Atomic Express

I always liked the insignia for the North American Air Defence Command: the peaceful wings of a white dove embracing an upraised sword protecting the North American land mass from whatever was on the other side of the Arctic.  NORAD was always associated with the cold, cold north and strange acronyms denoting secretive and protective systems of the day: the DEW Line, BMEWS, SPACETRACK, MIDAS, SAGE, COC, ADIZ, and NAWS. This was the Cold War in North America, waiting for the Soviet bombers that were going to obliterate life as we knew it and turn suburbia into “Planet of the Apes”.

But then there was a new compartmentalized project: NTS

In 1958, a public affairs wizard at NORAD came up with the idea of having all of those surveillance systems be re-prioritized on 24 December to track Santa Claus. Yes, the radars of the Distant Early Warning Line and the Ballistic Missile Early Warning System would pick up Santa as an in-bound “Track” and plug him into the SAGE systems as he progressed south over Canada. This ocurred after, according to NORAD public affairs,

“a Colorado Springs-based Sears Roebuck & Co. advertisement for children to call Santa misprinted the telephone number. Instead of reaching Santa, the phone number put kids through to the CONAD Commander-in-Chief’s operations “hotline.” The Director of Operations at the time, Colonel Harry Shoup, had his staff check the radar for indications of Santa making his way south from the North Pole. Children who called were given updates on his location, and a tradition was born.”

“NORAD Tracks Santa” really took off with the NORAD big band, “The NORAD Commanders,” producing a Christmas album in 1964, with a single in 1968. (if you want to download the 1964 album, go HERE)

I’m sure to the critics of the day and the anti-septic academic analysis applied in the 21^st Century would come up with something like the drama of having NORAD track Santa like a Soviet bomber,of course, added to Cold War psychosis and inoculated-indoctrinated the kids to the nuclear age.

But I remember it as a lot of fun anyway.

Merry Christmas and Peace On Earth. OPE. EOP Or something like that….

-SMM

PS: the North American Aerospace Defense Command, as NORAD is known today, still tracks Santa. In 1997, an old friend of mine, LCol Jamie Robertson was serving in the public affairs branch of NORAD and revitalized the NTS compartment for the internet.

All you need to know on the history of NTS:

http://noradsanta.wikia.com/wiki/NORAD_Tracks_Santa_Primer