The Incredible Story of the US Army's Earth-Shaking, Off-Road Land Trains

https://www.thedrive.com/news/33645...e-us-armys-earth-shaking-off-road-land-trains

 

This is so awesome to read about! Thank you for sharing it with us, Rick.

 

In addition to those radar stations that dotted the great white north, there are (or at least, were) a few airstrips up that way as well. They were built for USAF tankers which routinely orbited up that way during the Cold War. Those tankers were to deliver as much fuel as possible to the heavy bombers on their way to Soviet airspace in the event it all went DEFCON 1
party time.

After offloading said fuel, aircrews were to land their tankers on those airstrips which were maintained by almost no one (local Inuits, perhaps?) and then, I suppose, figure out a way to get home.

 

The Bigfoot tie in was great!

 

Didn't know that. That's a new riding destination to see.

p.s., every time I read that name, I think of Mary Kay.

 

That was cool as hell.

 

My dad had stories of driving these in Greenland while he was in the army. This would have been in the late 50's.

 

Galena, where I lived for the past 9 years was one of the tanker bases. It has a 7400 ft runway and can handle anything flying. In addition to the tankers, it also had 4 fighter/interceptors stationed there. However, the base had 300 USAF personnel stationed there, when it was active. I don't know of any remote airstrips which could have handled a plane the size of a tanker that wasn't operated and maintained by USAF personnel, although there were a lot of local Native Alaskan civilians that worked on the bases.