|
Army
Security Agency, Europe |
||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||
|
||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||
| Field Stations | ||||||||||
| Field Station Bad Aibling | ||||||||||
| 19.. - 19.. | ||||||||||
| (Source: Email from Thomas Nunn) | ||||||||||
| I served in Germany from Jan 1970 till Mar 1972 -- as a member of the Army Security Agency. I was stationed in Berlin for about six months and then transferred to Bad Aibling Germany for the remainder of my tour. There I was assigned to "F" Branch. Our listening equipment was located inside an old WW2 German hangar -- Bad Aibling was a German fighter training base during the war. Our particular section was located in the old parts room.
On our door was a timelock -- which opened every 8 hours to allow for shift change. We monitored "Scheds", or scheduled transmissions, in 8 different languages. These scheds consisted of traffic sent in numbers, divided into groups of five. Each message could be of varying sizes. The first line of the message was always the number of the specific person the message was intended for. There could be as many as 100 recipients in one sched.
These number codes were actually letters, which could then be broken down into messages. We could only read part of them. Who were the recipients? Iron Curtain spies located within the western countries. The languages were Bulgarian, Romanian, Russian, German, Hungarian, French, Czechoslovakian, and Serbian. Each sched was a scheduled transmission for specified agents -- in whatever country they were in. We could only decipher the messages that we had the pads for -- in other words, double agents.
The code pads were one use, daily pads. As each day passed, the pages would be torn off and disposed of by burning -- unless there was a message. In that case, the page would be used to decipher the message and then both would be disposed of.
While I was stationed in Berlin, we would take a bus every day to the top of the Teufelsberg Mountain. This "mountain" was built after the war with the rubble left after the Allied bombings of Berlin.
We sat a listening positions, or "Pozes". Each of these pozes consisted of 32 individual reel-to-reel tape recorders, one 32 channel microwave decoder, a small metal desk -- on which sat a 32 switch toggle-switch box with 32 lights just above the switches, which was connected to the tape recorders. There was also a typewriter which was fed with 8-ply NCR paper sheets.
Each time that a tape recorder came on, the corresponding light on the box would light up. I forgot to mention that the operator of the poz wore headphones. We would then toggle the switch below the light and listen to what was being said. If it sounded important, we would continue to monitor the conversation; if not, we would turn the recorder off, mark and date the paper, and wait for the next one. What made the tape recorders come on and the light to glow was -- the ringing of a telephone.
Yep, we were tapping the phones of the East German government, as well
as their various ministeries in the west. It wasn't a tap in the strict sense of the word. The old microwave broadcasts sent signals out in a figure eight signal burst. We just happened (?) to be on the back side of the figure eight -- hence the 32 channel decoders.
We also had sections listening to the other Iron Curtain countries and one listening to a "mysterious" signal coming from "outer space". We even had a section listening to the Soviet space missions. Our section was the first to find out exactly how fast the Mig 25 could fly at operational altitude, and also the first to find out the limitations of the airplane during such flights. The wing spar joints tended to separate at maximum speed at operating altitudes. It was fast, though. One pilot flew from an airfield near the east coast of Russia to Moscow in just under 3 hours. That is about 1500 miles per hour, at 80,000 feet. The Mig 25 was originally designed for only one mission--to intercept and shoot down the SR-71.
ADDITIONAL INFORMATION: I got to Berlin in January, 1970. The intelligence community was still smarting from the Russian invasion of Czechoslovakia. Why? Because the Soviet army had moved an entire tank division from about 10 mile south of Berlin to the Czech border without breaking radio silence. In other words, the NATO people lost track of them--an entire division. You know that our armed forces couldn't do that in 1970.
The first inkling the West got that there was a problem was the Czech border guards asking their government for permission to fire on the Soviet tank columns, permission which was quickly denied.
Well, late in 1970 the same type situation developed with Romania. Now, ya'll never heard about this one. See, the Russians liked to conduct massive field maneuvers twice a year. We always loved those times because we got super busy identifying units and putting together an order of battle. When they Ruskies went out, they required the other Warsaw Pact countries to send units as well. Most of the time, the "puppet" countries went along.
This time, however, the Romanians told the Russians to shove it. They were in the midst of harvest, and flatly refused to play. Which pissed the Russians off a bunch. So, the Ruskies sent a division to slap some sense into the Romanian government, and once again we didn't know anything about it. Until we heard the Romanian border guards requesting permission to open fire -- which the Romanian government quickly granted. However, the Russians blinked and cooler heads intervened. Crisis averted -- sort of. See, NATO told the Romanians that if they got into a shooting arguement with Russian we would step in and help them. The actual end result was the overthrow of the Romanian government and their replacement with Russian approved tyrants. We were truly only hours from war in Europe -- our butts were puckered, let me tell you.
|
||||||||||
 |
||||||||||
| Field Station Augsburg | ||||||||||
| 19.. - 19.. | ||||||||||
 Systems Engineering Div, USASAFS Augsburg |
||||||||||
|
||||||||||
| 17th Field Station, Rothwesten | ||||||||||
| 1963 | ||||||||||
| (Source: Email from Ron Ruiz) | ||||||||||
| I was an ASAer from 1963 to 1968. After many schools in the States I was stationed at the 17th USASA Field Station in Kassel (Rothwesten) for my entire Army career. I actually spent very little time at the FS as I was part of a "flyaway team" that manned or filled in for other ASAers at remote duty stations. I was at Luebeck until the station closed and also spent a lot of time at the Gartow site or Fort Gartow as we called it. I had permanent living quarters with a farm family in Pevestorf (near Det L Site). I even married a girl from Gartow and stayed in Germany when I was separated from the Army. My daughter was born in Dannenberg (near Gartow). I belong to a group of ex ASA Luebeck guys and that website can be found at www.lubeckers.com. There are approximately 300 members in that group. They hold an annual reunion somewhere in the US and an occasional reunion in Luebeck, Germany (next one is in 2009). The website contains a lot of information and photos. Other than the Luebeck and Gartow sites I was also stationed at Mt. Meisner and Helmstedt for short periods of time. I have numerous photos of the 17th FS, the Gartow site, the Luebeck site, and the Mt. Meisner site. I need to scan the photos and if you are interested I can forward them to you for your use. |
||||||||||
|
||||||||||
|
||||||||||
|
||||||||||
| Remote Sites | ||||||||||
| Gross Gusborn | ||||||||||
| 1972 - 1974 | ||||||||||
| (Source: Aerial photo - Email from Michael Grube, LostPlaces.de, Germany; information - webmaster) | ||||||||||
|
||||||||||
| (1) To view large format of the Torii Tower thumbnail, go to the URL: http://www.sender-fotos.de/; then click on the Niedersachsen button on the left; scroll down to the Gusborn/Klein Gusborn section and click on the thumbnail. | ||||||||||
| Related Links: Torii Towers Dannenberg and Wobeck - great page on the Torii Towers at Gross Gusborn and Wobeck operated by Field Station Augsburg. Authored by Michael Grube, Germany. Birgelen Veterans Association - British 13 Signal Regiment signal intelligence veterans |
||||||||||
| Mount Meissner | ||||||||||
| (Source: Email from Ron Jope, Mt Meissner, 1965-69) | ||||||||||
|
||||||||||
| (Source: Tom Byrd, 1968-71) | ||||||||||
|
||||||||||
| Schneeberg | ||||||||||
| Wobeck | ||||||||||
| 1965? - 1976 | ||||||||||
| Official designation: Det K, 319th ASA Bn; later (mid-1966?) Det K, 17th USASA Fld Sta or Wobeck Detachment Site Opened: 1965? Site was constructed as a replacement for the Bahrdorf site. Personnel arrived from the closed site at Bahrdorf sometime in 1965? Torii Tower: constructed around 1969; height - 79 meters. Det Closed: (Feb or March) 1976 Site was under the Border Site Command in Augsburg. (Later reopened as a detachment of the 326th ASA Co (FWD).) |
||||||||||
|
||||||||||
