Gartow was one site, up in the Brit zone where the Elbe River hit the West German border and swung north. That was a mobile site and the guys lived nearby in a quite comfortable Gasthaus. There was another mobile site south of that one, hard on the border but buried back in the woods, I think near Fulda. Mt Meissner? Those guys also lived in a Gasthaus, but this one was just a couple of hundred meters back from the fence. There was a third, in the Harz mountains area but I have forgotten the name. Wasserkuppe comes to mind. BTW, the Brits did NOT believe in a 5K zone, or any kind of zone, for that matter! Quite a change from life in Hof/Saale and the ever present 5K zone!

There was also a big ASA field station on Teufelsberg (the monster post-WW II rubble pile) in Berlin that I spent a couple days working at while TDY at the 6912th on Templehof in Berlin. I don't think I have seen that one mentioned or haven't found it.

Keep up the incredible work!

(Click here for more information from Jerry Managas - Schneeberg)

2. I arrived "A" Co, 319 Bn in Heidwinkel shortly thereafter. Spent two years there. Our operations site was at Bährdorf. This site was a essentially a voice intercept site. I was the analyst (982) and wrote the daily reports. I thought that the small Elint unit that was located within the compound was intercepting radar signals from the first SAM sites deployed by the Russians in East Germany. I note that someone else wrote from a later time that it may have been an RDF site. Maybe they are the same. I arrived late summer of 1960 and departed Aug of 1962.

I was there when the Wall in Berlin went up and the border between East and West was hardened. Was also on duty when the East Germans attempted to restrict access to Berlin along the autobahns. Minor panic time at Heidwinkel. Interesting times.

Schneeberg was an interesting TDY. A regular Buffalo NY when it came to snow!

We had a comm link between Hof and Schneeberg via KY-1 as well as as the normal CRITICOM links which all ASA, NSG and AFSS sites world wide were hooked in on.

The Air Force in their wisdom had issued us Hofers honest-to-God Arctic parkas. Incredibly warm! The Army in THEIR wisdom apparently thought their troopers were hardened enough to withstand the rigors of the weather in Bavarian Siberia (which is what Bayrischers called Hof/Saale). The Army had their usual field jackets with liners and those Korean era winter caps. The 2/2 Cav border troops in Hof were no better equipped and they rode around in open jeeps most of the time when they were out on the fence.

Two of us Hofer AFSS NCO's went down to Schneeberg for a day's TDY. Met our ASA powerwagon driver in a Bierstube in Ochsenkopf, left my car there and we went sliding up the mountain. At some point the driver said we're here! I asked "where's the site?" He said.... "You're looking at it!". All we could see were the small lights on the top of the 3 meter tall concrete posts going off into the snowy distance.

The whole place (It was a combined Luftwaffe/ASA site) was buried under 9 plus feet of snow. There was a good reason the place was called Schneeberg! They had a Luftwaffe street sized snowblower that did nothing but go around the perimeter of the site, keeping the security road clear.

We got the tour, had our rather important discussions with various guys and NEVER ONCE TOOK OUR PARKAS OFF the entire time we were there! We didn't want to have to pay for the damn things if we lost them, and those guys were cold enough to grab them if we laid them down, I think. It snowed like mad the entire time we were there. The troopers had tunneled thru the snow between the Quonset huts so they didn't have to go outside in that weather.

There was a building there that housed the Luftwaffe troops (I think) and it is still there today, used as a hostel. Saw it in 2002 or 2006.

I was the CO of Det. J-2 (USM-621Y), a mobile NSA R&D team supported by ASA, on the Wasserkuppe, near Fulda, Germany, from 1958 until relocated to Wobeck, in the Elm Forest near Schoeningen & Helmstedt on 1 Jan 1960.

During the period 1959-60 I was a member of several site survey teams evaluating where best to relocate this detachment; as a result, the elevation at Wobeck was determined to be best for our purposes. We made a road march from the Wasserkuppe to Wobeck, providing our own security and recovery vehicles. It was forunate that we had our own wrecker, as several of the "mobile" vehicles had not been moved for many months while on the Wasserkuppe; consequently seals, hoses, and belts that appeared ok turned out not to be when subjected to the rigors of the road march.

We moved, literally, to a set of coordinates in the woods. We had to do our own site preparation & soil stabilization. It was very fortunate that I was originally commissioned Corps of Engineers to understand what had to be done under these circumstances.

We erected a concertina wire enclosure, dug holes in the ground & used the dirt for revements to protect our ammunition, surveyed & constructed the anchor points for two AB-216 towers, one over 200 feet (high), the other over 300 feet, which we erected ourselves - without the assistance of the antenna team from Frankfurt.

We mounted all of our special antennas & radomes, ran cables & power lines, stabilized the XM-292, H-1, and other trucks, including our radio & TTY commo vans without outside assistance.

We were up and running, operationally, within a week of departing the Wasserkuppe - no small feat!

Again, it was fortunate that I was the CO, because I was & am a fluent German linguist. I had to make arrangements with the mayors & families in surrounding villages to billet the troops & with a local Gasthaus - we tried several until the troops were happy - to feed them within their subsistence allowance.

Initially I was the only officer, so I was able to billet myself in the Hotel Klabautermann in Bad Helmstedt, where some other ASAers had stayed over the years. We had an RCA tech rep (Dick Cassell) to assist us from the beginning, but later he was replaced by a maintenance warrant officer. Towards the end of my tour of duty, in 1962, an ASA 1Lt was sent to be my XO.

During all of this time we, as an NSA R&D Team, were "supported" by ASA more or less as step-children, being satellited in turn to HQ Co, H&S Bn, Frankfurt; 183 USASA Co, Herzogenaurach; USASA Element, Eur Devel Det; 319 USASA Bn, Rothwesten; USASAEUR Theater Exploitation Co; 279 USASA Det, 319 USASA Bn; and 77 USASA SU.

Notable among these commanders were: COLs Bryan Gruver & Raymond Hawtin. COL Bob Fechtman& CW Mel Jackson, USAREUR IG, were of immense help.

Key team personnel during my tenure were: 1LT Ed Groff; Ops Sgts Nick Kaps & Dave Bishop; Elec Maint Sgts Larry Christner & Emanuel Hilt; Veh & Generator Maint Sgt Robert Charlton.

NSA R&D types: Bob Hermann, Tom Blow, Charlie Gandy & Jerry Manning.

Hermann Conrad, USASAEUR S-1, saved the day many times with personnel assignments.

There are a few more items that may be of interest:

Re: Hotel Klabautermann. Hotel Klabautermann (means hobgoblin (aboard ship)), which was in Bad Helmstedt, about 200 meters from the East German border. The hotel was owned by "Mutti" Prost (a fitting name for a German tavern keeper) & her husband "Maenne." Many ASAers on TDY stayed there over the years & officers from Bährdorf, Grasleben, Heidwinkel & Schöningen used it as their residence. Before the Berlin Wall went up & the border was sealed, the East German border guards would occasionally drop in for a beer & Western cigarettes. Mutti would make them leave their AK-47s & helmets outside the door before she would serve them.

I was present in civlian clothes on one occasion, so I know this to be true & not just scuttlebutt. It was probably a Saturday afternoon, as there would have been many woods walkers & tourists on a Sunday & the guards would not have come over.

When tensions increased prior to erection of the Wall, we were ordered to vacate. This is when I moved to an apartment behind the Schöninger Hof. This was closer to the Wobeck site & OK except on Mondays, when pigs were butchered at first light in the courtyard beneath my windows.

Re: Situation due to increased East/West tensions. The Wobeck site was probed twice by unknown persons trying to get through the concertina wire - once shortly after we set up shop (which could have been an animal) and again about a week later before the border was sealed. This was probably an actual attempt at incursion, as the BND site just down the road from us was also probed that night, but the British Signals outfit on the way to Koenigslutter was not - probably because they had so many more troops (on site) and a regular fence with securtiy lights.

We were put on full alert with live ammo issued when COL Glover S. Johns, of WWII and 14th ACR fame, led the military column from Helmstedt to Berlin to assert the Allied continued access by land of that outpost city. Fortunately neither the Sovs nor the Volksarmee attempted to stop the column.

Re: Problems. On Thanksgiving Day 1961 one of the security guards being possessed of neither a military driver's license nor authority to do so, took it upon himself to back the guard relief 2½ -ton truck, without using a rear guide, from the front gate to the refueling point. Unfortunately, he never made it for he backed into a guy point for one of the AB-216 towers, causing it to fall & entangle the guy wires of the other tower, rendering it unsafe to climb.

I was at the British NAAFI Club on the Helmstedt Autobahn having dinner with the CO of the Helmstedt MP Det & some other officers when I received a telephone call telling me that the towers were down. Thinking this to be a joke, I went outside & from the elevation of the NAAFI, I could see our area of Elmforst quite clearly - the towers were no longer peeking above the foliage. Needless to say, the ensuing hours were quite hectic.

This time we had to use the antenna team from Frankfurt, as well as a heavy duty commercial crane to salvage what we could and erect new towers. We were out of business about a week, causing no end of technical & administrative difficulties. The report of survey was most interesting!

Re: Conversion to a more permanent site. Because of this accident & problems with power fluctuations from the diesel generators, it was decided to bring commercial power into the site. Again, thanks to my CE experience, I was made contract compliance officer for this installation, thereby obviating the need to have someone from Frankfurt come up on TDY at some considerable expense.

When we finally switched over and shut down the generators, the silence was blissful & it wasn't long before wild bore & deer could be seen on the game trails around the site. Then it became necessary to set up loudspeakers to play music to mask any inadvertent excape of classified sounds from the woods wanderers.

Now we could begin to think about semi-permanent buildings to get our gear out of the vans (XM-292s, M-109s & 1 H-1, an Air Force type).

Re: Relationships with other units. Our mission was independent of all other units in & around Helmstedt. Our contact with them was social.

Personal mail came through Helmstdt Det. & courier material via the duty train. Our technical equipment was supported by NSAEUR & our TO&E & TD equipment was supported, in succession, by the various ASA units listed at the top of this report.