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.

(1) Source: 2005th Communications Sq website - now defunct; accessd by webmaster ca. 2007