Three years ago I was able to go back to Germany on a vacation and revisited my old ‘haunts’ – most of which no longer exist. While in Nurnberg I was able to reunite with my old German National Director of Maintenance, Herr Alfred Arbter. He was able to fill me in on many things that happened after I departed and up to his retirement in 1992.

William O. Darby Kaserne was turned over to the City of Fuerth and is now largely a park, the buildings and old barracks turned into apartment complexes and one of the original Equipment Maintenance Center buildings now houses a Music School.

Somewhere along the line, in the mid-1980’s the Equipment Maintenance Center was placed under VII Corps as the Consolidated Maintenance Center Nurnberg. I’m attaching a photo Herr Arbter gave me. As you can see, it was still predominantly a civilian organization with a small military presence. Initially, the members of the Equipment Maintenance Group wore the USAREUR patch, but after it was reorganized in 1967 we wound up changing to the COMZEUR patch. I’m also attaching a photo of one of our Works Council Meetings where we were honoring an employee on his retirement.

As with William O. Darby, Ferris Barracks in Erlangen was also turned over to the City of Erlangen and has become more of an industrial complex. The military housing still stands and now houses local nationals. There was very little I could recognize inside the old kaserne – even the airfield had been cleared away.

I keep checking back to your website to see what new information has been posted and once again I have to commend you for putting together this phenomenal piece of history!

The center repairs everything from household furniture to movie projectors. And it is the only maintenance facility in Europe that repairs automatic transmissions, handling some Army 5,312 vehicles, said Dave Griffin, chief of base support operations.

In fiscal year 1976, the center saved the government $327,132 by repairing 484 automatic transmissions instead of installing new ones, he said. In fiscal year 1975, it saved Uncle Sam $299,599 by repairing transmissions, he said.

Griffin said the transmissions come from buses, trucks and cars the Army uses in Germany, Italy, Greece, Turkey and England.

To give an idea of how the center saves tax dollars, Griffin said that a new transmission for a 1968 Ford sedan used by the Army costs $457. It costs the center $207 to repair an unserviceable transmission for the same vehicle. A new transmission for a 1970 40-passenger bus would cost $3,090 to replace. However, the facility can repair it for $363.

The center got its repair mission in 1968 when there were only 127 Army vehicles in Europe with automatic transmissions. Today, 5,312 Army vehicles in Europe have automatic transmissions.

The facility has 10 Germans working in its transmission repair facility. Three Nurnberg American High School students work with them under the school's work study program.

"All work is done on an individual basis. It isn't a production line setup," said Alfred Arbter, transmission repair facility manager. "Each transmission is taken apart and only the part required to be replaced is repaired. All of our men are trained to work on any transmission of the 29 different vehicles the Army has in Europe."

Getting spare parts is no real problem, he said. Parts arrive at the facility through normal Army supply channels arid the facility has little backlog. If necessary, the center can buy parts on the economy, but they seldom have to do this, officials said.

"We work on a direct exchange basis. When a customer comes in with an unserviceable transmission, we can give him a serviceable one for it right then. We keep about 290 serviceable transmissions on hand," Arbter said.

The facility gets many parts from vehicles being removed from the Army's inventory. All useable parts are removed from those vehicles before they are sent to the property disposal yard, authorities said.

The officials said they are adding more people to the work force because the work load gets bigger every year.

"We haven't had a transmission sent back for failure," Arbter said.

"Each transmission is worked on by one mechanic. Each of them takes time to do a good job and that is why we haven't had any transmissions returned in the history of our program."