A sob story

What was this, I wondered, and asked the dispatcher what I was supposed to do with the envelope. “Oh,” he replied in a Cockney accent. “You must be new. You’ll be passing over a radar site called Sob Story on the Greenland ice cap. This is a note for Sergeant McMillian, who is stationed there, a message from his wife who would appreciate your reading it to him as you pass overhead.”

Sob Story, I learned later, was one link in a chain of U.S. radar stations extending from the Aleutian Islands and across the top of North America to Greenland. This chain of radar sites was established early in the Cold War to detect Soviet bombers heading for America from across the roof of the world, the direct route between the U.S.S.R. and the U.S.A. This was the Distant Early Warning Line or DEW Line.

As our Boeing 707 approached Sob Story hours later, I called the radar site on its published VHF frequency and asked for Sergeant McMillan. Looking down at the Middle of Nowhere, I could understand how this lonely outpost got its name. I read the message to him, one that he could not have been happy to receive and was too personal to reveal here. Two others at the site then asked if we would pass along messages to friends in Los Angeles, which, of course, we were pleased to do. We then exchanged a few unrepeatable jokes.

Such chatting when passing Sob Story—as well as another radar site on the ice cap, Big Gun—provided an enjoyable respite on those long polar flights. Because most traffic passed well south and beyond VHF range of these radar sites, having an airliner pass overhead was almost a cause for celebration on the ice below. With the later development of ICBMs and submarine-launched nuclear missiles, the DEW Line became obsolete. Sob Story was abandoned in 1988 and continues to sink slowly into the ice.

Before the advent of long-range radio aids to navigation such as Loran C, Omega, and GPS, it was difficult to get an accurate navigation fix when flying, for example, between California and Hawaii. I take that back. There was one radio aid, a low-frequency radio beacon floating halfway along the route to Hawaii. Well, it wasn’t floating in the conventional sense. The 335-kilocycle signal was transmitted from Ocean Station November, a Coast Guard cutter stationed at the midpoint of the route. Navigating to Hawaii in those days involved having only to get within ADF (automatic direction finder) and radar range of November. The cutter did not, of course, maintain a fixed position in the middle of the ocean. It was required only to stay within a 210-mile square centered 30 degrees North, 140 degrees West. The radar operator aboard the ship provided passing pilots with a position that a pilot could plot on his chart.

Remember the Coast Guard vessel rolling in heavy seas in the 1954 movie The High and the Mighty? That was Ocean Station November.

Following the end of World War II, the United States began to establish a global network of these ocean stations to assist in navigation and serve as weather reporting stations. Those flying across the North Atlantic, for example, used Ocean Stations Charlie and Juliet, which were stationed between Newfoundland and Ireland.

Getting a positive fix in mid-ocean was comforting, especially because it enabled us to determine actual drift and groundspeed. As with DEW Line radar sites, it was amusing to exchange off-color jokes with the Coast Guardsmen. It also was not unusual for passing pilots to be asked to relay messages to family and friends at home.

Until the program ended in 1974, ocean stations also came to the rescue of aircraft having to ditch. One such notable ditching occurred in 1956 when Pan Am Flight 6 (erroneously called Flight 943), a Boeing 377 Stratocruiser flying from Honolulu to San Francisco, lost two engines on this, the last leg of its flight around the world. The airliner had passed its point of no return and had insufficient fuel to continue to the mainland. November laid out a foam path to provide a quasi-runway. All aboard were rescued by November, and the aircraft sank 21 minutes after ditching.

If you’d like to see a video of the actual ditching and rescue, go to YouTube and search for Ready on Ocean Station November, the title of the Coast Guard production.

BarrySchiff.com