Northwest Staging Route
The Northwest Staging Route was a series of airstrips, airport and radio ranging stations built in Alberta, British Columbia, the Yukon and Alaska during World War II. It extended into the Soviet Union as the ALSIB (ALaska-SIBerian air road).
The route was developed in 1942 due to several reasons. Initially, the United States Army Air Corps 7th Ferrying Group, Ferrying Command (later Air Transport Command) at Great Falls Army Airfield was ordered to organize and develop an air route to send assistance to Russia though Northern Canada, across Alaska and the Bering Sea to Siberia, and eventually over to the Eastern Front. The Permanent Joint Board on Defense — Canada and the United States — decided in the autumn of 1940 that a string of airports should be constructed at Canadian expense between the city of Edmonton in central Alberta and the Alaska-Yukon border. Late in 1941 the Canadian government reported that rough landing fields had been completed.
With the outbreak of war, American lines of communication with Alaska by sea were seriously threatened and alternative routes had to be opened. The string of airports through the lonely tundra and forests of northwest Canada provided an air route to Alaska which was practically invulnerable to attack, and it seemed to be in the best interests of international defense to develop them and open a highway which would at once be a service road for the airports and a means for transporting essential supplies to the Alaskan outposts. In response to this need, United States Army engaged in the Alaskan Highway project.
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