provide U.S. fighter aircraft to Finland, when the Soviet attack on Finland took place. Enlisting with the Norwegian Air Force, he made his way to the United States on a crucial mission to negotiate "matters pertaining to aircraft ordnance and ammunition with the question of the Norwegian Government's possible purchase of such materials in the United States of America." With his status of holding dual Norwegian and American citizenship and his extensive contacts in the aviation industry, his instruction from the Norwegian Government-in-exile in London changed to a new directive: to set up a training camp and school for expatriate Norwegian airmen and soldiers in Canada. Balchen negotiated directly with Canadian government officials to obtain an agreement to use available airport facilities at the Toronto Island airport on Lake Ontario known as "Little Norway". During the war, over 2,500 Norwegian aviators of all categories: pilots, navigators and mechanics, were trained in the various bases of "Little Norway". During 1940, with the "Little Norway" facilities under construction and his administrative duties taken over by others, Balchen requested permission from the Norwegian Air Force to fly ferrying missions for the British, teaming with Clyde Pangborn, a contemporary record-breaking pilot of the era. In early 1941, while engaged in a ferrying mission, and on a layover in the Philippines, a representative of General Henry "Hap" Arnold sought out Balchen. Arnold asked Balchen to join the US Army Air Forces as a colonel to oversee the establishment of the USAAF polar airfields at Qaanaaq, and Sondre Stromfjord Greenland. These highly secretive bases would serve to ferry fighter aircraft across the Atlantic by air, rather than having to disassemble them and send them overseas by cargo ship. The airfields also served as bases from which long-range Consolidated B-24 Liberator patrol aircraft could fly far out over the North Atlantic Ocean in search of the German Kriegsmarine U-boats that were menacing American, British, and Canadian ships taking war supplies and troops across the ocean in preparation for the then undecided location of the cross-channel invasion of Europe. This latter air base had the code name "Bluie West Eight" during its operational life. Between September 1941 and November 1943, Balchen trained his personnel in cold weather survival skills and rescue techniques which enabled them to carry out many rescues of downed airmen on the Greenland icecap. On 25 May 1943, flying in a Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress,