Combat aircraft

There are very few places as hostile and challenging to

 y in as the Arctic. From April to August each year, the

New York Air National Guard’s 109th Airlift Wing heads to

Greenland and does just that.

report and photos: Neil Dunridge

H

IDDEN CREVASSES,

THE sky and ground

blending together

in one white ball of

light. The coldest

temperatures on

earth, longitude lines that merge to

make navigation di cult. Operating

anywhere in the polar regions requires

professionalism and expertise.

The 109th Airlift Wing (AW) deploys

its Lockheed LC-130H ‘ski birds’ to

Kangerlussuaq in Greenland for two-

week rotations to train new aircrews

to land on the snow runway at Raven

Camp, and  ies supplies to scienti c

sites around Greenland. For the 2017

season the primary sites supported by

the 109th AW were the East Greenland

Ice-core Project (EastGRIP) and the

Summit Camp research station.

When the 109th received its  rst

C-130Ds in the mid-1970s, their role

was to resupply the radar stations of the

Distance Early Warning (DEW) Line that

stretched from Alaska through Canada

and Greenland to Iceland. The radars

were established to detect incoming

Soviet intercontinental ballistic missiles

(ICBMs) at the height of the Cold War.

Many of these sites were close to roads,

but Greenland’s challenging terrain

An LC-130H gets

airborne from

Raven Camp.

If the Hercules

isn’t airborne

by the 2,000ft

markers, the

crew will abort

the take-o and

try again.

POLAR

express

POLAR

express

POLAR

UNIT REPORT | 109TH AIRLIFT WING

http://www.combataircraft.net January 2018

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