Blaine Air Force Station

 (1951-1979) - A Cold War Air Force Radar Station first established in 1951 as Birch Bay Radar Site near Blaine, Whatcom County, Washington. Named Blaine Air Force Station on 1 Dec 1953 after the location. Initially assigned a Permanent ID of P-46 and later a Sage ID of Z-46. Abandoned by the Air Force in 1979.

History
Established in 1951 and became operational on 14 Mar 1951 as the radar site at Birch Bay manned by the 757th AC&W Squadron. The name was changed to Blaine Air Force Station in 1953. The station initially had both a Ground-Control Intercept (GCI) and early warning mission. The early warning mission involved tracking and identifying all aircraft entering their airspace while the GCI mission involved guiding Air Force interceptors to any identified enemy aircraft. Controllers at the station vectored fighter aircraft at the correct course and speed to intercept enemy aircraft using voice commands via ground-to-air radio. Initial equipment included a pair of FPS-10 radars that were essentially stripped down CPS-6B radars with both search and height-finder capabilities.

SAGE System Operation


The site began operation as a SAGE site on 1 Apr 1960 initially feeding the McChord SAGE Direction Center DC-12. The search radar was upgraded to an FPS-20 and the height-finders to a FPS-6 and a FPS-6A height-finders. The search radar was upgraded again in 1963 to an FPS-24 and the FPS-6 height-finder was replaced by an FPS-26A.

Gap Filler Radars
Blaine AFS was responsible for the maintenance of one remote unattended gap-filler radar site. The Blaine AFS gap-filler site was located on Mount Erie at Anacortes, Washington. This gap-filler site was constructed but may not have become fully operational before being deactivated. Another site was planned for Concrete, Washington but it was never built.

BUIC System
Blaine AFS became a BUIC I GCI site in 1962 and went operational as a BUIC II site on 1 Mar 1966. The BUIC II system provided a backup for a SAGE direction center and provided the ability to display sector-wide radar data on consoles for local weapons controllers. The BUIC II system duplicated the functionality of the vacuum tube direction center computers with a GSA-51 computer and replaced the FST-2 with a more up-to-date coordinate data transmitter, the FYQ-47. Blaine was not selected as a BUIC III site and in 1969 the BUIC mission terminated and the site returned to a surveillance mission. As the threat from a Soviet bomber fleet lessened, the decision came to mothball the entire BUIC system in 1974. Blaine AFS and the 757th were deactivated in January 1979.

Physical Plant
The physical plant of the site was divided into the main site, an adjacent cantonment area, two separate housing areas and a radio site. The main site area housed the operations buildings, the radar towers, and the backup generators. The cantonment area contained the four enlisted barracks, a recreation building, the bachelor officer's quarters, the orderly room, the dining hall, the base exchange (BX), the motor pool and other support buildings. Apart from the main site were two small housing areas for critical married personnel. The first built housing area had 9 small units and the second area had 18 larger units. A separate radio site housed the radio equipment for directing aircraft intercepts.

Current Status
Most of the major cantonment buildings still exist, most repurposed for use as the Lions Camp Horizon within the Bay Horizon Whatcom County park. Both family housing areas still exist with the homes in private hands. The only part of the operational area remaining is the FPS-24 radar tower. The operations building and the FPS-26 radar tower are gone, demolished about 2009. The May 2009 Trail Mitigation plan for Bay Horizon Park shows the layout of the old Air Force Station with the buildings that were removed in 2009 shown in cross hatch and the remaining buildings in solid black.



See Also:
 * SAGE System
 * BUIC System
 * Permanent System Radar Sites
 * US Radar Sets
 * McChord Manual Direction Center P-4
 * McChord SAGE Direction Center DC-12

Sources: Links:
 * , page 164
 * , page 165
 * Trail Mitigation Plan for Bay Horizon Park, May 2009, Whatcom County Parks, Bellingham, WA, 17 pages plus Appendix A, B, and C.
 * Trail Mitigation Plan for Bay Horizon Park, May 2009, Whatcom County Parks, Bellingham, WA, 17 pages plus Appendix A, B, and C.
 * Trail Mitigation Plan for Bay Horizon Park, May 2009, Whatcom County Parks, Bellingham, WA, 17 pages plus Appendix A, B, and C.
 * Radomes - Blaine Air Force Station
 * Wikipedia - Blaine Air Force Station
 * Pictures and narrative