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Bluie West One (BW-1)
By Howard Traeder Pilot, 601st Squadron
First off, Bluie West One (BW-1) was located on the SW coast of Greenland, near the Eskimo village of Narsarsuaq. There was also a Bluie West Eight (BW-8), located farther north. We first encountered BW-1 on our flight from Goose Bay direct to Iceland. We were approaching Reykjavik, midway across the Denmark Strait, when Radioman Joe Reveman picked up a recall message that the field at Reykjavik was closed due to intermittent snow showers and directing us to reverse course and land at BW-1. We complied, after verifying that the message was legit, and not a German decoy to lure us to an emergency landing on the ice cap. Marv Blancett, our Navigator, took us directly to BW-1, as verified by our radio compass and visual sighting, when we were directly over it. However, our landing instructions required that we follow the fjord out to the Davis Strait and then drop down and fly up the fjord, between its mountainous walls, about 50 miles, at, as I recall, about 1,000 ft altitude, or less, until we saw the wreckage of a ship. At that point, we were to watch for the field on the right, prepared to turn about 30 degrees and begin our landing approach to the one and only runway, which sloped upward toward the glacier emanating from the icecap. We landed with no problem on Christmas Eve in 1944, when daylight in Greenland existed only from about 1000 to 1400 daily.
Veteran: Howard F. Traeder |
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