We removed some plaques and rifle carriers from some of those vehicles. Canvas covers still good. Jeeps really got the treatment - flattened and burned. The 6x6 trucks in the north 40 had their frames cut, but weren't burned. In one dump - the one where I found the large vise - there was a Jeep motor in a crate. Figured that being in a crate it was either a rebuild or a new motor. But the manifolds were smashed, and water had rusted the insides.
The first runway was the one started in 1943. Drop to the Sylvia Grinnel River at one end, hill at the other, crosswise to the prevailing wind. All built up now, not apparent it was ever a runway. The current runway was later, Cold War use. That runway was eventually extended to 9500 feet. Prevailing wind generally lengthwise. Saw a photo of KC-97 tankers lining it. Lower base was the air base, Upper Base was the end point of the radar line. Signals were relayed by microwave to Resolution Island, then south into Labrador, then furthered to Cheyenne Mountain. I remember one bright, beautiful June day, looking up, and seeing a KC-10 tanker with four B-52s flying line astern. Heading south, a good thing.
Sherm Wengard was the USN officer who searched the area in the summer of 1942, aboard the Morrisey, a chartered NFLD schooner, looking for a suitable site to build an airstrip. Met him in the '80s, when he came to Frob. and donated his photographs to the museum. Relatively stable weather and accessibility were factors in choosing the site.
You used to be able to stand outside the entrance to Upper Base and look down into a valley, and see canvas Browning belts and heaps of brass on the ground. M-1 clips galore. I'm still using some. They fired at a large red rock down the valley. It was studded with AP cores. Under one of the Upper Base buildings was a caribou skull with a large set of antlers. I imagine a US serviceman had collected the set, tucked it away there to take as a souvenir, then left it behind.
