World War: America’s Northeastern Frontier

For two generations the defense of the U. S. has faced west. Into the naval bases at Cavite, P. I. and Pearl Harbor, Hawaii have gone 75-80 millions of dollars for defense against an invader from the Orient. But today, although the U. S. Army and Navy are beginning to develop Alaska air and sea bases as another bulwark against a thrust from Asia, the U. S. defensively faces east toward Europe. For if Germany displaces Britain as mistress of the seas, the U. S. will have lost its insurance policy against trouble in the Atlantic: the British fleet. Until the U. S. has a two-ocean fleet, it faces the danger of surprise attack in whichever ocean is undefended.

From the standpoint of a would-be invader from Europe, there are two obvious approaches for an attack on the U. S. One is the Caribbean islands (TIME, July 29). The other is eastern Canada. On the two following pages, TIME presents a map of eastern Canada and the North Atlantic coast. A mixing pot for villainous weather through the winter months, it is nevertheless an area in which military operations were carried on, winter and summer, before and during the Revolution and the War of 1812. Over its forested stretches commercial aircraft today operate regularly in summer, with more difficulty in winter. Year-round, it is a country which calls for tough soldiers, both on the ground and in the air, but no tougher than Germany sent into northern Norway in the spring of 1940, or than Russia sent into Finland in the deep winter of 1939.

An invasion of the Caribbean islands would be a direct threat to the Panama Canal and the mobility of the U. S. battle fleet. A successful invasion of the St. Lawrence Valley would bring the chief war resources of the U. S. —the industrial plants of the Boston -Cleveland -Pittsburgh -Philadelphia quadrilateral — within easy range of enemy bombers. Taking off from Montreal a 250-mile-an-hour bomber can be over Boston in 60 minutes, Buffalo in 75, Pittsburgh in two hours. Established on the line Montreal-Quebec, an invader in strength could move into the northeastern U. S. over a network of highways, using the straight valleys of the Hudson and Connecticut Rivers and their railroads as his chief axes of communications.

If an invasion of the St. Lawrence would be even more serious for the U. S. than an invasion of the Carib bean, it is also more difficult for an enemy to undertake. The sea route to South America and the Caribbean from Africa or the Azores is short (2,500 or 2,250 mi.), favored by fair weather and relatively difficult for the U. S. to patrol from its bases many hundreds of miles away.

The sea approach to the St. Lawrence from northern Europe is longer (2,750 mi.) and relatively easy for the U. S. fleet to intercept from Atlantic ports. The main danger of invasion of the St. Lawrence region rests on the possibility that an invader might gain naval dominance in the Atlantic.

Invasion of eastern Canada is a subject no professional U. S. strategist will discuss with a layman. Before Hitler, the obstacles in the way of invasion — weather, terrain, mili tary resistance from the U. S. and Canada — seemed insurmountable. Since Nazi successes at arms and the threat to the British Navy, the problem has to be considered, but the possible consequences of such an invasion — remote though it may still seem — are so touchy a subject that professionals do not care to discuss them publicly.

Front door of eastern Canada is the wide, deep estuary of the St. Lawrence, and front porch is Newfoundland, an island rich in timber and iron (smelter centre, however, is at Sydney, Cape Breton Island) that is about the size of the State of New York. Off its rugged, forbidding east and west coasts, nicked with many a deep harbor, the Gulf Stream and the St. Lawrence meet the Arctic Current and the result is often fog. But in the interior the weather is better. Near Botwood, where many a transatlantic sea plane has landed, there is a great airport for land planes, built for scheduled stops on the North Atlantic run, and big enough for anybody’s bombers. Newfoundland is only 1,850 miles from Glasgow, is closer to New York than Little Rock, Ark. At Hearts Content, Bay Roberts, St. Johns and Harbor Grace are anchored 14 transatlantic cables. South, in the throat of the Gulf of St. Lawrence lie the last relics of France’s once great holdings in North America, Miquelon and St. Pierre, where descendants of the original habitants still speak Norman French, wear wooden sabots, drive dog carts. Study in grey — rock, houses, fog — splashed in summer with bright flowers, St. Pierre came to life in Prohibition as a strategic spot for bootleggers’ operations, today is a poor fishing village of 1,000. Diplomatically, it came to life again few weeks ago when the U. S. reopened its St. Pierre-Miquelon consulate, made it (as it did at Dakar, on the African coast) a new listening post for European trouble.

Athwart the mouth of the St. Lawrence estuary lies Anticosti Island, wildlife preserve, source of lumber for Canadian pulp mills, but no bargain either to an invader or defender because its harbors are few and treacherous. It has one commercial air field. South across the Gulf of St. Lawrence, on the left flank of any invader from the sea, lies Nova Scotia, scalloped with harbors for submarines and seaplanes (as is Prince Edward Island) and seat of Britain’s No. 1 North American sea and air base: Halifax.

When Britain’s plenipotentiaries sat down at Utrecht in 1713 to write an end to the War of the Spanish Succession (Queen Anne’s War to American colonists) they despoiled France’s Louis XIV of his important eastern Canada holdings except Cape Breton Island off the east end of Nova Scotia. From there French fishermen still went out to the Grand Banks and there they built a mighty fortress at Louisburg. From Nantasket, Mass, in 1746 set forth 4,000 colonists under Lieut. General William Pepperell to reduce this French threat to Anglo-Saxon supremacy in the northeast. It fell in a few weeks, was returned to France when King George’s War (a Western Hemisphere overflow of Europe’s War of the Austrian Succession) was settled. Ten years later Lord Jeffrey Amherst (hero of a famed college song) took it again with the help of famed Tactician Colonel James Wolfe, who died later in the storming of Quebec. Since then it has been British soil.

Halifax, on Nova Scotia’s southeast coast, was the departure point for convoys in World War I, was leveled on the morning of Dec. 6, 1917, when the French freighter Mont Blanc, loaded with T.N.T., blew up after a collision with the Belgian relief ship Imo. Today Halifax’s fine harbor is Britian’s convoy point once again, reputedly has been made into a good naval base as well. From its seaplane and land air bases, Canuck pilots fly out to sea on convoy escort and submarine patrol. Nova Scotia is heavily wooded, is connected with the mainland by a narrow strip of land. To a defender it is valuable as a base for ranging out to sea against an invader, flanking him if he gets through and tries to enter the St. Lawrence. For an invader once established, Halifax is only 369 mi. from Boston, has a Royal Canadian Air Force field at Dartmouth from which land-based aircraft could operate. There are also land-plane fields at Truro, Halifax and Yarmouth, across the Bay of Fundy from Franklin Roosevelt’s summer vacation spot at Campobello Island. (North of Halifax is the village of Grand Pré where Britain’s ruthless handling in 1755 of a political minority was hexametred by Longfellow in Evangeline.)

An invader could reach this general area by air (rather easily by hops from northern Britain to Iceland to Greenland), but to make use of it he would have to come by sea and establish a base there. To drive him out by a land attack might prove nearly as difficult as driving the Germans out of Norway for much of the terrain is almost equally barren and difficult. And from a base in Nova Scotia or Newfoundland he could harry the U. S. coast by sea and set about the steady business of softening up the U. S. and Canada by air raids on their industrial plants, hydroelectric stations (the chief of which are shown on the map by dams) and on the rail network. If he could do so at will he might bring the industrial life of the northeast close to a standstill.

This might be as far as such an enemy would go if his main push were aimed at another sector. But if he intended to make this his main attack, he would have to go farther.

Entering the St. Lawrence with the timbered, inhospitable Gaspé on his left, an invader would have the rugged Laurentians on his right, could not hope to get a foothold until he had taken Quebec. In the river his ships would be targets for defending bombers and artillery. The shores of the lower St. Lawrence are sheer and bold, could be held thinly by determined, well-armed men. At Quebec is the beginning of the lowland country which widens out into the fertile Richelieu Valley and south toward Lake Champlain. Farther upstrean lies Montreal, Canada’s metropolis and No. i seaport. To launch a land thrust to the south an invader would have to hold the Montreal-Quebec line as well as Nova Scotia and Newfoundland to protect his supply line.

Once having established himself on the St. Lawrence, an invader might pattern his advance by land on the thrust of gouty General Burgoyne down the Hudson in the Revolution. Mercilessly harried on his flanks as he moved south, luxury-loving Briton Burgoyne finally dug in near Saratoga, put his women in a safe place and tried to knock Gates’s Army out of his way. Soundly defeated in one of the world’s decisive battles (largely through the tactical resource of Gates’s brilliant subordinate, Benedict Arnold) he had to hand over his sword. Thus ended the only invasion down the Hudson Valley that had even the faintest chance of substantial success. A new invader would advance with motor transport instead of bateaux, with tanks and aircraft instead of Indian allies. The chances of whether he could be defeated would depend largely on the means the U. S. could muster to counter these weapons.

The primary defense of the U. S. against such an attack is fleet control of the Atlantic. But if by superior naval force an invader got a foothold, he would be in bombing range of U. S. fields from Newfoundland on. Chief of the Army’s strong points in New England is the new Northeast Air Base now under construction at Chicopee Falls, Mass, (just north of Springfield). Farther south, on Long Island, is the Army’s Mitchel Field, seat of the Air Defense Command. Through the whole northeast are scores of fields, ranging from New York City’s LaGuardia and Floyd Bennett to emergency stops on the airline runs, from which Army aircraft could operate in a pinch. With Canada’s cooperation, the use of Canadian fields would also be available. The second defense of the U. S. would be a big enough air force to cripple the invader’s bases and communications while protecting those of the U. S. The third defense would be to beat the invader at armored and mechanized land warfare.