Courtesy of The NBC Group
Direction was issued in the fall of 1958 for estimates on the construction of a SAGE facility in the North Bay Region. This facility was to be nuclear hardened. The area selected for construction was located near the southern extreme of the pre-Cambrian shield (just south of the RCAF Station at North Bay). It was decided from the start that the south entrance would be the larger of the two (16' x 17' vice 12' x 13') for the purposes of hauling out the excavated waste. So the size was determined by the dimensions of suitable mining equipment. The north tunnel was envisioned as the normal personnel access pathway and the people would ride a small train into the complex.
To maintain its nuclear hardening characteristics, it was decided to keep the openings to the complex to a minimum; therefore, there are only four major openings, the two access tunnels, a diesel exhaust raise and a water discharge raise. Air intake is through the south tunnel, but in the event that this was blocked, air could also be inducted through the north tunnel. The interior of the complex was built with five caverns to house a building which contained both electronic equipment and administrative support facilities. The interior building is a three story, free-standing structure with 142,000 square-feet of usable floor space (excuding the power cavern) and it is self-sufficient for several days.
The large cavern to the south of the main complex is the power cavern where six diesel generators could provide sufficient power for the complex (each could produce 750,000 watts). During the construction phase it also contained heating boilers, but these were not required after it was operational, as air cooling became the major concern. The heat generated by the electrical equipment (27,500,000 BTUs) was used for heating the administrative area and hot water. Between the power cavern and the main complex was the domestic water storage reservoir. The reservoir was capable of storing 200,000 gallons of clean filtered water. To the south was the subterranean reservoir, where 5,000,000 gallons of water was stored for cooling and air conditioning in the event that water from Trout Lake was unavailable.
The main chambers are 45 feet wide x 54 feet high and house the building wings which are 32 feet wide. The extra clearance around the building allows for ducts, cabling, piping, and space for inspection and rock wall scaling. It was decided that twice the dimensions of the tunnels should be left between the caverns.
Work commenced in August 1959 and the south portal was started on September 30, 1959. The grade was a minus 10% and the advance was done at a rate of 33 feet per day (the crews worked 24 hours a day 6 days a week).
When the complex first opened, the building lay-out was very different than its current configuration. The first cavern housed the domestic administration offices and would be the sleeping area if required (from the onset, the complex was designed to house 400 personnel). The ground floor of the second cavern housed the SAGE computer (two identical units, nick-named Bonnie and Clyde) and at one end was the two storey Regional Control Centre and Ottawa Sector Direction Centre. On the third floor was the "Blue Room" or the Sector Operations Room. This room housed all the equipment for regional control, the surveillance, identification and weapons control. On the same floor was the Regional National Survival Attack Warning office (run by the Canadian Army) and all the facilities for training and battle simulation. The SAGE facility was accepted as operational in October 1963.
Since then, there have been many changes. The SAGE computer was replaced by the ROCC/SOCC computer in 1983. This modern computer no longer required the massive floor space used by the SAGE computer. Therefore, new space became available. Additionally, to coincide with the ROCC/SOCC system, Canada became responsible for the control of all Canadian airspace. North Bay became the home for both Canada East sector and Canada West sector. The first floor, where the old SAGE computer resided, became the operations room for the two Canadian Sectors. The third floor (where the "Blue Room" had been located) provided more space for technical support.
During February and March 1988, Fighter Group Headquarters moved from their on-base facility and joined the other half of the Commanders responsibility, Canadian NORAD Region Headquarters, in the underground complex. During the summer of 1997 Fighter Group will closing and the Canadian NORAD Region Headquarters will move to Winnipeg. This will free up more administrative area in the complex into which much of 22 Wing will relocate.
Courtesy of Paul Ozorak
The mother of all Canadian bunkers, the NORAD "hole" at CFB North Bay, is still an active military facility. The underground complex houses the Canadian component of NORAD, the bi-national Canadian-American organization responsible for the defense of the North American continent. Its primary purpose is the surveillance and identification of incoming aerial traffic.
Built over a four-year period from 1959 to 1963, the complex consists of a network of buildings forming roughly a square figure-eight shape installed in caverns 60 to 70 feet high. Its total floor area measures over 147,000 square feet. As with Cheyenne Mountain in Colorado, the structures were built independently of the cavern walls to make them impervious to earthquakes and atomic blasts. It is for the same reason they are mounted on huge springs. Some of the blasting techniques were pioneered by Swedes and used in Canada for the first time here. The buildings are three-storeys and contain numerous offices, dining hall, kitchen, infirmary, Maintenance Control Centre, computer rooms, washrooms and a command post complete with large screen televisions. The network is protected by a single blue 19-ton blast door. The structures' independence from the cavern walls allows maintenance engineers easy inspection and indeed, walkways were laid out around the complex for this reason. Huge power generators, located in another cavern 500 feet long, 28 feet high and 50 feet wide, are said to be capable of supplying a small town of 3000. A six by seven foot tunnel running east west of the power cavern discharges waste water into the city sewer system. The entire structure is designed to hold 400 and was built at a cost of $51 million.
The complex is accessible through two tunnels called North and South Portals. The North Portal is a 6600-foot long tunnel so narrow the shuttle busses can barely pass through; pedestrians and bicycles are forbidden to use it. This gives out on the base proper very near the Military Police building. The South Portal is 3150 feet long and exits south of the base near Trout Lake. Both tunnels are lined with stabalizing bolts and fencing to prevent large rocks falling in. During evacuation of one of the portals, the crew hit an Artesian well (an underground river) partially flooding the tunnel. The crew suffered no damage but since the water served the base, some quick repairs were in order.
Security at the North Bay bunker is state-of-the-art. Most of the personnel enter through the North Portal and must present their passes to the guard on duty. On week-ends, when there are no guards, entry can be gained by having one's magnetically-striped badge scanned by an electronic reader. Normally, only shuttle buses are allowed in and even these have to pass through two Sally Port fences which do not remain simulataneaously open. Military Policemen can enter the tunnel through their own elevator. At one time, the main portal door was kept open but ever since the Gulf War, it is kept closed for security reasons. The South Portal is unmanned but protected by the same card-reader and watched by surveillance camera. All telephone calls to the facility are recorded. There is an escape hatch of sorts but its location is classified.
One of the in-jokes to the North Bay complex is that if a nuclear strike did not kill the personnel, flooding would. The bunker is located deep underground but yet relatively close to Trout Lake. A nuclear hit could widen any fissures in the rock and if these ran long enough, the lake would pour into the complex. It was not said if the bunker was stocked with life preservers.
The North Bay bunker's cynosure, the operations room, has been called different names over the years. Known at one time as the Semi-Automatic Ground Environment Combat Operations Centre, it was refurbished at a cost of close to $100 million in the early 1980s and divided functionally into two halves where the Region Operations Control Centre (ROCC)-East monitored traffic over Ontario, Quebec and the Maritimes and ROCC-West covered western Canada. These days, it is called the Sector Air Operations Centre. Technically speaking, operational personnel are assigned to the Canadian Forces 21 Aerospace Control & Warning Squadron while those in training, to 51 AC&W Squadron. Both units are subsidiary to the base's 22 Wing.
Most of the action at North Bay takes place in the SAOC. The center's three main roles are the surveillance and identification of aircraft and the control of fighter responses. All aircraft approaching Canadian airspace are watached by radar and have their identification-Friend-or-Foe signal verified. Minimally-manned long-range radar stations of the Canadian Coastal Radar System operate on both Canadian coasts and, along with signals from the North Warning System in the arctic, feed data continuously into a digital switch in the complexe's computer room. This data is inputted to two dedicated but soon to be replaced Hughes H5118ME computers, one being for back-up; the computer decides which console receives what data. The screens can display Air Movement Data for any or all aircraft shown and, at the push of a button, can expand any particular area. The operator can monitor any individual aircraft by selecting it with a track ball and "hooking" into it, what is really an aim and click process. Air Movements Data includes flight number, aircraft type, flight type or "mode" (e.g. normal, VIP, etc.), altitude, speed, heading and IFF transponder mode. Flights can be labelled F or S where Friendlies can refer to western civilian airliners or Canadian military flights while Specials denote foreign flights such as the former Soviet Union and in some cases, even from the United States.
Another section of the operations room deals with weapons control. Once an aircraft enters the Canadian Air Defence Identification Zone, a narrow airspace located off-shore, surveillance operators have two minutes to identify it, if it has not already been so. If identification is not made, interceptors can be sent up to investigate. Air Weapons Controllers decide when and what weapons could be used. Yet another section, the ROCC-AWACS Digital Interface Link (RADIL), allows constant communication between North Bay and flying American radar aircraft, the E-3s.
One of the newer mandates for NORAD is counter-narcotics and in this effort, the SAOC cooperates with organizations such as the RCMP to stem the flow of drugs into North America. If the RCMP learned a certain aircraft may be carrying drugs, it can ask NORAD for its help in intercepting the smuggler. North Bay can in turn dispatch interceptors to force the intruder down.
Both American and Canadian air force servicemen are found at the North Bay base as they are at NORAD Heqadquarters at Colorado Springs, Colorado. All major decisions are made cooperatively: even the safes can only be opened when two NORAD safe keys are inserted by officers of the Canadian Forces and USAF. When the Canadian Army was a separate entity, men and women from the Army were also stationed there since it and not the Air Forces had responsibility for warning the population of a nuclear attack. A single Bell Telephone technician is also present on the base since all air defense signals are sent along Bell lines. Some voice transmissions for one are sent along Seconet, the Secure Conversational Network. Since the North Warning System in the far north is operated by the civilian firm Frontec, some of the firm's personnel also work out of the bunker.
In another room near the operations center, Nav Canada personnel man a civilian Flight Service Station. Originally operated by Transport Canada, the FSS is respondible for providing assistance to pilots, be it in the form of directions, positions or emergency help. As of 1994, the FSS has been doubling as an Aviation Weather Briefing Station. With satellite inputs, station personnel can look at weather patterns anywhere in North America and relay this to pilots. Nav Canada is a new private firm given flight service responsibilities under a government privatization program.
One of the characteristics of a decent military force is the proper training of its personnel. People assigned to North Bay are no exception and submit to exercises on a regular basis. One of these includes a "button-down" condition, which essentially means the bunker is sealed up and put on alert status. With its large size, the bunker does not feel claustrophobic but when a drill was declared and the alarm sounded a few years ago, one of the junior female clerks panicked. The idea of being closed in was too much for her so she demanded quite hysterically to be let out. Such was her fear that she had to be restrained by several persons. Some say there was more realism in this exercise than expected.
The North Bay facility has undergone several changes over the years. Older consoles have been replaced by newer ones as has the aircraft tracking method and the processing computers. Previously, an aircraft could be hooked by an Air Defence Technician pointing a special light gun onto it. To identify it, the track was fired upon with the gun and by encircling it, again with the gun, the operator could look at its movement data. Some of the older technicians did not appreciate the new track ball technology since they had grown fond of the guns.
As well, the number of persons assigned to the bunker has dwindled over the years. In its hey-days in the 1960s, the bunker population numbered approximately 2500 but now, only 530 work there. The Canadian defense budget has been so reduced that the Canadian Forces operate only a segment of the outside base and in fact, the military houses above have all been sold off and a number of buildings destroyed. It was announced recently that the bunker will be closed and air defense operations will be moved above-ground. If no further use can be seen for the fortress, it will most likely be sealed shut.
Courtesy of Jim Williamson
CFB North Bay was originally slated for closure and the 22nd Wing was going to move to central command in Winnipeg, Manitoba. However the city of North Bay was worried about the loss of jobs, and entered into a cost-sharing arrangement to service the base. Part of this arrangement is the proposal to replace the underground command center with a new one on the surface. Construction of the new above ground command center began in the spring of 2004 and is set to be completed in the summer of 2005.
Updated: April 12, 2005
