The Little World

Vs things I thought about all the time…

As a kid in Alberta in the 1950’s the northern horizon was a worrisome prospect. We knew that it was the closest route for the Soviets to attack Canada and the United States by air. We knew that they had multi-engine bombers that they could arm with atomic and hydrogen bombs and that one day they might heave up over the horizon headed for the USA.

There were warning radar lines built at enormous cost – the Pine Tree Line, the Mid-Canada Line, and the Distant Early Warning Line. All of this before satellites or space-based surveillance. We were shown pictures of Soviet propellor-driven and later jet-engine bombers said to be capable of trans-continental flight. And we were shown the Soviets poised to attack west in Europe whenever the air assault was reaady.

Not surprisingly, there were air defences in place in Canada to try to stem this. Vampires, CF-100’s, a promise of the CF 105…which melted away and became the BOMARC for protection of Ottawa and Montreal and the CF 101 Voodoos for the rest of the place. We even got CF 104 ‘s but why I don’t know.

When the Soviets stopped threatening bombers and started threatening ICBM’s there was no answer formulated, save to hope the Americans and British could match them somehow. That they did became evident, and then it all wound down eventually. But there were questions I never asked myself…

1. Would the Soviets  – if they seriously contemplated trans-polar assault – have looked at what the Allies had to do with conventional air assault on Germany a decade earlier? Would they have realised that there was going to be a desperate defence and that unescorted bombers were never going to make it? Would they have tried to arrange for escort fighters? And what could they possibly have been? Jets burned up a lot of fuel those days and the MiGs would have never made it to the Alberta border, let alone the US one.
2. No bomber air strike could have caught the US or Canada flat-footed before about 1953 and certainly not later as the warning lines moved further north. The 26 or so Myasichev Bisons they built might have been fearsome on paper and over Red Square at a May Day parade, but were never a go-er as far as a weapon. However, it did stimulate the USAF to make over 800 B-52’s…which were indeed an effective answer. Good one, Krushchev.
3. Where would an air defence battle have taken place?

Prior to ’53 and the completion of the Pine Tree Line the warning might have come after the bombers had flown into the Alberta air space – some time before interceptors were up. That means they might have been doing those shoot-downs over the prairies between Edmonton and Calgary…where I lived. As the weapons available were either short-range air-to-air rockets or nuclear anti aircraft missiles that means we were living in a rather deadly place – and didn’t know it.

Well, perhaps my parents knew it. We moved to the mountains of British Columbia in ’56. But we were back in Alberta for the rest of the Cold War and the Cuban Missile Crisis…about 40 miles from an RCAF interceptor base…

Boy, the things you never know…