Following the fall of Denmark to Germany in World War II, responsibility for the security of Greenland passed to the American military under the terms of a 9 April 1941 treaty with the defected Danish ambassador in Washington, Henrik Kauffmann.

A 1,500 foot long dirt airstrip eight miles east was prepared for the expected aircraft of Atlantic flyers Bert Hassell and Parker Cramer.

During August 1940, the U.S. Coast Guard Cutter Duane supported an aerial survey commanded by Army Captain Julius K. Lacey.

Bluie West-8 was founded on 7 October 1941 by a 31-man expedition commanded by Captain (later Colonel) Bernt Balchen of the United States Army Air Forces (USAAF).

A road of about ten miles length connected the airfield site with the port location (Camp Lloyd) farther down the fjord.

Instead, the base earned its keep as an alternate field, a radio and weather reporting station, and as a departure point for search-and-rescue operations elsewhere in Greenland.

However, the base also served to support air refueling tankers, and trans-Atlantic ferry flights for short-ranged jet fighters continued to transit in the post-war period.

In the mid-1950s, Scandinavian Airlines System (SAS) began using the base as a refueling station on their then-new "Polar route" between Scandinavia and the United States.

In 1956, SAS was operating three round trip flights a week with Douglas DC-6B propliners on a routing of Copenhagen – Sondrestrom – Winnipeg – Los Angeles.

The United States Air Force continued to use the base for occasional traffic, and in particular for the yearly resupply of the DYE stations.