Lend-Lease: Soviet Pilots on Montana Runways

After nineteen forty-three, when the most urgent training needs of the early war had been met, the military airfield east of Great Falls took on a mission that most of the country did not know about during the war and has largely forgotten since. It became the primary transfer point for aircraft being delivered to the Soviet Union under Lend-Lease. American pilots flew planes to Great Falls.

Soviet crews picked them up here, flew north through Canada to Fairbanks, then crossed the Bering Strait to Siberia. In a twenty-one-month period, approximately eight thousand aircraft passed through on that route, including P-thirty-nines, A-twenty attack bombers, and C-forty-seven transports. Soviet and American airmen worked side by side on these Montana runways during the years the two nations were allies, on the same base that would later house the weapons aimed at each other.