Cut Throat Island, Labrador

Cut Throat Island is a mountain top that stick out of the North Atlantic. On the way to the island in the spring of 1961 I was told that there was a girl behind every tree there. I laughed but it was the truth – unfortunately, there were no trees, just rocks, grass and a few small shrubs scattered about.

The north side of the island was a sheer cliff down to the ocean, and to the south – it fell in a slope. When the wind was high, the surf would break on the cliff and this was really spectacular.

On the very top of the island sat a two storied building which was to be my new home. There was a "chopper pad" (our lifeline to the outside world) and a road that went down to the ocean. At the bottom of the hill the road curved to the right and this was the location of our dump.

Beyond that was a shack with a lean-to structure that I found was used by fishermen from Newfoundland who fished from Cut Throat Island during the summer months.

Then the road curved around to the landing area where ships were unloaded, and past that to the house where Ted, our civilian KP, lived with his family and dogs.

Other inhabitants of the island (aside from USAF and civilian personnel employed at the Gap Filler site) included hares, hawks, seagulls and other waterfowl.

And that, in a nutshell, was Cut Throat Island, Labrador – as I recall it to be in 1961.

Aside from the buildings which formed the Gap Filler complex (on the top of the hill) there was very little on the island. There was a shack with a lean-to attached that was used by fishermen from Newfoundland. They would fish for Cod for a short period of time during the summer months. Fishing in this area was not an easy life. It consisted of long hours, hard work, and deplorable living conditions.

When the cod were running, the fishermen would use nets to catch the fish. When the run slowed down, the fishermen "jogged" for Cod. Jigging for cod was quite popular . A jig is a large lead weight with a hook sticking out of each side of the bottom. Kind of like a big letter "J" that goes in both directions at the bottom. The line was made of twine. The water was so clear that they would ride along in a boat until they saw a school of Cod on the bottom. They would then drop the jigs to the bottom and start yanking on the twine. You didn’t have to guess when you had one – it was like hitting a log. While it was fun to try, it is not hard to imagine that this routine got old real quick.

The Cod fish were dried on the rocks in the sun and they ended up looking like big "fishy" guitars. The dried Cod were finally layered with salt in the lean-to at await shipment at the end of the season.

It should be recalled that the Gap Filler units were not designed in the same manner as a standard AC&W Squadron. There were, at most, somewhere between 25 and 25 people at a Gap Filler and the entire domestic site was usually housed in one building. This building housed everything that was required at the site.

You would, as expected, eat your meals in the mess hall. The mess hall was more like a small snack bar, but then we didn’t need much more than that. Even though it was small in size, it was a very important part of the site – as this was where we spent a lot of our free time. It was the movie theatre, club, games room, pool hall, day room, bar and mess hall all wrapped into one. After supper the movie would be shown and the bar opened. The kitchen was always available and we really made some killer late night omelets out of our leftovers.

Whoever was on standby could hear the radio from here and run up the stairs to the Communications Center if needed – so if there was nothing pressing, the person on standby was usually in the mess hall. And in the evening, there was not usually anything going on anywhere else. We didn’t have any Troposcatter communications equipment at CTI. We had a radio link to Cartwright and ground to air radio for choppers etc. I recall that we had to whistle a 1000 cycle tone to "ring" Cartwright.

Many of the civilian workers were English ex-navy types who managed the generators and stuff like that. A couple of these guys had served on mine sweepers in World War II. The generators kind of made them a little jumpy at times as they were not really comfortable with loud noises around them – but did those guys have stories to tell. This same group also showed us how to find mussels on the rocks just off shore, and we ended up having a "clam bake"

Our scientific weather reporting equipment consisted of things like "if you can see that island over there, visibility is X miles", or "if you can see the horizon, visibility is unlimited" – "if the clouds are like they are now, the ceiling is XXXX feet". I was taught other scientific data like "that is north" which was handy because we had to call a weather report to Cartwright every morning. I was also shown the radar screen and what a blip looked like so I could help out if needed there (again – everything was one shop).

Our thanks to Jim Heimburger who served at the Cut Throat Island Gap Filler site between May 1961 and mid September 1961 – when the site at Cut Throat Island was deactivated. Jim then proceeded to the 922nd AC&W Squadron – located at Cartwright, Labrador to complete what ultimately resulted in a combined "one year tour".