Alaska: Saga of a Bold Land

by Walter R. Borneman

By 1949, the U.S. Air Force was worried that the Soviets’ own long-range bombers based across the Bering Strait on the Chukotsk Peninsula could theoretically attack nuclear and other strategic sites in the Northwest, including the Hanford, Washington, atomic bomb plant and Grand Coulee Dam. In August in response to the threat, the air force announced that it was moving the Boeing aircraft plant from Seattle to Wichita, Kansas, to keep it out of harm’s way. The announcement raised an immediate and thunderous public outcry in the Northwest. Boeing was Seattle’s largest employer. Not only would 25,000 jobs be lost, but at least twice that number of spouses and children would likely also be affected.