Ladd Field and the Lend-Lease Mission: Alaska's Role in World War II

American and Soviet servicemen at Ladd Field. U.S. Army.

Imagine being stationed at Ladd Field, near Fairbanks, Alaska, when it first opened as a cold-weather test station on the eve of World War II. You live in a plywood hut. When a bunkmate mops the floor, the water freezes before he can mop it up. You take turns staying up to keep the fire going, and the dirty coal and poor ventilation fill the hut with fumes that make everyone sick.

Ground was broken at Ladd Field in 1939, days before war began in Europe. Once the United States entered the war, the field became the point where American aircraft were handed over to the Soviet Union under the Lend-Lease program, and its shift from cold-weather testing to that mission shows how important the country's most remote region was to the war. It became a place of political, economic and cultural exchange between two very different allies. This account is based on a National Park Service Teaching with Historic Places lesson written by teacher Sarah Evridge and edited by Park Service historian Darrell Lewis, drawn from the National Register nomination for Ladd Field.

From isolation to preparation

After World War I, President Woodrow Wilson proposed a League of Nations to prevent future wars, but Congress refused to ratify the treaty that would have let the United States join. Isolationism reigned for two decades, helped along by prosperity in the 1920s. In the 1930s, as Germany and Japan grew more militaristic and invaded their neighbors, Washington watched closely but hoped to stay out of any conflict, and many Americans did not want another war.

Major World War II military sites in Alaska. Fort Wainwright Cultural Resources Department.

Alaska was not yet a state, but it sent a nonvoting delegate to Congress, Anthony Dimond, who worked hard to convince Congress that Alaska needed defenses. Maj. Gen. H. H. Arnold, chief of the Army Air Corps, insisted on an air base. A 1935 law authorized military facilities in Alaska, including Ladd Field, named for a pilot who had died, but did not pay for them.

Testing in the cold

Construction began in 1939, and Ladd Field opened in 1940 as a cold-weather test station. Fairbanks was ideal: winter can start in September and last into May, lows average −15° to −25°F and fall below −60°F every winter, and snow stays on the ground from early October to May. The station's job was to make sure aircraft could start and fly in such cold.

Ladd Field under construction, 1939. U.S. Army.

More troops arrived in September 1940, and by fall 1941 more than 500 were stationed there, many only temporarily. The base commander, Lt. Col. Dale W. Gaffney, complained that it was hard to run a testing program with few people and unfinished facilities. Even so, testing went on until spring 1942, teaching the Army about wing icing, navigation, cold-weather clothing, armament and other challenges of flying in arctic conditions, lessons built into new aircraft that made them safer in the cold.

After Pearl Harbor, and after Japan invaded the Aleutian Islands in 1942, the Army disbanded the test detachment and sent its soldiers to fight in the Aleutian Campaign. Ladd Field became a place to store, repair and service aircraft. Within months the commanding general revived the test detachment, and testing continued long after the war. Ladd Field became an Air Force base in 1947 and passed to the Army in 1961 as Fort Wainwright, still an active post. Its historic district reflects its wartime roles as a cold-weather test center, a support base for the Aleutian Campaign, and the transfer point on the Alaska–Siberia Route.

Lend-Lease and the Alaska–Siberia Route

Before the war, the Soviet Union and Germany had agreed not to fight each other, but in 1941 Hitler invaded the Soviet Union, routing the unprepared Red Army and destroying many of its aircraft. Congress had passed the Lend-Lease Act in 1941, partly at Britain's request, letting the United States aid allies while staying neutral, and after Germany's attack the U.S. offered aid to the Soviets. According to 1940s records, Lend-Lease sent $50 billion worth of war materials to 32 allies, about $11 billion of it to the Soviet Union, including 427,000 trucks, 13,000 combat vehicles, nearly 15,000 combat planes, and everything from diesel engines to shoes.

In August 1941 the two countries agreed on a delivery plan. One air route ran 13,000 miles from Florida through North Africa and Iraq to Moscow. The other ran 7,900 miles from Great Falls, Montana, through western Canada to Ladd Field, then across Siberia to Moscow. Sea routes were longer and menaced by German submarines, so the northern route, known as the Alaska–Siberia Route (ALSIB), got planes to the front in days instead of weeks or months. The United States built seven airfields in central Alaska, at Northway, Tanacross, Big Delta, Ladd Field, Galena, Moses Point and Nome, and Canada was building six between Edmonton and Whitehorse.

The Alaska–Siberia (ALSIB) Route. Fort Wainwright Cultural Resources Department.

The United States first wanted to hand the planes over in Siberia, but Soviet leader Josef Stalin did not want U.S. forces flying into Soviet airfields and insisted Soviet pilots take delivery in Alaska. Ladd Field, strategically placed on the safest and fastest route, became the delivery point. There the Soviets formally took ownership; each plane was inspected and its white U.S. star painted over with the red star of the Soviet Union. Soviet crews then refueled and made repairs at Nome before crossing the Bering Strait.

Repainting the star on a Lend-Lease aircraft. U.S. Army.

The first five A-20 bombers arrived from Great Falls on September 3, 1942, after a two-day flight. Soviet officers flew in from Siberia the next day, and Soviet pilots arrived on September 24 for five days of training before flying the new planes home. Wartime censorship kept the route and the Soviet presence out of the news until summer 1944, though towns along the way knew all about it. Soviet pilots remained at Ladd Field until the end of the war, and in that time the United States delivered almost 8,000 planes to the Soviet Union.

Servicemen beside an aircraft with a sign reading "5000 airplane." U.S. Army.

Allies side by side

At the peak, about 300 Soviets served at Ladd Field, and many more flight crews came regularly from Siberia to collect planes. Maj. Gen. John Deane, head of the U.S. military mission in Moscow, was struck on a visit that the base seemed at least half under Russian control: officers' quarters, offices, hangars and shops had been given to the Red Air Force, Russian and American officers shared a mess hall, and Soviet soldiers could go anywhere on the base and travel freely. Red stars became a familiar sight over Fairbanks as the Soviets left in groups. A test pilot, Randy Acord, recalled that a flight of thirteen planes normally left together, bombers and pursuit planes taking off one after another and circling the field until all were ready; soldier-artist Henry Varnum Poor described the roar of the motors and the planes forming up and vanishing over the western hills.

Working together was not always easy. Some planes were too small for an American and a Soviet pilot to fly together, so Americans gave instructions on the ground and watched the Soviets fly. The base newspaper printed useful Russian phrases and the base offered Russian classes, but when no interpreter was around, people often resorted to sign language. Americans complained that Soviet pilots were too fussy about minor mechanical problems, but an American translator, David Chavchavadze, explained that the Soviet legs of the route were even harder, with fields farther apart and more primitive, and that the Soviet mechanic who signed for a plane was held responsible if it broke down or crashed on the way to the front. The Soviets also became known in Fairbanks, which had no rationing, for buying up consumer goods hard to find at home; one officer recalled a Soviet soldier who asked for shoes of every kind and every size, and left with the store's entire stock of last year's styles.

Visiting

Ladd Field is on Fort Wainwright, near Fairbanks, an active Army post; visitors must stop at the visitors center outside the main gate and can drive a self-guided tour of the historic district with interpretive panels and a booklet. May through September is the best time to visit.

Sources

• National Park Service, Teaching with Historic Places, "Ladd Field and the Lend-Lease Mission: Defending Alaska in WWII," by Sarah Evridge, edited by Darrell Lewis. https://www.nps.gov/articles/ladd-field-and-the-lend-lease-mission-defending-alaska-in-wwii-teaching-with-historic-places.htm
• National Register of Historic Places nomination, "Ladd Field" (1984): http://pdfhost.focus.nps.gov/docs/NHLS/Text/85002730.pdf; Cold Missions: The U.S. Army Air Forces and Ladd Field in WWII; Kathy Price, The World War II Heritage of Ladd Field, Fairbanks, Alaska (2004).
• Wartime accounts quoted in the lesson, by Gen. Deane, Henry Varnum Poor, David Chavchavadze and others, are paraphrased here. The lesson spells one airfield "Tanancross"; the standard spelling is Tanacross.
• Words on this page from people and organisations outside the federal government are paraphrased; rewritten in hubnx's own words.