the fjord of the same name. It is Greenland's main air transport hub and the site of Greenland's largest commer ...

, and Bluie East One on the almost-uninhabited east coast. Bad weather is frequent in Southern Greenland, and Narsarsuaq is virtually surrounded by high mountains, making the approach to the steel-mat

runway According to the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO), a runway is a "defined rectangular area on a land aerodrome prepared for the landing and takeoff of aircraft". Runways may be a man-made surface (often asphalt concrete, as ...

exceedingly difficult. The usual approach was a low-level flight up a

fjord In physical geography, a fjord or fiord () is a long, narrow inlet with steep sides or cliffs, created by a glacier. Fjords exist on the coasts of Alaska, Antarctica, British Columbia, Chile, Denmark, Germany, Greenland, the Faroe Islands, Ice ...

. Because the runway slopes up west to east, landings were (and still are predominantly) made to the east, with take-offs to the west, regardless of the wind direction. BW-1's importance declined post World War II, but the

U.S. Air Force The United States Air Force (USAF) is the air service branch of the United States Armed Forces, and is one of the eight uniformed services of the United States. Originally created on 1 August 1907, as a part of the United States Army Sign ...

maintained it as Narsarsuaq Air Base during the early

Cold War The Cold War is a term commonly used to refer to a period of geopolitical tension between the United States and the Soviet Union and their respective allies, the Western Bloc and the Eastern Bloc. The term '' cold war'' is used because the ...

years, when it served as a

refuelling station Refueling or Refuelling may refer to: * Gas station, for refueling cars *Refueling and Overhaul in the United States Navy * Reactor refueling * Aerial refueling *Bunkering, the refueling of ships * Refueling aircraft at airports See also * Nu ...

for

jet fighter Fighter aircraft are fixed-wing aircraft, fixed-wing military aircraft designed primarily for air-to-air combat. In military conflict, the role of fighter aircraft is to establish air supremacy, air superiority of the battlespace. Domination o ...

s and for

helicopter A helicopter is a type of rotorcraft in which lift and thrust are supplied by horizontally spinning rotors. This allows the helicopter to take off and land vertically, to hover, and to fly forward, backward and laterally. These attributes ...

s crossing the

North Atlantic The Atlantic Ocean is the second-largest of the world's five oceans, with an area of about . It covers approximately 20% of Earth's surface and about 29% of its water surface area. It is known to separate the "Old World" of Africa, Europe and ...

. The runway by this time had been paved with

concrete Concrete is a composite material composed of fine and coarse aggregate bonded together with a fluid cement (cement paste) that hardens (cures) over time. Concrete is the second-most-used substance in the world after water, and is the most wi ...

. Jets require a longer take-off run than do

propeller A propeller (colloquially often called a screw if on a ship or an airscrew if on an aircraft) is a device with a rotating hub and radiating blades that are set at a pitch to form a helical spiral which, when rotated, exerts linear thrust upon ...

-driven aircraft, and the

air base An air base (sometimes referred to as a military air base, military airfield, military airport, air station, naval air station, air force station, or air force base) is an aerodrome used as a military base by a military force for the operation ...

used a small

tugboat A tugboat or tug is a marine vessel that manoeuvres other vessels by pushing or pulling them, with direct contact or a tow line. These boats typically tug ships in circumstances where they cannot or should not move under their own power, su ...

to move

iceberg An iceberg is a piece of freshwater ice more than 15 m long that has broken off a glacier or an ice shelf and is floating freely in open (salt) water. Smaller chunks of floating glacially-derived ice are called "growlers" or "bergy bits". The ...

s out of the way of planes taking off over the basin west of the runway. There is a detailed account of a visit to BW-1 in the early days of World War II by

Ernest K. Gann Ernest Kellogg Gann (October 13, 1910 – December 19, 1991) was an American aviator, author, sailor, and conservationist. He is best known for his novels and memoirs about early aviation and nautical adventures. Some of his more famous aviation ...

, in the book

Fate Is The Hunter Destiny, sometimes referred to as fate (from Latin ''fatum'' "decree, prediction, destiny, fate"), is a predetermined course of events. It may be conceived as a predetermined future, whether in general or of an individual. Fate Although often ...

. The advent of

aerial refueling Aerial refueling, also referred to as air refueling, in-flight refueling (IFR), air-to-air refueling (AAR), and tanking, is the process of transferring aviation fuel from one aircraft (the tanker) to another (the receiver) while both aircraft a ...

, and the opening of the larger

Thule Air Base Thule Air Base (pronounced or , kl, Qaanaaq Mitarfik, da, Thule Lufthavn), or Thule Air Base/Pituffik Airport , is the United States Space Force's northernmost base, and the northernmost installation of the U.S. Armed Forces, located north o ...

in northern Greenland, made the base redundant, and it was turned over to the Danish government of Greenland in 1958. It is currently known as

and served by regular flights from

Reykjavík Reykjavík ( ; ) is the capital and largest city of Iceland. It is located in southwestern Iceland, on the southern shore of Faxaflói bay. Its latitude is 64°08' N, making it the world's northernmost capital of a sovereign state. With a po ...

during the summer season, as well as by

commuter aircraft A regional airliner or a feederliner is a small airliner that is designed to fly up to 100 passengers on short-haul flights, usually feeding larger carriers' airline hubs from small markets. This class of airliners is typically flown by the r ...

from Kangerlussaq and other Greenlandic airfields. There is no

control tower Air traffic control (ATC) is a service provided by ground-based air traffic controllers who direct aircraft on the ground and through a given section of controlled airspace, and can provide advisory services to aircraft in non-controlled airsp ...

, and ceiling is required, on all approach procedures.

References

External links

Remembering Bluie West One

Narsarssuak Air Base BW-1 - John Stott
{{Abandoned sites in Greenland Airports in Greenland Airfields of the United States Army Air Forces Air Transport Command on the North Atlantic Route Airfields of the United States Army Air Forces in Greenland Airports established in 1942 1942 establishments in Greenland Closed installations of the United States Navy