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The main route for the transports—four-engined Douglas C-54s— has two European terminals, Prestwick (Scotland) and Paris". Its main divisional point outside the U.S. on this side is Harmon Field at Stephenville, on the extreme western edge of Newfoundland. Here the C-54s change crews, refuel and are checked again before they hop the Atlantic either direct, or via Iceland or the Azores, depending on the weather. Harmon is the true crossroad of the Atlantic today.
On the Great Circle. Combat planes are nursed across the Atlantic north of the main transport lines. Their divisional points are the bases at Goose Bay and Gander Field, which the A.T.C. shares with the Canadians and the British. The planes, mainly B-17s and B-24s, are flown direct by their tactical crews.
They are sent northward over the Great Circle because it is shorter and because they can use the bases in North Canada and Greenland in case of trouble. Today the Canada bases—Crystals 1 and 2—are largely weather outposts and standby stations. But the Greenland bases, B.W. 8 and 1, and B.E. 2, are there as life rafts. The B is army code for Bluie. G.I.s disagree on its origin. One version is that it is short for Bluenose, the other that it was named after the color of the old sea ice at the base of the icebergs.
"Don't Count on My Return." Many of the airmen who fly over the ice cap on the way from Goose and Gander to Iceland have never seen a mountain nor flown an ocean when they set out. They go into the briefing room with the mark of the Texas sun still on their bright brown eager faces. They listen to the operations officer, see a motion picture that gives them a vivid pilot's-eye view of their course. Then they depart.
Occasionally they fail to make it. A while back a Liberator pilot, well on his way to Iceland and past "the point of no return" on his chart, suddenly turned back toward Goose again. From Greenland an operations officer talked with him by radio, tried to persuade him to come into B.W. 1. The boy still headed for Goose and there they heard his last calm message: "Don't count on my return. Am running short of gas."
He was the exception. Out of thousands of tactical craft that have been flown to Europe this year, less than .2 percent have been lost.