CFB North Bay
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CFB North Bay (22 Wing) is a Canadian Forces Base located in North Bay, Ontario, Canada.
The base was originally constructed in 1933, as a logistics and contruction coordination site for a series of airbases being build across northern Ontario. During World War II it was used fairly extensively as a refueling and emergency diversion airbase for aircraft being ferried from Canada and the US to England. In particular it was one stop along the ferry route for Avro Lancaster bombers being built at Victory Aircraft in Toronto, as well as US-built B-24 Liberators. The base closed with the ending of the war.
The base was re-activated in 1951 as a training base, and the runways were improved. With the rise of the cold war the base became a logistics center once again when construction started on the Pinetree Line which ran quite close to the base. The runways were again extensively lengthened and the base became the primary air defense site for Toronto and southern Ontario. Typically two wings of night fighters and a single wing of day fighters were stationed there, originally the CF-100 Canuck/F-86 Sabre, and later the CF-101 Voodoo.
With the formation of NORAD in the 1950s and the US's introduction of the SAGE system, CFB North Bay was selected as the Canadian counterpart to the US's Cheyenne Mountain control center. A SAGE installation was set up at the base starting in 1959, but unlike their US counterparts which were at ground level, in North Bay the entire standard three story installation was buried underground in what became known as "the hole". Later the base was also used as the control center for the Ontario portion of the two-site BOMARC missile system installed in the 1960s.
The BOMARC missiles were decommissioned in 1973, and the SAGE installation in 1983, with parts of the North Bay SAGE computers ending up in the Computer History Museum (http://www.computerhistory.org) in California. From 1972 on only a single fighter wing was stationed there, the 414 Electronic Warfare Squadron.
CFB North Bay remains Canada's primary NORAD site, monitoring all air traffic over Canada and North America by the North Warning System, across the Canadian Arctic, coastal radars on the east and west coasts of Canada, and Airborne Warning and Control System Aircraft. The personnel monitoring the air is called the 21 Aerospace Control and Warning Squadron. Any unidentified aircraft, aircraft in distress or suspicious aircraft are intercepted by CF-18s.
With the general scaling-back of air defences at the end of the cold war, CFB North Bay was originally slated for closure and the 22nd Wing was to move to central command in Winnipeg. However the city of North Bay was worried about the loss of jobs, and entered into a cost-sharing arrangement to service the base. Part of this arrangement is the proposal to replace the underground command center with a new one on the surface. Construction of the new above ground command center began in the spring of 2004 and is set to be completed in the summer of 2005.
External link
- Department of National Defence Canada - CFB North Bay (22 Wing) (http://www.airforce.forces.ca/22wing/site/index_e.asp)