1. Maj. Robert B. Sykes, “Greenland Weather Service History (July 1941 to March 1944),” n.d. (ca. 1944), p. 1. This ninety-seven-page manuscript, on file in the AWS historical archives, is hereinafter cited as “Greenland.”
2. In July, 1942, the AAC’s Ferrying Command was redesignated as the Air Transport Command. ATC’s North Atlantic Div. was headquartered in the remote potato town of Presque Isle, ME.
3. The far-northern route extended along the great circle from the west coast aircraft plants to Scotland via Hudson Bay, Baffin Land, central Greenland, and Iceland. Although that path was touted as north of the zone of bad frontal weather, its weather problems proved worse than along the route a few hundred miles south. That second route was favored by thousands of combat cargo, fighter, and twin-engined bomber aircraft during the 1942–44 buildup, for they used short hops from Maine to Newfoundland or central Labrador and then continued by southern Greenland to the U.K. Four-engined aircraft like the B-17s could also take that route or, winds permitting, cross the North Atlantic in one leap from Newfoundland to Scotland. An extra southerly route via Bermuda was used should tailwinds be unusually favorable.
4. Sent to conduct an aerial survey of the Greenland-Iceland transatlantic air route in 1934, Col. Charles A. Lindbergh emphasized the importance of stationing trained meteorologists there. So did Capt. Julius K. Lacey, after being dispatched by Merry in Aug., 1940, on an exploratory flight to Greenland.
5. Hosmer’s classmates included the likes of William C. Westmoreland, Creighton W. Abrams, Albert P. Clark, Joseph J. Nazzaro, and Howell M. Estes (a former MAC chief).