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Currently Playing: Greenland, Iceland and the World War Two Air Battle for the Atlantic

In September 1939, Greenland and Iceland sat outside any serious Atlantic defence pla. There were no permanent military airfields, no aircraft, and little strategic precedent for treating the far North as managed airspace. This video traces how Denmark’s occupation in April 1940 forced a rapid change of tack. Improvised RAF Hudson patrols and intermittent Sunderland operations gave way to U.S.-built runways at Meeks and Patterson Fields, long-endurance Catalina patrols, and then Liberators that finally pushed air cover deep into the mid-Atlantic. Greenland developed into a critical staging, rescue, and meteorological hub anchored on Bluie West One at Narsarsuaq. All in all, the militarisation of Iceland and Greenland in the Second World War paved the way for the heavily militarised GIUK Gap of the Cold War.