Strategic Map: Northwest Frontier

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In the swampy flats north of the Yukon River the ground becomes iron-hard, the lakes glass-smooth. The heaviest airplanes can land on the ice. Hard on men and machines are the temperatures. Toward Point Barrow the thermometer sometimes falls to 75° F. below zero. Before Finland and the German invasion of Norway, many military experts would have said no army could operate there. Now they are not so sure.

Biggest army bases in Alaska proper are at Anchorage on the south coast and Fairbanks in the heart of the territory. Moderate in climate, Anchorage is likely to be Army's big home base, and its Elmendorf Field is under construction. Fairbanks is only 356 miles up the Government-owned Alaska Railroad from Anchorage, but Ladd Field at Fairbanks has been laid down squarely in the midst of Alaska's 'toughest winter weather. The ground thaws on top but always remains frozen two or three feet down. There, working three shifts in Alaska's 24-hour summer daylight, Army engineers have laid down a two-mile-long runway and reared the first of Ladd Field's hangars and shops. There, this winter, Air Corps pilots and mechanics will get their first big lesson in Arctic operations.

Good start to a system of military fields through the main body of Alaska is the airport system of Pan Am's sourdough subsidiary, Pacific Alaska Airways. Bossed by Alaska Veteran Joe Crosson, P.A.A.'s pilots operate in & out of Fairbanks, Whitehorse, Burwash Landing, Tanana Crossing, Ruby, Nome, McGrath, Ophir, Flat and Bethel. To help civil aeronautics and, in the long run, the defenses of the northwest frontier, the Civil Aeronautics Bureau is dotting Alaska with emergency fields, installing radio range stations for navigation at night and in bad weather.

The Army Air Corps is going further, readying plans for fields at Point Barrow (where Will Rogers and Wiley Post were killed), at Nome and probably another near the Canadian border, against the possibility of an air invasion across the top of the world. Advance fields will dot the Seward peninsula back of Nome, the lower Yukon Valley back of Bethel and the tundra south of Point Barrow. This summer the U. S. Army landed at Anchorage the first big contingent of troops the territory had seen in 40 years. The only other sizable garrison in Alaska consists of some 400 infantrymen at Chilkoot Barracks, a station not far from Skagway which was set up in the gold rush of '98. Tactically unimportant, Chilkoot's cold-weather garrison is likely to dwindle to a maintenance force, and Chil-koot's sourdoughboys are likely to be detailed to other Alaska stations.

Biggest strategic weakness of Alaska, now that it is being armed, is its lack of communications with the rest of the U. S. Machinery, food and other freight comes largely by steamer from the U. S. Engineers have long planned a road through Canada (the route is shown by a dotted line) to enable supplies to be trucked in three days from Seattle to Fairbanks. The cost is estimated at $25,000,000 for building 1,200 miles of 24-ft. roadway through the wilderness. With new U. S.-Canadian defense cooperation, the road may be built at U. S. expense, for $25,000,000 is the cost of only one aircraft carrier for the Navy, and Alaska's security is worth it.