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Aviation History
1948
1948 - 0013.PDF
FLIGHT .ongj'ecr City, Spitzbergen. CTIC EMPIRES Frtfhk Illingworth describes a New World opened up by Air Transport AIR transport is the foundation of the new polarempires now being built by the U.S.S.R., the UnitedL States and Canada. The main Alaskan and Yukon towns are linked by the famous Alaska and Richardson Highways; a narrow road crawls up the spine of Finland to Petsamo, the (now Russian) port on the edge of the Barents Sea; roads link the Soviet Arctic towns, Igarka and Kirovsk, grown in seventeen years from hamlets of 43 and 28 inhabit- to industrial centres of 23,000 and 40,000 people Actively; sea convoys pass through the fabulous North- ,t Passage and along the Soviet's Arctic seaboard; all this and much more has been accomplished in the Far North, but without freight planes the colonisation of the Arctic would still be far from fulfilment. ' Aviation has transformed the industrial development of the polar regions from a painfully slow process to a startling realisation, if as yet only an immature realisation. The Russians are shy about their success in Arctic colonisation. Foreign sailors are not permitted to join the summer convoys through the grinding floe-ice of the North-East Passage, eastern gateway to the new towns illuminated by arclights throughout the winter-long polar night; the "greenhouses" built in frozen earth; the vanadium mines; coal, copper, nickel and iron mines; the lumber mills powered by wind-generated electricity; the collective farms growing a species of wheat specially developed for planting in the Far North; and the chain of meteorological stations built to facilitate air communica- tions. Russians are shy about all this. But news travels fast and far, even in the Arctic, and it is reported that the Soviet's chain of weather stations stretches from the navaland air base of Petrovosk (on the Kamchatka Peninsula overlooking the Aleutian Islands in the North Pacific) allalong the Soviet's Arctic shore to the desolate island of Nova Zemlaya (embedded in the Ice Barrier) and across "thePolar Ocean to Barentsburg in Spitzbergen. It is by no means certain that the last-mentioned Russianmet. station will form part of the new chain of weather stations, including floating met. ships in the Atlantic,planned by PICAO (ICAO, now that the "Provisional" has been dropped). It is equally uncertain whether Atlanticair services will gain an advantage from the Russian robot met. stations planted on the ssa-ice that drifts across theroof of the world from Siberian waters through the Kara Sea and across the North Pole to the Bering Straits (separatingSiberia and Alaska). Soviet Strategy How many meteorological stations and air bases the Soviet has on the North Siberian coast is a matter for conjecture. But at least thirteen are reported to be as large as any in Alaska and Arctic Canada, Excluding Goosebay; and Russia is now seeking to exteijd tfyis chain to Spitzbergen, the Norwegian islands midday between Murmansk and Iceland. 1 Why should Moscow want to fortifv archipelago ? •*• ^J One reason is that Spitsbergen is only eight to flying-time from Canada'sHt#$nium mines. Anot is the islands' strategical esolate
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