Islands for Defense

To detect approaching enemy bombers, the U.S. has spread a web of radar stations along its coastlines and across the wastes of northern Canada and Alaska. Except for Navy picket ships and patrolling "Pregnant Geese" (radar-laden Lockheed Super Constellations), the protective net stops at the water's edge, leaving U.S. port cities vulnerable to sneak atomic attack. Last week the Air Force revealed that it plans to eliminate part of the gap with a string of artificial, radar-equipped Atlantic "islands," located from Newfoundland to the Virginia capes (see map) and as far as 150 miles offshore.

In building the new defenses, the Air Defense Command will exploit a happy geological accident: the Continental Shelf, a wide, submerged plain stretching out from the Atlantic Coast. Unlike the prohibitively deep waters off the Pacific Coast, the shelf abounds in shoals where the ocean floor is less than 100 feet down, providing readymade sites for man-made islands.

Much like the rig used by oilmen in the Gulf of Mexico (TIME, July 5), the Air Force island (nickname: "Texas Tower") will probably be a steel barge, some 200 ft. long, with 100-ft., tubelike caissons, each 6 ft. in diameter, running through vertical holes close to its sides. At the designated site, the caissons will be dropped and poked deep into the ocean bottom. Compressed-air jacks will inch the barge up its caissons, out of reach of waves and stormy seas. Then the caissons will be pile-driven into the mud, cut off and welded flush with the deck, then covered with flooring. Sand or concrete will be poured into the caissons for added weight and strength.

Sitting snug above the sea, each island will be a self-contained $1,000,000 platform for a radar tower and a mass of sensitive electronic gear. Unlike similar outposts built by the British in World War II, the unarmed Air Force stations will seek only to locate, rather than destroy, enemy aircraft; they will also guide friendly fighters to the target, furnish weather information to ships and shore. For the 30-odd technicians assigned to each island, living will be cramped and bleak indeed; the Air Force plans to rotate its seagoing units every 30 days.

As yet, no island has been built (the planned total is an Air Force secret), no exact location announced. But survey ships are already at sea, taking samples of the ocean bottom to determine the firmest anchorages for the new stations. By next spring, construction will be under way. Air Force target date for completion of the entire chain: 1957. Total estimated cost (excluding radar equipment): $15 to $20 million.

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