2023-07-15 14:54:00
During the Second World War, deadly dramas played out in the icy waters of the North Atlantic: Due to their initial superiority, U-boats of the German Navy sank countless Allied merchant ships and warships on their way between North America and Europe.
After Denmark was occupied by the Germans in April 1940, their former colony of Greenland also acquired geostrategic importance. German weather troops set up several outposts on the east coast of the world’s largest island for better forecasting.
At the same time, with the Hull-Kauffmann Treaty of April 1941, the Danes allowed the United States to set up military bases in Greenland. About a dozen bases sprang up along the east and west coasts, which were simply numbered. Because the American soldiers could not pronounce the Greenlandic place names correctly, they used “Bluie” to designate the respective military bases.
Some of them like Bluie West Six, today Thule Air Base, are still in operation or are in civilian use like Bluie West One as Narsarsuaq Airport or Bluie West Eight in Kangerlussuag. An East Coast station that operated only between 1942 and 1947 was Bluie East Two.
First, a weather station was set up here, and later a 1,500 meter long slope. But due to the adverse weather conditions, BE-2, the internal abbreviation for Bluie East Two, was hardly used for transatlantic traffic, more as an alternative airport and for operations against the Germans: In March, B-24 bombers that had taken off from Bluie East Two were destroyed the German weather station on Sabine Island 600 kilometers further north.
You can also click through the following photo series:
– Titan Missile Museum near Tucson in Arizona: In the underground cabinet of horrors of the arms race
– Shipbreaking Yard in Aliağa: This is what the cruise ship slaughterhouse looks like
– Canfranc in the Pyrenees: This Spanish ghost station awakens from its slumber
#Lost #Places #World #Abandoned #Air #Force #Base #Bluie #East #Greenland