The Canadian Trick That Built a Bomber Base in Labrador in One Autumn

The Canadian Trick that built a bomber base in Labrador in one autumn: Goose Bay Labrador, the RCAF WW2 bomber base of the Royal Canadian Air Force, built by Canada on Newfoundland land in 1941. CFB Goose Bay began as a bomber base built in one autumn: Eric Fry picked Goose Bay from the air, and Canada built the base before the lease. Goose Bay Labrador air force base history: Labrador WW2 and Newfoundland WW2, Hamilton Inlet and Lake Melville, the North Atlantic ferry route of RAF Ferry Command, Gander Newfoundland and Goose Bay. The Canadian trick: one runway under spruce brush, two runways of snow, a bomber base built in one autumn. WW2 bombers of Ferry Command flew from Goose Bay across the North Atlantic: the B-17 Flying Fortress and the P-38 Lightning of Operation Bolero, Hudsons and Liberators of RAF Ferry Command. RCAF WW2 and Canada WW2 history, Canadian military history, WW2 airfields, Happy Valley-Goose Bay and CFB Goose Bay today. In July 1941 Eric Fry, a Canadian government surveyor on loan to the air force, picked a sand plain in the spruce at the head of Lake Melville. Labrador then belonged to Newfoundland, and the lease was not finished until October 1944. Ships had to come up Hamilton Inlet before the ice shut the inlet for six months. By 16 November 1941 three gravel runways of 7,000 feet were cleared. Two were kept open on packed snow all winter; the third was covered with spruce brush so the frost could not get deep into it, and in the spring it went straight into service. By 1945 about 22,500 fighters and bombers had staged through Goose Bay on their way to Europe. Has anyone in your family served at Goose Bay or flown with Ferry Command? Tell us below. Chapters: 0:00 A bomber base with no road 2:22 Labrador belonged to Newfoundland 4:45 Eric Fry and the sand plain 7:21 The race against the ice 9:31 A runway under spruce brush 11:55 Bombers leave for Britain 16:34 A town nobody had planned 19:02 The lease and Fry Mountain Sources: 1. RCAF Air Traffic Control history, "Goose Bay" (Canadian Military Heritage / CADE museum archive), 1941-1945 chronology 2. W. F. Craven and J. L. Cate, The Army Air Forces in World War II, vol. VII, ch. 4, "The North Atlantic Route" 3. Royal Canadian Air Force, history of 5 Wing Goose Bay 4. Helen Kerfoot, Arctic Circle: features in Canada named for members (E. S. Fry) 5. Wikipedia, "CFB Goose Bay" and "Happy Valley-Goose Bay" (citing Carr, Hansen and Christie) Photographs: Imperial War Museums (Royal Air Force official photographers), Australian War Memorial, US National Archives, US Army Signal Corps, US Air Force, US Navy, Library and Archives Canada, San Diego Air & Space Museum, WWII in View, Internet Archive Book Images (Grenfell, Labrador, 1909), A. P. Low's map of the Labrador Peninsula (1896), Wikimedia Commons. Film: Tunisian Victory (1944), Normandy Invasion (1944), D-Day 1944 (Office of War Information), NARA 111-ADC-2447, Canadian Army Newsreel No. 2 (1943), Why We Fight (US Army); public domain or free licences. Where no picture of Goose Bay exists, the caption says where the photograph really was taken. Maps: NASA Blue Marble, Sentinel-2 cloudless 2016 by EOX (Copernicus).