Gander, Ferry Command and the Newfoundland Railway

• Flexibility ... when commercial aviation was young ... Flying boats could land wherever there was a stretch of calm water. Long paved commercial runways were not required.
• Safety ... on long trans-oceanic voyages ... A "flying boat" with a mechanical problem could force land on the sea. Flying without modern aviation weather forecasting, a desperate pilot could "pull off onto the shoulder" to deal with wing icing problems. "Desperate" is the key word, because a flying boat flaring to land would be going fast enough to break into pieces or seriously injure the occupants if the wave patterns weren't favourable. 
• Prestige ... Countries with distant foreign territories could "show the flag" with luxurious flying boats, rather than using those underpowered hydrogen gasbag airships like the Hindenberg. Oh, the humanity !
• Maritime patrol and rescue ... Future military variants could swoop in to rescue survivors of ship sinkings or aircraft ditchings. Or the positions of enemy ships could be reported to naval authorities for interception.
• Sub killing ... If an enemy submarine was running on the surface (traditionally, the only way they could travel at a reasonable speed) a flying boat could attack with guns, bombs, or depth charges.

• In 1932, the DO-X was travelling from Newfoundland to Europe via the Azores "gas station" (at the bottom of the map).
• In 1933, Hitler became Chancellor of Germany.
• In 1936, Britain, the United States, Canada, Newfoundland and Ireland (Eire) were working together to set up facilities to support trans-Atlantic aviation. Hoping that ground-based aircraft could be developed to make the trip safely, an area near Gander Lake being hacked out of the bush. It was imaginatively named "Newfoundland Airport".
• July 5, 1937, a Pan Am Clipper flying boat left Botwood, Newfoundland ... and simultaneously ... an Imperial Airways Caledonia flying boat left Foynes, Ireland. Each aircraft flew to the other's starting point as a symbolic first step to scheduled trans-Atlantic flight.

• 30 locomotives [steam]
• 32 passenger cars
• 250 flatcars
• 250 boxcars

• Stephenville - US Army Air Force
• Argentia - US Navy and USN air station
• Fort Pepperell - US Army, at St. John's
• Gander, formerly Newfoundland Airport - Newfoundland and Britain, with Canada and the USAAF

• workers
• land clearing tools and tractors to pull stumps and prepare the ground
• gasoline.
• Of course ... somewhere for the workers to live ... summer and winter.
• Gee, almost forgot ... coal and firewood to keep warm, FOOD !

• lumber
• cement
• crushed rock
• sand
• structural steel
• dynamos
• shielded copper wire
• transformers
  
• floodlights to permit work at night
• copper pipe
• steel and ceramic pipe
• boilers, fireboxes, valves and gauges
  
• water pumping and storage facilities
• roofing material
• plaster
• glass and windows
• beds and furnishings 
• more coal
• more gasoline ... and diesel fuel for modern construction equipment
• more food
• more motorized construction equipment : cranes, bulldozers, graders, power shovels and snow clearing equipment !!
• cars, trucks, buses, tires, motor oil and grease, spare parts - not too many cars because there will be no roads to the outside for years
• dog teams and sledges [not kidding !]
• more people
  

• tons and tons of crushed rock, sand, asphalt, and cement for roads and runways
• some rock crushers
  
• more dump trucks and road rollers
• fencing, gates, barbed wire
• steel aircraft hanger fabrications
  
• runway lights, signal flares, signal lamps
• mess hall equipment
• ammunition and secure storage facilities, weapons
• meteorological equipment and maps
• mountains of paper forms and books, typewriters and ribbons, pens, pencils, paper clips, blackboards and chalk
• morse and telephone communication equipment and switching gear
• radio transmission gear for morse and local direction finding beams... steel towers and aerials
• aviation gasoline storage tanks and aviation gasoline to fill them
• refueling "bowsers"
• runway fire protection equipment
• aircraft spare parts
• aircraft hydraulic fluid, engine oil, and grease
• retail goods for sale, including periodicals
• religious furnishings and supplies
• more gasoline, diesel, coal and food
• military personnel and all their personal equipment and belongings
• recreational supplies, liquor
  

• As indicated, the mileages are measured from St. John's.
• Gander (no longer named Newfoundland Airport) is about 200 rail miles from St. John's. 
• Considering all the railway car switching activity in the area - continuing after the war in 1957 - restricted speed (max 15 mph) was required on 7 miles of mainline track at Gander.
• In 1957, Gander's yard tracks could hold 329 freight cars and there were specialized spurs into the airport, including a coal dump spur.
• Much of the crushed rock for the buildings and runways came from a pit a few miles east of Gander along the line - Hall's Quarry.
• At mile 244, at Notre Dame Junction, a 9 mile branch ran to the overworked seaside port of Lewisporte. Most of the fuel, coal and most large manufactured items came through Lewisporte.

• From St. John's, Lewisporte or Port-aux-Basques ... almost everything and everyone required for the airport, came to Gander by train. At its peak, there were 15,000 people at Gander during the war.
• Meanwhile, the other bases were being constructed at Stephenville, Argentia and St. John's - at least these had direct ocean access for the imported goods, decreasing some demands on the railway.
• Newfoundlanders themselves were travelling in increasing numbers to and from the new jobs associated with the various construction projects and operating military bases. 
• Newfoundland's typical exports were needed in greater quantities because of wartime demand.
  
• Remember that the railway did not have very much rolling stock or modern equipment ... and narrow gauge cars and locomotives are smaller and have less capacity.
• The whole thing was operated by timetable and rulebook ... and train movement orders were sent by by telegraph. 
• A rare railway train order telephone was installed at the Gander coal dump to issue the routine train orders to return to Lewisporte. Switching congestion at Gander station had often delayed these orders in the past.  
• Between Gander and Lewisporte, 15 flatcars (what the railway could allocate) were constantly shuttling back and forth with freight for the airport. 
• In 1957, the top speed for freight trains was 30 mph - this was after the CNR takeover and some track renewal. Passenger trains were good for 45 mph ... but 30 mph on curves ... curves ? ... on the Newfoundland Railway ???

• The photo is undated, but it is fair representation of the airport developed for the war.
• The smoke to the left is near Gander Lake which is roughly south of both the airport and the community.
• Along the right edge, the dark line is the Newfoundland Railway and spurs branch off to service the fuel tanks at the bottom of the photograph.
• The Canadian Army garrison for airport defence was based north of the tracks to the right.
• The USAAF was located between the runways at the top of the photograph.
• The RAF was located in the foreground at the left.
• During and immediately after the war, the heavy traffic's proximity to living quarters and facilities added to the dangers of those living near the runways.
  

• At the beginning of the war, the German Unterseeboot fleet (U-boats) was doing a much better job of sinking Allied shipping than the Royal Navy was doing of protecting it. The Germans were winning the Battle of the Atlantic.
• Flying boats had shown that four-engine aircraft could travel successfully from Newfoundland to Britain. (However, in-flight refuelling was still too experimental to use. If the aircraft couldn't be fitted with auxiliary tanks, a place like the Azores (Portuguese)  was handy for refueling. Often, the prevailing winds were helpful to eastbound fuel economy.)
• Why take up valuable, increasingly scarce ships with big aircraft which can get to Europe on their own ?
• If you need the manufacturing capacity of North America to build planes, it is a waste of effort to break them down and crate them for sea transport ... and then ... reassemble them in Britain !
• So much valuable labour and scarce metal is put into manufacturing aircraft ... can the Allies afford to have entire shiploads of them eternally patrolling the bottom of the Atlantic ?

• At Christmas, each of the forces had their own celebration for the kids. One year the RCAF Sergeants' Mess brought in kids from nearby Gambo by train to add to the festivities.
• The Americans had their big celebration on July 4.
• Guy Fawkes Day was celebrated each November 5 by Newfoundlanders - something familiar for the visiting RAF personnel, who put on a bonfire and feast for the kids.
• And July 1, Canada's birthday ... was, and is, a day of Remembrance for Newfoundlanders.

"The story of many of these flights upon which aircraft of Coastal Command are constantly engaged must remain a secret until the war is over. Their importance is, indeed, obvious. Commanders-in-Chief have no longer to rely entirely on cipher telegrams or long-distance wireless telephone conversations. They can meet together in conference and together discuss the many problems of the war face-to-face across a table. Then, when the talk is over, the decisions taken, they can enter a flying boat or a Hudson of the Command and return to their posts at the various seats of war."

One source suggests that Churchill came through Gander at least twice - landing at least once on Gander Lake in an aircraft like this.
This is one of the "Pan Am Clippers" - more correctly known as a Boeing 314. In all, 12 Boeing 314s were built.
Britain bought 3 in April 1941, and BOAC operated them. They were named Bristol, Berwick and Bangor.

A quick chronological background to the wartime conferences between leaders :

• September 2, 1940 - By executive order, President Franklin Roosevelt sets up the "destroyers for bases" agreement with Britain.
• October 1940 - Britain has won the Battle of Britain - preventing a German invasion across the English Channel - by stopping the Luftwaffe from achieving complete air superiority over the islands. However, British cities will still be hammered by German bombs and V1 cruise missiles in "The Blitz".
• December 1940 - Secure, as he has just won a third presidential term, Franklin Roosevelt declares the US to be "The Arsenal of Democracy " in a "fireside chat" radio broadcast to the US and the world. He suggests that the US can no longer expect to be protected from attack by the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans - given the range of the newest bombers and Hitler's determination to invade country after country.
• March 1941 - FDR's "Lend-Lease Act" passes Congress, empowering the US President to provide the cash or material aid he saw fit to allied countries. Britain's dollar reserves were low and its gold reserves would be the next to go ... In international trade a country must have some method of paying for imports and Britain was running out of cash. To those who wanted to preserve American military and financial neutrality, FDR provided the following memorable parable : If a neighbour's house is burning down, you don't haggle over a price - you lend them your hose and work things out later.
• June 1941 - Hitler invades the USSR, breaking his non-aggression pact with Stalin. The Soviet Union ultimately loses 20 million soldiers and civilians killed in World War 2.

Conferences

Apparently, Roosevelt and Churchill first met to discuss the war at Argentia, Newfoundland in early August 1941. Both were masters of little white lies to fool the enemy ("disinformation") ... and propaganda ... and a big deal was made about FDR spending the time in question fishing off the coast of New England. Later when the meeting was revealed to the public, he and Churchill were said to have sailed aboard their own warships to meet at a secret location for their 3 day conference. Much was also made of Churchill's warships taking detours in the Atlantic to avoid suspected U-boat locations on his way to Argentia. Yes, but it's generally not the U-boat you know about that gets you, so why would that risk have been taken?

Note of caution: I am not a historian with access to archives, or the daybooks and credit card receipts of the leaders ... but ...  a lot of ranking Washington war planning military and civilian officials were present at the Argentia conference. I have trouble believing - with the free world threatened by the spit-polished hobnailed Nazi jackboot of tyranny - that all these important people were bobbing around in the middle of the ocean to get to the meeting if they could safely fly in. The British already had the flying boats to do the job.

However, at the time, neither the potent imagery of warships, nor the concept that "Britannia rules the waves" would be allowed to fade away, just because of a few U-boats ...

Military photo-op : Churchill at Argentia, Placentia Bay, Newfoundland, aboard HMS Prince of Wales in August 1941.
The Newfoundland shoreline is visible behind the second warship.

The Argentia Conference ... at the new US naval base on Placentia Bay, on the southern coast of Newfoundland ... was probably mainly used to develop Allied war strategy ... before Pearl Harbor ; and to plan production for Britain's needs for war materiel. The photo-ops and the "Atlantic Charter" (a glorified press release apparently signed by neither leader) stated the honourable goals of Britain and the US, and a hope for the peaceful future of humanity without Nazi tyranny and "that all nations of the world, for realistic as well as spiritual reasons, must come to the abandonment of the use of force".


Whether or not Churchill flew to Gander and/or the USN air station at Argentia doesn't really matter.
Churchill, Roosevelt and other leaders made many other flights across the Atlantic during World War 2 for conferences at the following locations :

• Moscow September 1941 - Beaverbrook, Harriman, Stalin
• Washington, December 1941 - Churchill, Roosevelt
• Washington, June 1942 - Churchill ("flying boat" reference found), Roosevelt
• Moscow, August 1942 - Churchill, Harriman, Stalin
• Casablanca, January 1943 - Roosevelt, Churchill, de Gaulle ("Roosevelt - Clipper flying boat" reference found)
• Washington, May 1943 - Churchill, Roosevelt
• Quebec, August 1943 - Churchill, Roosevelt, Mackenzie-King ... (like the Mountie's dog, addressed habitually as "King" by Roosevelt)
• Cairo, November 1943 - Churchill, Roosevelt, Chiang Kai-shek
• Tehran, November 1943 - Churchill, Roosevelt, Stalin
• Cairo, December 1943 - Churchill, Roosevelt, Inonu (of Turkey - military minister under Ataturk, statesman, President 1938-50)
• Quebec, September 1944 - Churchill, Roosevelt
• Moscow, October 1944 - Churchill, Stalin, Molotov (tending bar), Eden
  
• Malta, January 1945 - Churchill, Roosevelt
• Yalta, southern Ukraine, February 1945 - Churchill, Roosevelt, Stalin
• Potsdam, July 1945 - Churchill, Stalin, Truman, Atlee

Is it any surprise that a stylized flying boat serves as the logo for Air Miles ?

Update:  November 2009 James Trautman, author of the book pictured at the left, published by Boston Mills Press, sent me an interesting update about aspects of wartime travel on the Clippers regarding ... " ... FDR, Casablanca [Conference] and the Clipper. Yes, he did fly on a Pan Am Clipper. He took the train secretly from Washington to Miami, boarded the Yankee Clipper and traveled through Central and South America to Casablanca. On the return flight he celebrated his 61st birthday on the aircraft. On the flight over and back two Pan Am Clippers in the service of the US military were involved. On the flight over he played the famous WWII 'short snorter' game. Churchill played that same game when he came to Newfoundland in 1943. " ... Involving two of the off duty reminders of civilian life ...  paper currency and alcohol ... the short snorter game was played by soldiers about to enter action or parting company for a while ... For example, if two friends were playing ... each would have a drink and sign the other's bank note. The next time they got together, the participant who had amassed fewer signatures would buy a round of drinks ... he who was 'short' of signatures bought the other a 'snort'. If several buddies played together, the cost of the round for the loser would be higher. More significantly for the soldiers ... if a comrade was lost ... the signature on the local currency remained a enduring portable keepsake of the last time they had shared a drink together.

Was there really a serious U-boat threat early in the war to Churchill et al around Argentia and Newfoundland ?

A tragedy of the war for Newfoundland on October 14, 1942 was the sinking by U-69 of the scheduled Newfoundland Railway Port-aux-Basques ferry, Caribou.
Lost were 90 passengers and the entire 46 member crew of the ferry - with only one lifeboat getting off as the ferry sank.

The 46 [sic] member crew of the U-69 were killed east of Newfoundland in early 1943 by depth charges from HMS Fame.

It was on a fast, modern ferry that we returned from our own Newfoundland visit 46 years later : Caribou.

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Other air routes across the Atlantic for ferrying aircraft ...

In the end, about 12,000 new aircraft were flown across the Atlantic to the war in Europe.
The US had its own hierarchy - the US Army Air Corps Ferrying Command - ACFC.
Besides using Gander for bombers, they would also take shorter range planes across in short hops via military airstrips at :

• Goose Bay, Labrador 
• newly constructed bases in western Greenland 
• Reykjavik, Iceland 

.

About 2000 US aircraft of the total above took a more interesting route to keep things moving when the weather in the North Atlantic was very poor. It was a scenic route which provided extra practice for green crews who were flying over aboard their own bombers : Puerto Rico, Brazil, Ascension Island, Liberia, Morocco and then to England.

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Gander after World War 2

Although it almost began before World War 2, trans-Atlantic civil aviation really developed after the war. More advanced radio guidance, and cockpit navigation instruments developed for war, along with aircrew, and supporting professions and trades, were ready to make the transition to peacetime aviation.

Easy to identify with its triple tail, a Lockheed Constellation is being refuelled with Shell gasoline - which came through their facilities at Lewisporte. The building certainly looks like a wartime model.

Below, in a 1957 Government of Canada atlas, Gander was still shown as an important refuelling stop for transatlantic flights. This status continued to decline with the evolution of long range commercial turbojets. You can see four schematic routes heading for the US east coast and one to the Caribbean.

In a 1960s postcard ...the star is probably a stylized representation of all the runways at Gander.

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1988

By the time we showed up in Gander (below) its much shorter list of international clientele featured regular Soviet and Cuban flights
which were not allowed to swing by the US as they travelled to and from "that imprisoned island" - Cuba
... which people from Quebec like to visit so much.


Around the time of our visit, I read that there were on average each day, 3-4 requests for asylum in Canada by transitting passengers from communist countries.
The article said the RCMP officer at the airport had a standard speech which included the idea that the person could relax because they were in a free country now.

The "Coastal Command tradition" was still alive ... well, except for depth-charging U-boats
... with US Coast Guard, and Canadian International Ice Patrol aircraft present.

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Twilight at Gander

Fifty years after it brought Gander and its airport into the world,
the Newfoundland Railway waits for the end in 1988.