FlightGlobal.com
Home
Premium
Archive
Video
Images
Forum
Atlas
Blogs
Jobs
Shop
RSS
Email Newsletters
You are in:
Home
Aviation History
1951
1951 - 1111.PDF
690 FLIGHT LABRADOR'S IRON-ORE AIRLIFTM An Ambitious Engineering Project in which Air Transport is Playing a Key ^ By FRANK ILLINGWORTH Typical country over which the railway from Seven Islands to Burnt Creek will pass. ONE of the biggest undertakings in the history of civilaviation is getting into its full stride in Labrador,where rather more than 200 million dollars (£714 million) is now being spent in the development of what is described as "the largest iron-ore fields in the world." Labelled the Ungava Projectj the venture will depend for its success primarily on the work of air freighters. Between May and October this year between four and five million pounds of heavy equipment are being put down on the newly constructed airstrips in the heart of "The Barrens." This entails a day and night shuttle service of thirteen air- craft, ranging from a C-119 Fairchild Packet (loaned by the U.S.A.F.) to a Stinson, apart from the DC-3S and DC-4S operated by Canadian Pacific Airlines between Mont Joli (on the south bank of the St. Lawrence River) and the air- strip at the focal point in the Ungava Project, the log-cabin settlement of Burnt Creek. The plan to broach the immense resources of the Labrador iron-ore fields is bold in the extreme from an engineering point of view. It also illustrates the part aviation can play in the industrial development of a country; and the Ungava Project will undoubtedly become the blueprint for similar industrial schemes of the future. The project was bom shortly after the war, when the Hollinger Mining and Exploration Company was formed with a backing of Canadian and United States dollars to tap the fabulous wealth in the little-known interior of the Barrens south-east of the Hudson Bay. The country here is wild in the extreme. The pilot with whom I flew to Burnt Creek, ex-R.A.F. Don Taylor, pointed down at the high plateau: "You wouldn't stand a dog's chance if you force- landed there !" Almost bare of vegetation, the plateau supports a handful of Indians whose life is a constant battle against starvation and exposure. Servicing a Bell helicopter for a flight to the interior of Labrador. It is planned to transform the little French-Canadian fishing village of Seven Islands into a port capable of handling twenty million tons of ore annually, and to drive a railway 360 miles northwards into the locality now known as Burnt Creek, in the heart of the ore deposits. Engineers to whom 1 spoke said : "The railway job entails several major engineer- ing problems. But they'd be a good bit more pronounced if it wasn't for our airlift. In fact, the airlift is making it possible to accomplish in three years what would normally have taken us at least twice as long." The Ungava Project opened with the drone of Norseman floatplanes. Landing on a small lake near Burnt Creek, they put ashore teams of geologists, and before the summer of 1947 was out some two dozen survey teams were "in the field," some engaged in the geological work, others in plotting the route for the railway Unking Seven Islands and Burnt Creek. An airstrip was laid at Burnt Creek. The Canadian Department for Transport extended the airfield at Seven Isles, and two intermediate strips were laid at points along the railway route, at localities known as Mile 36 and Wacouna, construction equipment being landed there. "We built the Wacouna strip in ten days last October," William Frazer, traffic manager at Seven Islands Airport, told me. He added: "The weather was lousy almost the whole time. You know—Labrador weather, interminable fog and buzzard. But then we had to get weaving because some of the heavy railway-building equipment arrived at Seven Islands ahead of contract." And with the completion of the strip at Wacouna 2,400,000 lb of heavy gear was landed there from Seven Isles*—tractors, trucks, road graders, jeeps, scrapers, compressors, fuel, food, timber for the necessary construction camp, and labour gangs. Three thousand cases of dynamite were flown in in thirty-six hours. The constant aim was to keep the aircraft flying, to bring in the equipment; engineering workshops were built at Wacouna so that the vehicles and other heavy gear cut into sections with blowlamps (to facilitate loading into the DC-3S) could be welded together again. The airstrip at Mile 36 is situated on the floor of a canyon, with black walls towering up many hundred feet. It is hardly an ideal site for approach and take-off, but light aircraft, at any rate, put down there in most sorts of weather. The strips here and at Wacoua were used during the winter only for the delivery of urgently required equipment or to "take out" sick men. But last May, before the snow had gone, when the lakes were still frozen and the weather unreliable, the transports began to arrive one after another; and at least 1,000 tons of gear will be landed at Wacouna alone before winter closes in again.
Sign up to
Flight Digital Magazine
Flight Print Magazine
Airline Business Magazine
E-newsletters
RSS
Events
