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Ron Waggoner | all galleries >> Galleries >> Cold Bay Air Force Station, Alaska > White Alice Antenna
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August 1970 Ron Waggoner

White Alice Antenna

Cold Bay Air Force Station, AK

Because of their massive size, the communications antennas were the most prominent features of the remote Aircraft Control and Warning(AC&W) Squadrons in Alaska. To accommodate the long distances involved and the high volume of information transmitted, a special tropo-scatter system was devised to send and receive information vital to our national defense. At Cold Bay, two of these antennas were aimed eastward up the Peninsula toward Anchorage and Elmendorf AFB. The other two were aimed westward out along the Aleutian Islands. They were a link in a highly complicated communications system that allowed individual radar sites like ours to rapidly communicate our information, including that involving unauthorized penetration of our national air space and beyond. These four "White Alice" antennas were as vital as the radar equipment that constantly watched for intrusions and initiated the information. At the time it was created, the White Alice system was state-of-the-art. By the 1980's communications via satellites made it obsolete. This is a side view of one of the antennas at Cold Bay in August of 1970.

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