The Air Force set up shop at a place called Siegelbach in Germany circa 1953.

It was located on what was called Rhine Ordnance Barracks, (Kaiserslautern). (Note: The unit was originally organized at Camp Pieri in Wiesbaden and moved to Siegelbach in November 1953.) In 1959, the name was changed to Siegelbach Air Station.

One of the primary units at Siegelbach was the 2005 Communications Squadron (USAF) which belonged to MATS (Military Air Transport Service).

From a CommCenter standpoint, what is significant is that Siegelbachs' 2005th Comm Sq was also the operator of (then) Germany's largest tape relay station: RUFP, Primary Relay. In 1953, it was a manual tape relay. Some years later, it became a Plan 55 relay. At the time, most Army and Air Force tape relays connected to Siegelbach. Siegelbach, in 1960 and later, did not have tribs (most Primary Relays didn't). Primary Relays only connected to other relays, mostly other Primary Relays and Major Relays, whether torn tape, or semi-automatic. Siegelbach did have its own terminal station (RUFPC) and Relay Floor Services section, RUFPCM. The relay at Frankfurt (RUFM) had 2 circuits to RUFP, which were secured by KW-26Cs. RUFP had circuits to a few RUFP Minor Relays, such as RUFPAG (7th Army) at Heidelberg, and Major Relay RUFD (Pirmasens).

RUFP/Siegelbach was closed down in 1968 when RUFT/ASC Pirmasens came online and ushered in the AUTODIN era for Germany. RUFT assumed Primary Relay status, along with RHFF (ASC Augsburg/Gablingen) and later, RUFL (ASC Coltano, IT). (RHFF closed in 1973, and was declared surplus).

Today, Siegelbach Air Station is closed. Where the Plan 55 Relay once stood -- only the concrete building slab remains.

There are several photos of the relay at this URL: http://bobp31.homestead.com/SIEGELBACH.html

Having visited Siegelbach Relay a few times in the 60s, it was a "model" for its time, and the envy of all tape apes back then. The Air Force folks often conducted "seminars" and invited Army and Air Force commcenter out station folks to visit for day trips (or TDY over nights). Unlike tape relays, the Plan 55 was very quiet and everything shined. Few "operators" were ever present; everything was largely automatic. Mostly, you only saw KW-26 crypto folks, Tech Controllers (lots of them) and a few ops at the Service Positions. I never saw any tape apes.

A side note: In tape relays, there were generally four (4) classes of relay stations:

Primary Relays:.......Essentially GATEWAY stations that mostly connected to other relay stations. Primary Relays were also the conduit for overseas to CONUS connectivity, since Major Relays did not connect overseas (to CONUS). Primary Relays did not normally connect to tribs, other than its own terminal station and its Service sections or Room circuits.

Major Relay:.........Connected to at least one Primary Relay, and any number of other Major and Minor Relays. Major Relays also had tribs of their own. Major Relays usually served a Corps, Theater Command or
Field Army.

Minor Relay:.........Connected to at least one Major Relay and servcing mostly tribs of its own. Could also connect to other Minor Relays. Minor Relays usually served a Major Command, or Theater Area Support Command.

Terminal Relays:...Any trib that had relay responsiblity but which was not classified as a tape relay (as above). These might include the circuits within a combat Division serving its individual Brigades, Regiments and Battalions. (For instance, 3rd Inf Div, Wurzburg, which was a "trib" tied off of RUFM/ Frankfurt, but which had 9 circuits of its own. 3ID was RUFMAZ. Its tribs were RUFMAZA thru RUFMAZI). Another example would be 8th Inf Div at RUFMEI/Bad Kreuznach. It had 8 tribs, RUFMEIA thru RUFMEIH). This was 1960s era stuff.

Mediterranean Communications Region was attached to the Spanish Communications Region for operational control until the Spanish Communications Region was inactivated. (Attached squadrons were reassigned to the Mediterranean Comm Region.)

Det 20, 2140th Comm Gp
Mt. Pateras (15H) was linked to five locations:
Levkas (14B) via AN/FRC-96
Mt. Edheri (24D) via AN/FRC-97 1KW tropospheric scatter radio
Yamanlar (16D) via AN/FRC-96
Mt. Parnis via AN/FRC-127
Elefsis (a USAREUR site) via AN/FRC-127.

From Mt. Parnis, communications went to northern Greece, Nea Makri, and Hellinikon AB (Athens). Mt Pateras also had the 490L AUTOVON Switch for Greece. The Switch building is the closest building in the picture on the cover of the Feb 1969 Airman on your web page.

I was stationed at Mt Corna RRL OL-K in Italy and we used the following MW radios  (1972-1975). Siemens/Halske EM 120/400  it was a 132 voice channel analog MW radio using the 400 mhz band 

This was the main radios at
Zugpitze to Cima Gallina to Pagnella to Mt. Corna
Mt Corna to Mt Venda to Aviano
Mt Corna to Mt Cimone to Coltano

Mt Corna had a fourth radio shot to Ghedi Torre (Italian AFB with AF det).  It was a Siemens/Halske FM 12/800,  a 12 channel 800 mhz radio.

I first went to Germany in 1972 TDY to assist in the MUX installations (UCC4) from Patrick AFB, FLA assigned to the 1836 E&I Sq at Ramstien. They sent me and my crew to Feldberg for 2 months and transferred us to LKF until my PCS to Mt Corna RRL.

I went PCS to Mt Corna in DEC/1972 and during my time there I went TDY to support sites all along the 486L system. I spent 3 yrs at Keesler (slow student haha) as KAFB school maintenance. I was repairing every radio in the AF MW inventory and even a few that were not. I was even TDY to a few sites on the tropo sys from Turkey back to Italy via Greece. I even flew to Det 94 in Turkey to work on a tropo system at the direction of HQ DCA Commander. They sent his jet down to Ghedi Torre IAFB base and fly me to the site and back. They were doing real time intercepts from the USSR and sending back to Langley AFB and the network was DOWN hard.

I have more photos of Barkway somewhere.  Here is what I can lay my hands on right now.  If you look at page 1 of the maps, Barkway is the 4-link hub. 

I was there from 1985 to 1989.  They were almost done upgrading the site to the new digital radio’s.  The outcome of the upgrade was the site went unmanned shortly after I left.  It was then maintained by what the Air Force called Regional Maintenance Teams.  AF in England called it Regional because there were more than one location that had a team.  If I heard correctly there were two Bases that had a team and was responsible for their half of the sites. 

I was in Italy from 1993 to 1995 and turned the sites over to Contractors.  In Italy we were called Mobile Maintenance Team because we maintained all the unmanned sites in Italy. 

Barkway was a 5-man site.  I was a Buck Sgt (E-4) and the Operating Location Chief.  Our support base was RAF Alconbury. 

Barkway as you can see was One Building, two radio vans, a permanent Shed called the MDF Hut, and a Generator Van.  In the photos the radio van on the right had four radios.  We were frequency and space diversity.  So two radio’s in the right van shot to Alconbury and two shot to Mildenhall. 

The Alconbury radio’s were AN/TRC-157s and the Mildenhall radios were AN/FRC-167s also known as L-4s for Ford Loral 4 GHz radios. 

The Van straight ahead but on the left side of the walk had four radios.  All four were AN/TRC-150s.  Two of them shot to Weathersfield and the other two shot to Hillingdon through an unmanned site called Bovingdon. 
Chris