# NORAD/CONAD Historical Summaries (1958-1959)

Compiled by [Robin Monks](https://coldwar.tech/about), a Cold War archival expert.

*NORAD's own classified half-year histories bracketing the birth of CADIN: the 5 January 1959 cost-sharing agreement ($440.088 million, split $304.607M/$135.481M), the surveillance-network census of 30 June 1959, and the gap-filler program that never left paper.*

## Metadata

| Field | Value |
|-------|-------|
| Document Type | declassified |
| Creator | NORAD/CONAD Directorate of Command History |
| Date | 1959 |
| Classification | SECRET (declassified) |
| Document ID | NORAD/CONAD Historical Summary, Jul-Dec 1958 and Jan-Jun 1959 |
| Original Language | english |

NORAD’s command historians wrote a classified summary of the command’s activities every six months. These two volumes, July–December 1958 and January–June 1959, both stamped SECRET at the time and since declassified, bracket the birth of CADIN, the Continental Air Defense Integration North program that produced the [Pinetree Line’s](https://coldwar.tech/systems/pinetree-line) second wave of stations, the North Bay SAGE centre, and the forty-five gap-filler radars that were never built. I pulled them because the CADIN figures circulating in secondary sources are rounded retellings; here are the originals.

## The 5 January 1959 agreement

The 1959 volume (attached above) records the agreement in principle and, later, the exact price:

> On 5 January 1959, USAF informed NORAD that the Governments of the U.S. and Canada had agreed in principle to a cost sharing arrangement for a joint air defense program in Canada. This program was to provide two thirty-missile BOMARC squadrons, seven heavy radars (two in the Ottawa-North Bay area and five in the Pinetree system), a SAGE Sec/DC in the Ottawa area, and 45 gap fillers…
>
> -- NORAD/CONAD Historical Summary, January–June 1959 (PDF p. 78)

> The cost of the CADIN Program was figured at $440.088 millions; $304.607 millions being USAF’s share, $135.481 millions RCAF’s share.
>
> -- NORAD/CONAD Historical Summary, January–June 1959 (PDF p. 80)

The same volume carries Table I, “The Surveillance Network, 30 June 1959,” a one-page census of every radar program on the continent. For the Pinetree system it lists 22 USAF-funded and 10 RCAF-funded operational sites; for CADIN it lists 7 heavy radars programmed, none operational, and 45 gap fillers programmed, none operational. None of those gap fillers ever would be: the program died on paper, which is why the table is one of the few places you can see it counted at all. The volume also names the four gap-filler sites NORAD wanted accelerated (London and Brampton in Ontario, Mt. Carleton in New Brunswick, Les Étroits in Quebec, none of which was built).

## The 1958 volume

The July–December 1958 summary ([download the PDF](https://coldwar.tech/media/pages/archive/documents/norad-conad-histories-1958-59/551210b432-1783635679/norad-conad-historical-summary-1958-jul-dec.pdf)) closes the year with a status report on Canadian radar: 33 operational heavy stations plus six real gap fillers the USAF annexes in Newfoundland and Labrador with Lowther operational and Barrington and Kamloops still under construction under the mobile program. It also preserves a program that never happened twice over: Operation PILLOW, the “Fourth Phase Radar Program” the USAF proposed in 1955 to push the combat zone northward, which neither government had approved by 1958 and which CADIN effectively replaced.

**A note on rights and copies.** These are works of the United States government and in the public domain. The scans come from US Northern Command’s FOIA reading room, via the mirror maintained by The Black Vault; redaction bars and period security stamps appear as in the originals.

## Related

- [The Pinetree Line](https://coldwar.tech/systems/pinetree-line) (Systems)
- [The Mid-Canada Line](https://coldwar.tech/systems/mid-canada-line) (Systems)
- [The DEW Line](https://coldwar.tech/systems/dew-line) (Systems)

Tags: NORAD, CADIN, Pinetree Line, declassified, SAGE, gap fillers, Cold War

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Canonical URL: https://coldwar.tech/archive/documents/norad-conad-histories-1958-59
Last updated: 2026-07-15