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Engineers Make History
At Alaska Bases
(This is the first of 5 articles
dealing with the construe ion ot
installations in Alaska. The next
4 articles will deal with people
whose war job is concerned in
this work.)
Headquarters, Alaska Defense
Command: This is a $300,000,
000 story that cannot even yet
be written, the story of the
Army Engineer fortification of
Alaska, where ihe outposts of
defense grew into theater of
operations offenses.
By the time the complete
story of the names and locations
of the Alaskan installations can
be given out g nerally for public
and one time enemy alike, the
Engineers will doubtless have
built a new volume of construc
tion history.
The beginning of this story
briefly, is August 19i0, when
the Seattle District of the U. S.
Army Engineers began a swift
move from peacetime operations
into national defense by initiat
ing the building of two air bases,
Annette Island and Yakutat.
Into the Tongass National For
est of mountained. marshy
Southeast Alaska, through mus
keg formation of matted vege
tation, roots, and moss 3 to 20
feet deep, the Engineers carved
down and ' laid out Annette
Island There is more to any ait
base than merely a runway,
from troop housing and a chapel
to electrical and plumbing sys
terns and from payrolls of civil
ian construction workers to
shipping up the supplies. So
skillfully was Annette done that
the Air Corps recommended to
the War Department that the
Engineers be entrus'ed w th all
Air Force construction.
Then there was Yak u tat, no
simple runway job, either. With
120 to 100 inches of annual rain,
with abundant snow, often a
foot in 24 hours, with the drag
lines operating on timber mats
to keep from miring down, pav
ing was no easy task. But the
concrete runways had to go
down. To keep the concrete
mix from being ruined before it
could set in place for an air base,
the Engineers brought up two
giant canvas tarps from Mud
Mountain Dam and worked un
der tents on this runway job.
There was the Alaska Rail
road Cut off, an Engineer job to
bring the coast shipping closer
to the remote interior, to take
out the steep grades and snow
bound passes of winter railroad
ing The Engineers set up their
transits on a glacier with only
the fading trail of Mike Sulli
van’s 1896 mule freigt line over
the mountain to follow. Now
the civilian contractor, Engineer
troops, and civilian workers
po nt with pride to an Army
Navy “E” for this job that
blasted through the mountains
beneath glaciers and snow beds
There was the winter job near
Fairbanks in the heart of Alaska,
where 60 and 70 degree below
zero winters weren’t easy. Bull
dozer blades shattered like glass
and truck springs were snapping
after 16 hours in that weather
and no lubricating oil cn the
market would perform along
with the thermometer. It toek
steam drilling to melt the per
manently frozen earth before the
Engineers could get the cats to
working on it.
There was, of course. Umnak,
where construction equipment!
was shipped for months under
the red-herring name cf “Blair
Packing Company,” and where
the Engineers slept with mud
for a pillow and lived in packing
crates until they could get the
airfield in use. When the En
gineer officer and civilian sur
vey party went in, late in 1941, j
the wind was sometimes toOj
high for work and with no more
advance bases ahead, Umnak
was pretty close to Japan, but
morale was high. Moiale was
high all through the muddy j
construction history of Umnak,'
where the fiist steel mat run
ways in the Aleutians were put I
down in time to help with the
defense of Dutch Harbor. Alaska
still talks of Umnak’s land-based
planes, frightening to the Jap
invasion fleet bound for the
Dutch Harbor Naval Stat on.
There was the Andreanof Ar
mada, a motley collection of
(continued on page 6)
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