Sweden, four minutes by jet from Baltic Soviet bases, is in dead earnest as it prepares its own defense.
One of its most imposing engineering feats is the construction of vast coastal rock tunnels for its Navy.1 One of these, said to be the largest of its kind in the world, consists of two deep tunnels disappearing into the mountain, straight in from the sea. These are provided with docks capable of accommodating destroyers of 2,600 tons, as well as submarines and other units. Heavy gateways and pockets have been blasted at oblique angles into the rock to protect the tunnels against the impact of air or water pressure, in case of enemy attack. So far, the largest tunnel is 96 feet high and 57 feet wide. Eventually, if present plans are completed, Sweden’s entire naval combat fleet will be provided with such tunnels. The question of building a similar unit for a new naval base at Musko, in the Stockholm archipelago, is being brought up for discussion during the current session of the Riksdag. Not only docks, but also repair depots, workshops, storage areas, and living quarters for personnel have been built deep in the granite mountains; the Swedish Navy now stores both its fuel and its ammunition far below solid caps of rock.
To date, about 500 military rock shelters of various types and dimensions have been completed, or are under construction, or on the drawing boards. Since 1946, installations costing 200 million kroner2 have actually been completed; current and future units will total 245 additional million kroner.
In addition to the rock tunnels for the Navy, these units include: a control center and shelter for high military and civil authorities (including a 300-foot corridor with 46 doors opening from it to smaller rooms and offices); military workshops; supply depots; oil storage facilities; fortifications; radar and fire-control stations; subterranean hangars for an estimated 1500 Air Force planes; and permanent installations for the Coast Artillery. All of these are protected by a mighty cover of impenetrable primary rock. Since 1946, millions of cubic feet of granite have been steadily blasted away, creating a veritable network of hidden chambers along the entire Swedish coast, and also at strategic inland points.
In one place, a city of over 1000 rooms, laid out in a number of stories, has been blasted into the mountain. In this underground ant-hill, people could live for a considerable time, if conditions made it necessary. Schools, an 1100-bed hospital and several smaller hospitals, sanitation, stores of food, and utilities have been set up; many key factories and mines are ready to operate entirely underground. Far to the north, the 380,000-volt Harspranget power plant, one of the world’s largest, is buried deep in solid rock. To support industry in case of attack, large stockpiles of rubber, oil products, tungsten, and chemicals are steadily being gathered from abroad and stored underground.
It has not been easy to store adequate fuel supplies properly. Huge underground cement tanks, lined with metal, have been constructed; in some areas where they were available, abandoned mines have been converted into vast storage tanks. Trains or trucks for the transport of oil, drive straight into the mountainside, and are loaded deep within the shelters. Hidden pipelines run directly from these underground storage rooms to the berthing place of the tankers, so that the entire operation can take place in safety, even during an attack if necessary.
All such efforts are, of course, costly, but new discoveries, based on cementing tungsten and titanium carbides, using cobalt as a binder, have revolutionized the processes, and have inspired a completely new concept of underground engineering. One Swedish pioneer in the process said, “Thanks to these developments we have lost all our respect for hard rock.”
Tunnels are nothing new. But up to less than a decade ago, they were so expensive and tedious that they were avoided by all cost-conscious engineers whenever it was possible to do so. Now, as a result of research in tunnel-cutting techniques, mining costs have been substantially decreased. We can see the change reflected on the U. S. west coast, and in the rich Cobalt silver mines in Ontario; huge new French and Italian power stations are being built deep within the Alps, helped substantially by American Mutual Security financing. Thirty-one miles south of Mt. Blanc, on the Isere tunnel, French tunnelers are advancing 30-33 feet per day, driving a penstock tunnel 444 square feet in cross section through crystal slate. The Italian Mori tunnel, 5.8 miles long and 796 square feet in area, has been advancing 27 feet per day through limestone. When completed it will be the longest in Italy.
Various factors, geological and technological, as well as understandable fear of her near neighbor, have particularly sparked the burrowing process in Sweden. Known as “Operation Granite,” Swedish penetrations into the depths is only partly due to fear. Part is due to the fact that it has become cheaper to excavate needed accommodations out of solid rock than it is to erect equivalent surface structures! The cost of such underground work today is less, even in inflated postwar currency, than it was in the days of hard, old-fashioned pre-war money.
What has made the difference? The use of carbide-tipped tools in place of high-speed steels has multiplied the rate of production by something like 500%. The so-called “Swedish Method” of cutting rock uses a light air-leg percussion rock drill with tungsten carbide-tipped drill steel, says Gösta E. Sandström, writing in Industria International, “the speed and flexibility of this tool combination have brought about such far-reaching repercussions on methods, generating, in turn, savings in something resembling a geometric progression, that the full effects on civilization are just beginning to be felt.”
Neutral Sweden is including not only military, but also extensive civilian protection in her gigantic “burrowing” program. In Stockholm deep shelters already completed, can accommodate 80,000 persons; in five to seven years, authorities expect, there will be enough deep space to hold 400,000. This is half the capital’s population; the situation is similar in other Swedish cities. An expanding network of giant shelters is threading under Sweden. They are not saying, as the United States Civil Defense officials are, “Digging shelters is too expensive to contemplate; we must evacuate our cities.” They know they must protect the cities’ workers if they are to keep Sweden’s production in full swing. The balance of the population, including children, old people, and the sick, would be evacuated to rural areas under extensive and detailed plans, which envisage transportation by every means, from planes to skis.
Sweden, rich in minerals and forests, and productive in its industries, as well as strategically located, would be a rich prize for conquest. Though traditionally neutral and still aloof from NATO’S defense pacts, Sweden is well aware of her present position. As a result, this vulnerable nation is spending 17 times as much per capita on Civil Defense as we are in the United States. For these shelters, for stockpiles of supplies, for training and promotional work, Sweden spends four dollars for every Swede. We in America are spending 23.5 cents per capita. Seven per cent of Sweden’s military budget goes to Civil Defense; 1/10th of 1% of America’s budget, so far, has been allocated to protect her industrial might, or her skilled, productive, and irreplaceable people.
One of the most striking evidences that in Sweden Civil Defense is in reality, and not merely in words, the “fourth arm of national defense,” is that by national law, every able-bodied person between the ages of 15-65, except those in military service, is required to devote 60 hours a year to home defense training. Think what that means in preparedness! A host of schools have been established, preparing the population in firefighting, first aid and nursing, gas defense, the repair and guarding of communications systems, and many other necessary skills.
A second law requires that builders of all dwellings for three or more families, provide, at their own expense, adequate shelter for the tenants. Many industrial plants have also financed their own training and shelter.
The energetic Swedes are realists. They know that enemy attack could strike at any moment—that neutrality in the Hydrogen Age is no longer a defense. Even between the past two world wars, they started to hack into their granite underpinnings; steadily, since 1945, with new vigor, new tools, and new speed, the blasting and the burrowing have continued.
Sweden does not expect to “sit out” another war. She may not yet be a member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, but she is ready to defend herself with far- reaching, energetic measures.
1. See the Pictorial Section, “The Navy of Sweden,” on page 1259 of this issue of the Proceedings.
2. The Swedish kroner is currently rated as 5.17 to the U. S. dollar.