I found this on the internet. I think it answers all your questions.
Quote:
Guarding the Sault Ste. Marie Canal
The only activity in the Central Defense Command during World War II that involved the use of Army combat units was the protection of the Sault Ste. Marie Canal and the St. Marys River waterway, which connect Lakes Superior and Huron. On the eve of the war nearly nine-tenths of the iron ore consumed in the United States passed through the Sault locks during the eight months' navigation season between March and November, and all of this traffic moved through the American locks of the Sault Canal system, located between the American and Canadian cities of Sault Ste. Marie. Since there was no other way in which most of the iron ore could be moved, the success of the American war effort was vitally dependent on continuing its flow through the Sault locks (See Map 1.)
At the outbreak of the European war the War Department ordered the commander of the Sixth Corps Area to take all necessary steps to safeguard the Sault waterway. Fort Brady, an old Army post located on a hill overlooking the St. Marys River valley about half a mile south of the Sault locks, had a garrison at this time of four companies of the 2d Infantry; troops were therefore readily available for carrying out the War Department's directive. On 7 September 1939 the Sixth Corps Area commander reported that the Coast Guard was patrolling the canal approaches under Army direction, that machine guns and searchlights were being emplaced above the locks, that Army guards were patrolling the lock area and the river channel below, and that military guards were being placed on all passenger and pleasure craft transiting the canal.80
These were the only protective measures in effect at the Sault until 1942. The War Department studied the possibility of an external attack by air as early as the summer of 1940 but decided that the chance of it was too remote to justify any form of antiaircraft defense. In fact, during that summer the Army reduced the Fort Brady force to one infantry company, since that was all that was needed for guard purposes.81
A Federal Bureau of Investigation survey in the fall of 1940 led to a re-examination of the Sault's defense needs during the following winter and spring. In January 1941 the Army presented the problem of co-ordinating American and Canadian defense measures to the Permanent Joint
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Board on Defense, and the board recommended that each country establish a central authority over the local defenses. The Sixth Corps Area commander had submitted a similar recommendation. In consequence, the War Department obtained President Roosevelt's approval to an Executive order that established the Military District of Sault Ste. Marie, effective 15 March 1941. To command the district the Army chose Col. Fred T. Cruse, who previously had been in charge of the security guard for the Panama Canal. In April Colonel Cruse met with the officer of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police who had been appointed as his opposite number, and this visit began a close collaboration between local Canadian and American military authorities that continued until 1944. In May 1941 the Army replaced the remaining infantry company with the 702d Battalion, Military Police.82
After the United States entered the war the Army was urged from many directions to provide the Sault area with troops and equipment that could defend it against external attack. As a result of this agitation, the War Department during January and February 1942 instituted a thorough restudy of the problem among its own staff agencies, and again put the subject before the Permanent joint Board on Defense.83 The Army's Intelligence Division and the Army Air Forces agreed that, while no form of external attack seemed likely, several forms of German operations against the Sault installations were possible: the Germans might send submarines or surface ships into Hudson Bay and from its nearest arm --four hundred miles away-- launch a bombing attack, or they might fly long-range bombers all the way from Norway along the Great Circle route, or they might attempt a parachute attack from planes flown from Norway, the paratroops carrying out sabotage after they landed.84
In response, therefore, both to outside pressures and to its own conviction that it was at least possible for the Germans to make a suicidal attack against the canal, the Army decided to add sizable increments to the Sault defenses. It planned to provide the area with an aircraft warning system, a regiment of antiaircraft artillery, and a barrage balloon battalion, and, finally, to replace the military police battalion with an infantry regiment that would be equipped and qualified to fight parachutists as well as to
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perform routine antisabotage duties. By April 1942 elements of the 131st Infantry, the tooth Coast Artillery (AA), and the 39th Barrage Balloon Battalion were at the Sault, and by midsummer the Sault Military District contained a mixed combat force of about 7,000 officers and men 85
In the meantime the Permanent Joint Board had recommended that Canada as well as the United States undertake a more extensive system of defenses in the Sault area. The Canadians supplied an antiaircraft battalion for their side of the locks area and put it under the operational control of the Sault District commander. This Canadian battalion used American guns until the fall of 1942. In May Canada agreed to organize a ground observer aircraft warning system to cover the region between Sault Ste. Marie and Hudson Bay, and 266 observation posts were functioning in the Ontario wilderness by 1 September 1942. Canada also allowed United States Army troops to install and operate a string of five radar stations across northern Ontario, and it provided housing facilities and defense sites on its side of the Sault for about 2,000 of the American antiaircraft and barrage balloon troops.86
The one defense element that the War Department did not feel it could afford to provide for the Sault area was a squadron or more of pursuit planes. In May 1942 it ordered the preparation of three emergency landing fields in the vicinity of the canal, and it subsequently directed that local defense plans provide for planes of the First Air Force to use these fields in an emergency. Actually, the planners themselves appear to have realized that it was very unlikely that planes could reach these fields in time to participate in fighting off an air attack 87
To enhance the effectiveness of the ground defenses against hostile aircraft, the War Department in April 1942 authorized the establishment of a Vital Defense Area that included most of Chippewa County, Mich. On 29 September this area was enlarged into a Central Air Defense Zone which extended to a depth of up to 150 miles on the American side of the waterway. Canada established a similar zone to the north of the Sault Canal in early 1943. Only controlled flights approved in advance were permitted within these zones. Finally, to facilitate security measures on the ground,
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the Secretary of War authorized the establishment of the Sault Ste. Marie Military Area on 22 March 1943.88
By the end of 1942 the Operations Division acknowledged that the 7,300-man garrison guarding the Sault Canal area was excessive, particularly in view of other measures taken during the year-such as the sandbagging of installations and provision of spare lock gates and other parts-that made any extended interruption of canal traffic unlikely even if the installations were successfully attacked. But it doubted that a contemplated 2,000-man saving would be worth the political repercussions that would probably follow any reduction, and therefore postponed a decision until the following summer. Then, as an aspect of the general reduction of continental defenses, the War Department ordered that the Sault garrison be cut to about 2,500 officers and men by I September 1943.89 Four months later the United States and Canada abandoned all of their aircraft warning installations and services and removed all of the local antiaircraft equipment. After January 1944 the United States Army garrison consisted, as it had before the United States entered the war, of a single battalion of military police, and even this was reduced to a single company before the end of 1944.90
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05-14-2004, 01:05 PM
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