Did you ever wonder what an abandoned NSA installation looks like?

[jmowreader]

This is the first page (of five) of a "post-mortem" tribute to Field Station Berlin, where I served for six years.

Some of the captions are wrong--I'll leave it to your imagination which they were.

(Okay, I'll give you one: on the first page it describes the "MP Shadow Watch" rooms, which in the last years of the site were actually our training rooms. It says something about the "raised ceilings"--most people call these "suspended ceilings"--and surmises that either the rooms were outfitted as computer rooms or the MPs were running site surveillance in there. I helped to install the suspended ceiling, and the reason we did it was because the ceiling that was there was so fucked up due to condensation, it was easier to cover it over than to fix it.)

Anyway, this site is kinda cool. Pay particular attention to the cable plant.

http://www.ccc.de/teufelsberg/index.html

[Benhurst]

1. Deleted -- Posted to wrong thread.

[Aviation Pro]

2. I didn't know they had a pulping machine at FSB

Will wonders never cease?

[jmowreader]

9. The best part was what we did with the product

You've seen cellulose insulation, or at least heard of it. It's just shredded paper, treated with borate to keep it from catching fire.

About once a week a big truck came to the field station, loaded up with the bales of pulped paper, and hauled them to East Berlin...where we sold it to a company that made cellulose insulation.

I am not sure what we did with the East Marks. Probably sent them to the US consulate in East Berlin for use over there.

[NoPasaran]

3. Fascinating

Thanks for posting this!

[bahrbearian]

4. Thanks for the posting, I like the Pics

It is a little like the abandoned DEW line sites in Alaska.

[WannaJumpMyScooter]

5. That is cool, amazing all the money poured

into that just to be bypassed by technology.

[TankLV]

6. The "arctic tower" and the "ball domes" - the architects of this have GOT to be kidding!

Not that they are compensating for anything...!

[pokerfan]

18. Please, form follows function

You see, they're trying to "stick it" to the enemy.

[Moochy]

20. Sometimes an artic tower and two spheres are just um.. a cigar.

As to the shrinkage, remember it's cold on top of those mountains. :+

[MazeRat7]

7. Optical cable in pressurized pipes w/pressure alarms to prevent tapping... wow

Thats what I call going the extra mile...

Thanks for the tour...

MZr7

[TahitiNut]

8. What's "unusual" about orange shielded Ethernet cable?

That orange coax, transceiver tap, and drop cable look totally normal to me. :shrug:
It was very common in the early 80s, afaik.

[Capn Amerika]

10. If you would like to tour a NSA site

Or former site I should say, check out the Pisgah Astronomical Research Institute in the mountains of Western North Carolina. It's the former NSA Rosman station.

http://www.pari.edu/

[WannaJumpMyScooter]

14. They are doing Roswell work in Rosman?

I always thought that was kind of funny.

[Bavorskoami]

11. NSA Sites

I was TDY only briefly at Field Station Berlin in the days long before INSCOM swallowed up the ASA.
Along the borders of West Germany with East Germany and Czechoslovakia there was a series of installations performing the same or similar work. One of them was on Schneeberg. Scroll to the bottom of the linked page to see photos of the demolition of the Schneeberg site.
http://www.schneebergvets.org/sitemapmp3.html
Another site was on the Eckstein peak of the Hoherbogen ridge on the Czech border. The linked page has photos of what it looked like in the late 60's / early 70's.
http://www.rimbachvets.org/site.html
Americans left Hoherbogen in the mid 70's but German and French units stayed at their neighboring sites/towers into the 90's. The French and German towers still stand to this day.

[jmowreader]

12. From an INSCOMer to an ASAer, welcome to DU

Did you ever get up to Bad Aibling or Wobeck?

[Bavorskoami]

15. Thanks INSCOMer for the welcome

I am a long time and devoted lurker and use the info and links I find here for backing up my discussions on other sites and at work.
No, never got to Bad Aibling or Wobeck. My Field Station was Herzo Base, but I spent almost all my time out on the Czech border at Det K (Hoherbogen). It was absolutely a great location, no barracks, no mess hall, living in a Gasthaus, receiving partial per diem for three years, a young hip 2nd looie for a CO, a local economy that was not overrun with us Ami's and local people who treated us with warmth and friendship. Here's the village's monument to that freindship.

(We had a reunion there two years ago and they put us as the second unit in the parade that opened the village's beerfest - right behind the Bürgermeister and his council)

They still have warm feelings for us as individuals. Those I talked with during the reunion were already opposed to current American foreign policy. Some don't want to talk politics with "their" Americans because they are afraid of offending us or causing us the embarrassment of being reminded what an idiot we Americans have for a President and how much damage the USA is causing in many places.

I did visit the field station in Augsburg - Gablingen with the big circular antenna array - and later they automated Hoherbogen and ran everything out of Gablingen but that was after my time. I was sent to Berlin for a few weeks in 70 or 71 when the Warsaw Pact was having a big exercise in East Germany and they needed a Czech 98G on Teufelsberg.

[jmowreader]

17. That antenna was just incredible...

The antenna at Field Station Augsburg was called the AN/FLR-9. Pronounced "flare-nine." Better known as an elephant cage. This is what it looks like...



The outer ring is 400 meters--yes, a quarter-mile--in diameter. They claim it can pick up signals 5000 miles away.

The reason it was called an elephant cage is that when they were building the first one, someone who didn't have The Need To Know what it really was asked what it was, and the designer told him it was an elephant cage. When asked why he'd want to build such a thing, the designer looked at him and said "you don't see any elephants running around loose, do you?"

There's a monastery in Augsburg that supports itself by selling delivered beer from its brewery, and they noticed one day that their biggest customer was Field Station Augsburg. (On this "delivered beer" thing: you may have heard, many years ago, that milk companies in the United States used to deliver bottles of milk to customers' homes. In Germany, breweries do the same thing. Right to your doorstep.) To honor their best account, they created "Field Station Beer" that had a picture of that antenna on the label.

[newyawker99]

13. Hi Bavorskoami!!

Welcome to DU!! :toast:

[Bavorskoami]

16. Thanks newyawker99

There is only one site (old Army buddies) where I post much and it will be years, if ever, that I reach 1,000 on DU so in order to get my post count up at all I must make sure I respond to all the notes of welcome that I get. It is a nice gesture that you do here on DU to new posters. About how many posts before one is no longer considered a newbie? How many posts before one can welcome others to DU - is that just for the 1000+ club? This site has kept me sane over the last year as I found that there are many people willing to speak with great conviction and strength against W's administration.
Thanks for the emoticons giving the toast. This is me accepting your toast and celebrating becoming an active DUer: :beer:

[Benhurst]

19. Welcome and ...

Cheers! :toast: