Strategic Map: Northwest Frontier

On the following two pages, TIME presents a map of the U. S.’s northwest frontier, and its name is Alaska. Its area is one-fifth as large as that of the 48 States. At its westernmost point the mainland of the territory is separated from the mainland of Asia only by the 62 miles of Bering Strait. Its outpost, Little Diomede Island in Bering Strait, is separated from Russian-owned Big Diomede by only a mile and a half of open water. Its westernmost Pacific Ocean island (Attu) is only 250 miles southeast of Russia’s advance submarine base on the Komandorskie Islands, only 696 miles east of Japan’s advance base on Paramosmiri Island, off the toe of Kamchatka. An airplane from any of these Asiatic strongholds can cross the international date line and be over U. S. territory in 20 to 24 hours before it takes off.

Alaska has been vulnerable to invasion since navies were converted from sail to steam. It took the airplane to make it a strategic area from which an attack could be launched against the U. S. From the southern boundary of the narrow, water-laced Alaska panhandle which extends southward along the western frontier of Canada, Seattle is only 625 miles by air. From Juneau, considerably farther north and west, Pan American Airways runs regularly, twice a week, flies to Seattle in seven hours. The special importance of this fact is that this part of Alaska also lies along the route that any Oriental invader would naturally take in approaching the U. S. A ship following a great-circle course from Yokohama to San Francisco passes within 300 miles of the Aleutian Islands. The seemingly shorter route via Hawaii is 1,100 miles longer. So an invader intending to attack the west coast of the U. S. would find it a great advantage to snaffle Alaska and use it as an advance base for operations by air and sea against the U. S. proper.

There is a further threat since Russian naval and air establishments have been built on the Kamchatka Peninsula (which wanders off the western edge of the map), since the Russians are reported to have constructed bases at East Cape, Anadyrsk, and other nearby points on the Asiatic mainland.

These dangers do not make a liability of the $7,200,000 which Secretary of State Seward paid for Alaska in 1867. Alaska would still be there as a danger if Mr. Seward had not bought it. U. S. possession of it is a great strategic asset and $7,200,000 is not much more than the cost of a modern destroyer. Lying close to the great-circle course from northern Asiatic ports to the U. S., Alaska is a base from which U. S. submarines and aircraft can operate against the flank of any invader.

It is also a strategic economic asset. Since the U. S. bought it, the territory has exported about $2,000,000,000 in fish, furs, gold, etc. and its 70,000 inhabitants (half white, half Indian) have no more than scratched its natural resources.

Today, to protect strategic Alaska, the U. S. is spending $45,000,000, more than six times the purchase price of the territory. Alaskans, alarmed by Japanese and Russian reaches toward the north, hope it is just a start, that before the fortification of the territory is completed the U. S. will have sunk as much in it as it did in Hawaiian defenses: about $400,000,000.

Most populous section of Alaska is the island-fringed panhandle, extending south from the grandeur of Mt. St. Elias (18,024 ft.) to a point 23 miles below the peaceful, prosperous Indian village of Metlakatla on Annette Island. Alaska’s panhandle is a bony spine formed by continuations of the U. S.-Canada coast range. Partly submerged by the sea, the outer range is the panhandle’s islands. The inner range rises sheer from the water to heights of 7,000 to 9,000 feet. Glaciers have deepened the river valleys into fjords like Norway’s coastal indentations and there are no natural locations for flying fields.

To an invader this panhandle would be a prize. Once established in the vast network of its mainland and island harbors he would be hard to dislodge, and its climate would be an advantage. Warmed by the Japan Current, the panhandle has a milder winter climate than New York City or Washington, D. C., is an ideal natural base for naval operations. To airplane pilots its No. 1 winter grief is fog, but fog is no grief that good instruments and smart weather flying cannot cure.

In the panhandle both the U. S. Army and Navy are busy. A few weeks ago 400 CCC boys, directed by Army technical experts, landed at Metlakatla, promptly set to work clearing and draining Annette Island’s swampy seaward front for an Army flying field. Impressed by the urgency of Alaskan defense, the thrifty Indians of Metlakatla had readily voted permission for the Air Corps to build a field on their reservation, are now hosts to more white men than most of them have ever seen at one time. Farther north at Sitka a naval air base is already building, will eventually be home for submarines, as well as aircraft. Planned by the U. S. at Juneau and Ketchikan are other bases hard by Pan American flying fields.

North of the panhandle the mountains reach their cloud-piercing apex in Mt. McKinley, highest (20,300 ft.) peak in North America. The range swings southwest to form the Aleutians, where much of it is submerged and active volcanoes still spit fire & brimstone.

To the U. S. Navy has gone the job of building defenses in Alaska’s island chain. On Kodiak Island (2,795 miles directly north of Hawaii) its $12,730,000 sea and air base is already under construction, will be completed within two years. A newer establishment is at Dutch Harbor (Un-alaska), where Navy building is going on in secret, with the area restricted from visitors. And far out in the Pacific, 1,242 miles west of Kodiak, is the Navy’s outmost listening post, Kiska Island, which can be used as an advance base for U. S. Navy operations.

Alaska’s mainland belongs to the Army. Across the international date line lie Russian bases, and many a sourdough airplane pilot has long observed that Alaska’s western beaches, stretching northward from Nome across the shortest sea gap from Asia, are big enough and smooth enough for the landing of any bombers or troop transports now flying. North of the Aleutians—beyond which the southern limit of drift ice (shown by ice cakes on the map) does not extend— Alaska’s nine-month winter is bitter cold.

In the swampy flats north of the Yukon River the ground becomes iron-hard, the lakes glass-smooth. The heaviest airplanes can land on the ice. Hard on men and machines are the temperatures. Toward Point Barrow the thermometer sometimes falls to 75° F. below zero. Before Finland and the German invasion of Norway, many military experts would have said no army could operate there. Now they are not so sure.

Biggest army bases in Alaska proper are at Anchorage on the south coast and Fairbanks in the heart of the territory. Moderate in climate, Anchorage is likely to be Army’s big home base, and its Elmendorf Field is under construction. Fairbanks is only 356 miles up the Government-owned Alaska Railroad from Anchorage, but Ladd Field at Fairbanks has been laid down squarely in the midst of Alaska’s ‘toughest winter weather. The ground thaws on top but always remains frozen two or three feet down. There, working three shifts in Alaska’s 24-hour summer daylight, Army engineers have laid down a two-mile-long runway and reared the first of Ladd Field’s hangars and shops. There, this winter, Air Corps pilots and mechanics will get their first big lesson in Arctic operations.

Good start to a system of military fields through the main body of Alaska is the airport system of Pan Am’s sourdough subsidiary, Pacific Alaska Airways. Bossed by Alaska Veteran Joe Crosson, P.A.A.’s pilots operate in & out of Fairbanks, Whitehorse, Burwash Landing, Tanana Crossing, Ruby, Nome, McGrath, Ophir, Flat and Bethel. To help civil aeronautics and, in the long run, the defenses of the northwest frontier, the Civil Aeronautics Bureau is dotting Alaska with emergency fields, installing radio range stations for navigation at night and in bad weather.

The Army Air Corps is going further, readying plans for fields at Point Barrow (where Will Rogers and Wiley Post were killed), at Nome and probably another near the Canadian border, against the possibility of an air invasion across the top of the world. Advance fields will dot the Seward peninsula back of Nome, the lower Yukon Valley back of Bethel and the tundra south of Point Barrow. This summer the U. S. Army landed at Anchorage the first big contingent of troops the territory had seen in 40 years. The only other sizable garrison in Alaska consists of some 400 infantrymen at Chilkoot Barracks, a station not far from Skagway which was set up in the gold rush of ’98. Tactically unimportant, Chilkoot’s cold-weather garrison is likely to dwindle to a maintenance force, and Chil-koot’s sourdoughboys are likely to be detailed to other Alaska stations.

Biggest strategic weakness of Alaska, now that it is being armed, is its lack of communications with the rest of the U. S. Machinery, food and other freight comes largely by steamer from the U. S. Engineers have long planned a road through Canada (the route is shown by a dotted line) to enable supplies to be trucked in three days from Seattle to Fairbanks. The cost is estimated at $25,000,000 for building 1,200 miles of 24-ft. roadway through the wilderness. With new U. S.-Canadian defense cooperation, the road may be built at U. S. expense, for $25,000,000 is the cost of only one aircraft carrier for the Navy, and Alaska’s security is worth it.