New Year's Eve 50 years ago

[kickingfrog]

http://www.nugget.ca/2013/12/30/50-years-since-nukes-arrived-in-canada

 

The nuclear warheads arived:

 

 

 

The New Year’s Eve parties were in full swing when the telephones started to ring.

In a short while, reporters, photographers and others were begging off, heading out to work on an assignment a lot of them had never imagined they would ever cover.

Fifty years ago tonight, the nuclear warheads for the Bomarc missiles arrived in Canada – specifically at Royal Canadian Air Force Station North Bay.

“The ex and I were at a house party,” says Dave Palangio, a Nugget photographer at the time. “Then the phone started ringing.”

It wasn’t really a surprise, Palangio says.

“The whole staff had been informed it may occur that night, and sure enough . . .”

He said he didn’t know if it was a contact at the Air Force station who tipped the news media off that something big was happening or someone else in the know, but “everybody was on alert. All our staff. We knew something was happening, and when we got the call, we jumped to it.”

The spouses and dates, he said, were abandoned at the parties or at home while “we dashed up to the airport.”

Palangio still has the Nikon F SLR he used that night.

“That was the camera back then,” he says. “An f 2.8 lens that would gather enough light, and a very slow shutter speed.

“I had to shoot everything with available light, because my strobe light packed up. Talk about being in the grip of fear. I didn’t know if any of my pictures would turn out.”

It was about 10 p.m., cold and clear, Palangio says.

“I didn’t know what to expect. There was excitement and fear. I was up there and Bud (Berry) and Barry Davis went up to the sites where they were transporting it to. Those guys were detained” by the military police because they got too close to the fence.

“Talk about high security.”

Palangio was parked at the intersection of Tower Drive and Airport Road, waiting for the trucks to pass by. He was there when the United States Air Force transport came in with the warhead or warheads.

“Years later, someone told us that only one nuke came in that night.”

Arming the Bomarc missile with nuclear warheads had been a vow made by the newly elected prime minister Lester B. Pearson, whose minority government had ousted the Progressive Conservative government of John Diefenbaker.

Diefenbaker had agreed to take the Bomarc missiles after the cancellation of the Avro Arrow interceptor program in the late 1950s, but had refused to take the nuclear warheads.

Pearson had agreed to take the nuclear warheads for the missiles, and had said the Bomarcs would be armed with the warheads before the end of the year.

As the convoy approached, Palangio says, he and the reporters on the scene with him were told by the Air Force Police to “stay back, stay back, stay back.”

Seven warheads were delivered to the Bomarc base that night, with another 21 coming in over the next couple of weeks.

The 28 warheads for the Bomarc base at La Macaza, Que., were delivered in late 1963.

The missiles, delivered to both bases in 1961, were under Canadian control, but the nuclear warheads were under the control of United States Air Force personnel, which were to be released to the Canadian military only on receipt of a coded message from the U.S. president.

The nuclear warheads were removed and the squadrons were disbanded in December, 1972.

[manitoubass2]

Gnarly. Cant imagine that anticipation

[Rod Caster]

Great read.... some interesting history in this Town.

[Roy]

I remember that. For many years we had two super powers, armed to the teeth, posturing for an all out, last man standing. world war III.

[LeXXington]

Cool story, Funny how close the world was to killing each other.. Now the super powers are more concerned about individuals threats than from other countries,