An abandoned Soviet ‘secret city’ near Skrunda, Latvia, once housed an advanced radar installation along with apartment blocs er, blocks for base workers.

Riga Mortis

They called it “Skrunda-1”… that is, when they called it anything. Back in the Soviet Era, it was customary for Eastern Bloc “secret cities” not to have actual names nor appear on maps. Instead, a numeral was appended onto the name of the nearest town. Thus the remains of Skrunda-1 lie 3 miles (5 km) north of the historic town of Skrunda, roughly 95 miles (150 km) west of Latvia’s capitol city, Riga.

Them Negative Waves

The former LSSR (Latvian Soviet Socialist Republic) was a puppet state established in July of 1940, following the Soviet Union’s invasion, occupation and annexation of the independent Republic of Latvia. The fall of communism in September of 1991 saw Latvia regain its sovereignty but subsequent negotiations over base closures and the withdrawal of thousands of Red Army troops stationed on Latvian soil dragged on for years.

Your Base Are Belong To Us

Skrunda-1 was one such base the USSR (and its successor state, the Russian Federation) was reluctant to relinquish. Opened in 1964 at the height of the Cold War, Skrunda-1 boasted a variety of advanced radar installations capable of monitoring air traffic across the width and breadth of Western Europe. Facilities there were continually upgraded over the years, right up to the time a formal base closure agreement was signed between Latvia and Russia in April of 1994.

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Radar Offline Abandoned Secret Soviet Base In Latvia

Back in the 1950s, Cold War tensions ran high and so did the DEW Line: high above the Arctic Circle, that is. Though many of the original 63 radar stations have been re-purposed or dismantled, many still remain in place, remarkably preserved by some of the coldest temperatures found outside Antarctica.

How DEW You Do?

(images via: Tundra Daisy and 50before50)

The Cold War didn’t get much colder than the chain of 63 lonely radar stations strung across the 69th parallel, roughly 200 miles (300 kilometers) above the Arctic Circle. Ironically, the DEW Line was meant to function as a sort of “trip wire”, providing us with a Distant Early Warning of an impending Soviet nuclear airstrike.

(images via: Tundra Daisy and 50before50)

Though the DEW Line was rendered mainly obsolete by the mid-1960s when speedy Soviet ICBMs supplanted slow bomber aircraft, the stations were officially kept in operation from April 15th, 1957 through to July 15th, 1993. Some of the stations were then incorporated into the DEW Line’s successor, the North Warning System or NWS; many others were left to slowly decay beneath drifting snow, howling winds and the ghostly aurora borealis.

(images via: DEWLine Adventures)

One significant DEW Line station isn’t located quite as far north as the others: northern Illinois, to be exact. A prototype station was set up in a cornfield outside Streator, Illinois, where technical functions of the radar equipment could be tested and human operators were sent to be trained. Above are views of the facility in its heyday and just below, the current remnants.

(images via: Paul Malon and WIX.com)

In late 1954 the USAF contracted the design and construction of the DEW Line stations to Western Electric, who were given until July 1957 to build 63 separate stations stretching from northwestern Alaska to the east coast of Greenland – a distance of over 6,200 miles (10,000 km). Against all odds and despite the challenge of constructing sensitive electronic installations in mostly uninhabited, prohibitively cold and nearly inaccessible locations, Western Electric handed the “keys” to the DEW Line over to the Air Force almost three months ahead of schedule.

The (Polar) Bear Necessities

(images via: Yvon from Ottawa, WFNS and Zone Interdite)

Not all 63 stations were identical in appearance, functionality, number of on-site staff or all of the above. Some of the Auxiliary (“AUX”) and Intermediate (“I”) sites had as little as a half-dozen staff while the keystone MAIN stations housed dozens.

(images via: Hallbeach.com, DEW Line History and The Kraalspace)

The locations of the DEW Line stations are also evocative of the High Arctic: Icy Cape, Cold Bay, Storm Hills and of course, Point Lonely. On the other hand, Hall Beach (above, top) sounds positively summery but don’t bother bringing a surfboard.

(images via: Idlewild Expedition, UT Systems Ecology Lab and Wikipedia)

The Air Force’s relative lack of experience in arctic warfare didn’t impact on the design of the DEW Line stations, which ended up being remarkably low-maintenance facilities regardless of the main problem: drifting snow.

(images via: Przystanek Grenlandia and Radar-Junk)

The average DEW Line station consisted of two long rows of connected metal huts for equipment and staff. The rows were laid out along the direction of the prevailing winds and parallel to one another. They were connected by a raised “bridge”, making the station itself take on the appearance of a spindly letter H.

(image via: Seldon’s Gate)

Inside one of the H’s three-sided courtyards was a round, geodesic radome that housed and protected a pair of radar dishes mounted back to back. The radome was mounted of steel stilts that raised it as much as 50 feet off the permafrost. The stations also featured other radar dishes and reflectors that facilitated communications with neighboring stations and also to command and control centers hundreds of miles to the south.

Drawing a Line in the Snow

(images via: Wild-A, Roclar.net and Paul B Jones)

DEW Line installations were built to last; environmental concerns came last, for the most part. Asbestos insulation kept the manned modules warm, PCB lubricants ensured the radar dishes spun easily in the cold, and lead-based paint kept rust at bay. All well and good until the stations were decommissioned and their components left to decay or worse: be salvaged by local Inuit for building materials.

(image via: BS Keyhole.com)

Getting equipment OUT of the High Arctic can be just as difficult, time-consuming and expensive as getting it there in the first place. How’d you like to be the guy whose job it is to dismantle the main radar station at Cape Dyer, on the rugged (to say the least: above) eastern shore of Baffin Island?

(images via: Radar-Junk, Polar Star and Ruud Leeuw)

Other original DEW Line sites are more accessible but have their own issues. Take the LIZ-3 DEW Auxiliary site at Wainwright, Alaska, closed in 2007 due to soil erosion. Unlike some of the northern Canadian and Greenland sites, Wainwright can be TOO warm at times leading to subsidence of the permafrost and severe shoreline erosion unhindered by ice-free seas.

(images via: Tundra Daisy)

Without the preservation afforded by sub-zero temperatures, structures and equipment can decay and corrode alarmingly quickly – that’s a typewriter above right (or at least, it was). Corrosion exacerbates pollution problems as well. Most of those 55-gallon oil drums typically dumped in rusty mounds contain residual fuel and lubricants that can (and do) leach into the soil, contaminating groundwater.

(images via: J P Newell and Polar Star)

Cleanup costs skyrocketed when the realities of arctic environmental remediation became apparent and the cleanup completion date has been extended from 2011 to 2018.

(images via: ThisBlogIsMyBlog and Dew Line History)

The DEW Line served a noble purpose in its heyday, drawing a line in the snow against Soviet aggression that was never crossed in anger. In doing so, the long and lonely chain of isolated radar stations forced both Americans and Canadians to see their far northern territories in a different light. With post-Soviet Russia taking a greater interest in the real roof of the world these days and Global Warming setting the stage for a scramble for arctic resources tomorrow, our erstwhile line in the snow north of 69 degrees may have been the shape of things to come.

The invention of radar in the 1930s not only saved Great Britain from the German Luftwaffe, it gave the Allies a huge advantage over their enemies in World War II. Imagine where we’d be if radar panned out and its forerunners – Sound Mirrors, Acoustic Horns and War Tubas – were the only means of detecting incoming aircraft?

Early Echlocation

(images via: Ratiu Family Foundation and Michael Leong)

The roots of acoustic location extend back to the late 19th century, even before the invention of aircraft. The earliest rendition of such a device appeared in the pages of Scientific American magazine from 1880. “Professor Mayer’s topophone”, invented and patented by A. M. Mayer in 1879, was intended to assist the wearer in pinpointing the source of any sound. How’s that for Yankee ingenuity!

(image via: Modern Mechanix)

From the “building a better mousetrap” category comes the Shout-O-Phone, a souped-up version of Professor Mayer’s enhanced ears that boosts the outgoing sound as well. Amazing… not so much the device, but that it took 60 years for it to be produced.

The Ears Have It

(images via: Amplifier Institute Failures and Dark Roasted Blend)

Somebody obviously thought there was potential in Professor Mayer’s brainchild (or brain fart, you decide) because personal, wearable sound-enhancing devices made a number of appearances culminating in the 1960 Brussels Inventor’s Fair where French inventor Jean Auscher demonstrated a device that was supposed to help boaters navigate in case of radar failure – which happens like ALL the time.

Czech Mates

(image via: Amplifier Institute Failures)

It was the invention of the airplane and, soon thereafter, the threat of massive bomber attacks in wartime that concentrated military minds. Some way of detecting warplanes at a distance had to be found, and the most obvious method was enhanced acoustic detection. The above devices were built and used by a number of armed forces with a mixed record of success. The above four-horned acoustic locater was built in 1920s Czechoslovakia and tested in The Netherlands… evidently the nearest noisy place.

Horns Of Plenty

(images via: Amplifier Institute Failures and Architectune)

Let’s not forget the Americans, carrying on the legacy of Professor Mayer in times of peace and war. The image at above, top, shows a two-horn aircraft detector in use at Bolling Field in Washington DC, in 1921. The lower image depicts a slightly less cumbersome acoustic locator manned by US Army troops in 1943, after radar had been introduced. It should be said that the first Japanese air raids on the American-held island of Corregidor in late December of 1941 were detected by acoustic locators.

Sounds Like War

(image via: Amplifier Institute Failures)

The 1930s saw rising tensions in Europe and rapid technological progress in aeronautics. Radar was on the horizon but until the newfangled machines were ready, something had to fill the gap.

Do I Hear Spitfires?

(image via: Damn Interesting)

As Hitler speedily rebuilt Germany’s war machine in the late 1930s, antiaircraft measures were a high priority. German radar research was far behind developments in Great Britain but that wasn’t the case with acoustic detection, as shown above. Behold, das Ringtrichterrichtungshoerer (or “ring-horn acoustic direction detector”)… RRH for short, used during the Second World war to help aim searchlights at night-flying bombers.

Release The War Tubas!

(image via: Amplifier Institute Failures)

Let’s not forget Japan, though Japan would probably like to forget these bizarre yet magnificent “war tubas”. These were a variation of the acoustic horn listening devices, not an attempt to blow attacking aircraft out of the sky using low-pressure sound waves. That’s Emperor Hirohito reviewing the Imperial War Tuba Brigade in the top photo by the way, so you know they were serious.

(image via: Fark.com)

That incredible War Tubas photo was the subject of a photoshop competition at Fark.com, and the above colorized rendition is one of the more intriguing efforts.

Sound Mirrors, Soul Survivors

(images via: Everyone Forever, C20 Society and Passing Strangeness)

The British were well along with large-scale radar installations as the blitzkrieg burst across continental Europe but taking nothing for granted, Churchill’s minions set up a significant number of concrete sound mirrors facing across the English Channel. many of these parabolic shells survive as abandonments today, a testament to a far-off time when wars were low-tech though no less deadly.