Former CAM-5 DEW Line Radar Site

 closed / former military, early warning radar

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Constructed during the Summers of 1956 and 1957 atop a 1,300ft high coastal promontory, the CAM-5 or Mackar Inlet Radar Site was a Long Range Radar facility operating in the CAM Sector of the Distant Early Warning (DEW) Line. Entering service in 1957, the site was responsible for monitoring the airspace between the CAM-4/Pelly Bay to the West and the FOX-MAIN/Hall Beach site to the East against Soviet air attack. Staffed by approximately 20 crew on a year-round basis, the site's ranks often swelled during the busy Summer months when the yearly amphibious supply program and site repairs and construction were undertaken.

Operating as part of the DEW Line CAM Sector for the entire life of the DEW Line, the site was not selected to see revised use as part of the DEW Line's successor North Warning System, which instead opted for a new station at Cape McLoughlin. Officially shut down with the activation of its successor in 1992, the site was closed up and essentially abandoned until the mid-2000s, when all of the infrastructure onsite was demolished, removed or landfilled as part of a territory-wide environmental remediation effort at former DEW Line sites. Following the completion of the remediation effort, the only trace left of the CAM-5 site is a small plaque atop the landfill where the radar site once stood and the now abandoned access road and airstrip which once connected the site with the outside world.

lswilson.dewlineadventures.com/cam5.htm