Norway: Infrastructure Committees Visit


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Europe » Norway » Northern Norway » Bodø
June 5th 1990
Published: October 4th 2011
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Some of the committee members at the top of a mountain in northern NorwaySome of the committee members at the top of a mountain in northern NorwaySome of the committee members at the top of a mountain in northern Norway

Bob to the left of the Navy officer. In the front row to the left of Bob is Steve, who Bob worked for in Thailand in 1973.
Although our usual Infrastructure Committees visits to various host countries were a week or more in length, upon occasion we took trips to see only one or two projects of significant interest. In these cases we didn't take the spouses.

On this occasion, Norway wanted NATO to fund a radar site on top of a mountain in northern Norway. They wanted to show us why this location was of strategic significance, and the difficulty, and therefore the higher cost, of building in such rugged terrain.

So on Tuesday, 5 June 1990, we flew from Brussels on a Norwegian military cargo aircarft to Bodo Air Base in northern Norway above the Arctic Circle. From there we took several Huey helicopters to an existing radar site in the Lofoten Islands, where we went through a tunnel into the mountain, and then took an elevator to the radar at the top of the mountain. This would give us an idea of how the radar would be installed in the other mountain. We returned to Bodo for the night. For some of us this brought back memories of our visit to Bodo in June 1985.

Wednesday morning we boarded the helicopter for the flight to the top of the mountain where they proposed to locate the radar. From this location they would be able to detect any movement in airspace all the way to North Cape. We were briefed on the project and then walked around in the deep snow. After awhile we returned to Boda where we caught the military cargo aircraft to a maritime patrol airbase on an island west of Trondheim, where we spent the night.

Thursday we continued the rest of the way to Brussels. Two weeks later we went on our committees visit to Canada.

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