World War II Database

Contributor: C. Peter Chen

ww2dbaseBetween 1927 and 1928, Professor William Hobbs of the University of Michigan operated the meteorological station Mount Evans deep in the Kangerlussuaq Fjord (Danish: Søndre Strømfjord) in western Greenland 97 kilometers (60 miles) north of the Arctic Circle. Since that time, it was known to be a favorable site for an airfield. In Aug 1940 and then again in May 1941, US Coast Guard and US Army surveyed the site. Bluie West Eight airfield was officially established in Oct 1941, and it began operations in spring 1942. Ten miles down the road, Camp Lloyd provided port facilities in support for the airfield during the summer and fall seasons. To aid navigation, the Bluie West Nine auxiliary station was established on Cruncher Island (Simiutak) at the entrance of Kangerlussuaq in Sep 1942 to guide incoming aircraft. During WW2, it mainly served flights on search and rescue operations. After the war, it was renamed Sondrestrom Air Base. In the mid-1950s, it began seeing mixed civilian use as airliners traveling between Denmark and North America landed for refueling. Beginning in the 1950s, it played a role in the construction of, and later the supplying of, radar stations across Greenland. In the early 1990s, the radar stations in Greenland began to shut down, thus rendering the base obsolete, leading to its closure in Sep 1992. Greenland took control of the facilities and operated it as the civilian Kangerlussuaq airport. It remains serving in that capacity at the time of this writing in 2019, with a small US Air National Guard presence.

Bluie West Eight Interactive Map

Photographs

Bluie West Eight Timeline