AT&T Archives: Arctic Mission

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This film shows the progress of the Distant Early Warning (DEW) line construction and some of the profound difficulties in building in the Arctic.

The DEW line is a series of radar-spotting stations above the Arctic Circle whose purpose originally was to give notice of enemy aircraft approaching the North American continent by way of the polar regions. The DEW line, at the time of the film, was under construction by Western Electric with help from the other units of the Bell System.

This 1956 film, in a formal way, reveals some of the struggle to build a continent-wide alert system. The DEW line was not just an engineering feat, it was literally the coldest part of the Cold War, testing the limits of human endurance. The film concludes with pictures of one completed site, though the rest were still in process at the time.

Building the DEW Line took three years and an astonishing amount of resources. The project was the largest commercial airlift to date, with over 45,000 flights to the Arctic Circle. Here are some other figures to help give the scope of the project:

* 22,000 tons of food shipped in 32 months
* 818,000 drums of petroleum products shipped during the building cycle
* 113,000 purchase orders were generated during construction
* 459,000 tons of material and equipment transported to the arctic via aircraft, ship, train and barge

The DEW line was rendered obsolete soon after it was completed. Once the Russians launched Sputnik in 1957, the attention shifted from near the North Pole to further out in space - even higher-altitude possibilities than the 12-mile-high radar "wall" which the DEW line monitored for incoming missiles.

Today, some of the DEW Line stations have been incorporated into the NWS, or North Warning System, and many of the stations have been abandoned or dismantled.

Footage courtesy of AT&T Archives and History Center, Warren, NJ

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