Bluie West One - William Kray
Secret Mission to Greenland July 1941 - The Building of an American Air Force Base
KORTE INHOUD
Merriam Press Military Monograph 76. Fourth Edition (March 2012). In 1940 a decision was made between the U.S. and Great Britain to build an air base in Greenland. The mission for the airbase was to patrol the North Atlantic shipping lanes, to protect the cryolite mines at Ivigtut, Greenland, from German occupation. (Cryolite is a flux used in the refining of aluminum-the only known source in the world), and to act as a rescue station for any Allied planes that encountered trouble along the route. This is the story of the building of that airbase—codenamed Bluie West One—by 2nd Lt. William Kray, a member of the 3rd Battalion, 21st Aviation Engineer Regiment, which was tasked with building the base. The trials and tribulations of unloading the ships bringing the supplies and materiel was a mission in itself. The inability to build an unloading dock required a crude but effective improvisation. The problem was sufficiently grave to force the War Department to send a civilian contractor with the proper equipment...
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