User:Cuprum17/Greenland Patrol

Background
Executive Order 8929 transferred the Coast Guard to U.S. Navy control from the Department of the Treasury on 1 November 1941.

Equipment
Aivik, WYP-164 p.186

Aklak, WYP-168 p.183

Alatok, WYP-172 p.181

Amarok, WYP-166 p.182

Arluk, WYP-167 p.184

Atak, WYP-163 p.187

Arvek, WYP-165 p.184

Nanok, WYP-169 p.188

Natsek, WYP-170 p.187, sunk by icing December 1942

Nogak, WYP-171 p.185

USCGC Northland (WPG-49)

USS Bear (1874)

USCGC North Star (WPG-59)

USCGC Storis (WMEC-38)

USCGC Laurel (WLB-291)

USCGC Evergreen (WLB-295) ???

USCGC Citrus (WLB-300) ???

USCGC Mojave (WPG-47)

USCGC Tampa (WPG-48)

USCGC Escanaba (WPG-77) sunk

USCGC Raritan

USCGC Modoc (WPG-46)

USCGC Eastwind (WAGB-279), captured Externsteine commissioned in US Navy as USS Callao (IX-205)

USCGC Southwind (WAGB-280)

PBY-5A Catalina (Patrol Bombing Squadron 6, Navy Unit manned by Coast Guard)

Places
Godthaab-Godthåb (Nuuk)64-10-30N,51-44-20W Ivgtut-Ivigtût (Ivittuut) 61-12-30N, 48-10-10W Cape Farewell, Greenland-Kap Farvel (Uummannarsuaq) 59-46-23N, 43-55-21W Bluie West One, Narsarsuaq Air Base 61.1667N,45.4333W Franz Joseph fjord, Kejser Franz Joseph Fjord 73-27N, 25-00W

Greenland Base Command, U.S. Army Air Force

 * Prins Christianssund (radio and weather station) (Bluie East One) (BE-1)
 * Angmagssalik Army Airfield (Bluie East Two) (BE-2) (Air Transport Command)
 * Cape Tobin, Walrus Bay (radio and weather station) (Bluie East Three) (BE-3)
 * Ella Ø Island (radio, weather, and patrol station) (Bluie East Four) (BE-4)
 * Eskimonæs (radio and weather station) (Bluie East Five (BE-5) (United States Navy)
 * Narsarsuaq Army Airfield (Bluie West One) (BW-1) (Air Transport Command) (HQ Greenland Base Command)
 * Kipisako (alternate for Bluie West One) (Bluie West Two) (BW-2) (United States Navy)
 * Simiutak Island (Bluie West Three) (BW-3) (United States Navy)


 * Teague Field, Marraq Point (radio and weather station) (Bluie West Four) (BW-4) (United States Navy)
 * Egedesminde (radio and weather station) (Bluie West Five) (BW-5) (United States Navy)
 * Thule (radio and weather station) (Bluie West Six) (BW-6)
 * Grønnedal Naval Base (radio and weather station), (Bluie West Seven) (BW-7) (United States Navy)
 * Sondrestrom Army Airfield (Bluie West Eight) (Air Transport Command) (BW-8)
 * Cruncher Island (defensive position for approaches to Søndre Strømfjord radio and weather station) (Bluie West Nine) (BW-9)

Greenland Base Command
While the exchange of destroyers for a string of Atlantic bases was under negotiation, and then, while plans and preparations for developing the new bases were getting under way, Great Britain and Canada were consolidating their position in the North Atlantic by stationing troops in Iceland and were attempting to counter German activities in Greenland.

With United States bases were under construction in Newfoundland, a number of possible sites for airfields in Greenland were made in late 1940. Greenland being a Danish colony with Denmark under the occupation of Nazi Germany at the time. These surveys were made with the justification that the defense of the American bases in Newfoundland and of the northeastern United States would be affected by a German military air base in Greenland.

The United States, nor Canada or Great Britain desired any Nazi facilities or armed forces in Greenland to obtain weather data. During the summer of 1940 Nazi Germany had organized in Norway a number of expeditions for the purpose of establishing radio and weather stations in northeastern Greenland, in the neighborhood of Scoresby Sound. Although manned, it would seem, by Norwegians and Danes, and led by a Dane, these weather stations were under German control and were operated for the purpose of assisting the German naval and military effort. A mixed British-Norwegian landing party seized a supply of aviation gasoline, dismantled several radio stations, and took into custody a number of heavily armed Danish "hunters" found on the coast. This was in late August or early September 1940. A few weeks afterward the British intercepted another vessel off the coast of Greenland with about fifty Germans, some of them meteorologists, on board. All this activity at the top of the Western Hemisphere was a source of much concern to the United States.

In addition to seizing German ships and weather equipment on Greenland, the British and Canadians were planning on building air bases on the island to conduct antisubmarine warfare in the North Atlantic. Although the United States Government had acquiesced in the British garrisoning of Iceland, it had no desire to see Britain make the same move into Greenland; for Greenland was, unlike Iceland, definitely within the Western Hemisphere and within the scope of the Monroe Doctrine.

The Department of State reached an agreement on 9 April 1941 with Danish Foreign Minister, Henrik de Kauffmann, acting on behalf of His Majesty the King of Denmark in his capacity as sovereign of Greenland. The agreement recognized that as a result of the European war there was danger that Greenland may be converted into a point of aggression against nations of the American Continent by Nazi Germany. The agreement, after explicitly recognizing the Danish sovereignty over Greenland, granted to the United States the right to locate and construct airplane landing fields and other facilities for the defense of Greenland and for the defense of the North American Continent.

As soon as the agreement with the Danish Government was concluded, President Roosevelt authorized the War Department to go ahead with the preparations for building airfields and other facilities in Greenland. $5 million in funds previously allocated for constructing the bases acquired from the British in the Bases for Destroyers agreement was re-allocated to Greenland. On 30 June construction of the first U.S. Army and Navy base in Greenland, code-named Bluie West I began. Greenland Base Command (GBC) was established on 1 September 1941 headquarters at Bluie West I was established to take charge of the U.S. forces and facilities being planned.

By the end of September 1941, when the contractor's people arrived, the troops at Bluie West I had erected 85 buildings, about two-thirds of the total needed for the initial force, and had begun to install the necessary utilities. They had built three miles (5 km) of access roads, constructed a temporary dock, and started work on the airfield. By the time the civilian construction force arrived they had finished grading one of the two runways and had a metal landing mat partly laid. Bluie West I was thus one of the earliest U.S. Army airfields, if not the first, to make actual use of Pierced Steel Planking (PSP) in runway construction, an important engineering development and one that afterwards contributed greatly to the winning of the war, in the Pacific particularly. After the arrival of the civilian construction force the engineer battalion, reinforced by a company of the 42d Engineers (General Service), concentrated exclusively on airfield construction. They continued to do so until February 1942 when the civilian force took over this work as well. By then the first runway was ready for limited use. Construction work on a second west coast base further north, at Sondrestrom or Bluie West Eight, began in September 1941. A third field was placed on the east coast almost directly across from BW-1 at Angmagssalik

In addition, the United States obtained rights to build bases in Greenland. In July 1941, a task force of service troops arrived at Narsarsuaq. This site had been chosen as a major staging base between Labrador and Newfoundland. Work began at once on the base, which was given the code name Bluie West One (BW-1), and the first plane set down on 24 January 1942. Work on a second west coast base further north, at Sondrestrom or Bluie West Eight, began in September 1941. A third field was placed on the east coast almost directly across from BW-1 at Angmagssalik (Bluie East Two).

An interesting contribution to the defense of Greenland was the Northeast Greenland dog sledge patrol organized in the summer of 1941 as a joint endeavor of the Army, the United States Coast Guard, and the Greenland Government. All the activity on the east coast the year before had demonstrated the ease with which anyone could establish a foothold in the vast Arctic wastes, the near impossibility of finding a hostile force that had established itself, and the difficulty of dislodging one, once it was discovered. An air patrol of the east coast, even after the new bases were completed proved its worth by assisting in the capture of the trawler Buskoe on 12 September, as that vessel, a small German-controlled Norwegian ship, was attempting to establish a radio and weather station in the Mackenzie Bay area.

In addition to the Army Airfields, the United States Navy Atlantic Fleet established a number of stations on Greenland to support radio, weather, and naval patrols as part of the Battle of the North Atlantic against German U-Boats and the protection of Allied convoy traffic in the North Atlantic.