
Children of The Cloud and Major Tom: Growing Up in the 80s Under the German Sky - smacktoward
https://catapult.co/stories/children-of-the-cloud-and-major-tom-growing-up-in-the-80s-under-german-sky
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chiph
> Low-altitude flyovers were legal pretty much everywhere in Germany until
> 1990;

I was at Hahn [0] from 83-85. We had a German partner airbase (Pferdsfeld [1])
and they would occasionally act as aggressors (fake Soviets) in our exercises.
So we got used to the sound of F4's passing at low altitude over the base, in
addition to our own higher-pitched sounding F-16s with their near-constant
takeoffs and touch-and-goes.

I recall one time a German Tornado pilot did a loop around our 100m tall
microwave tower. The observer we had on top of it (for the exercise) was able
to look down at the pilot. Any US pilot would have been called on the carpet
for this stunt, but the all the Germans drove fast and flew fast.

The photo at site [0] of the airman guarding the fenceline brought back bad
memories of doing the same. Hahn had the worst weather in USAFE because we
were on top of a mountain range (icicles would grow sideways off the chain-
link fences due to the wind), and being out there for 12+ hours in the winter
was really unpleasant. The trick was to get one of the WW-II era metal helmets
larger than you needed so you'd have room for a couple of knit caps
underneath.

[0] [http://www.mil-airfields.de/germany/hahn-air-base.html](http://www.mil-
airfields.de/germany/hahn-air-base.html)

[1] [http://www.forgottenairfields.com/germany/rhineland-
palatina...](http://www.forgottenairfields.com/germany/rhineland-
palatinate/koblenz/pferdsfeld-s491.html)

~~~
bogomipz
Great pics in those links. Are Hahn and Pferdsfel still in active use then? Or
did those wind down after reunification?

~~~
dmurray
Hahn is now a civilian international airport, mostly for low cost airlines
like Ryanair, sometimes referred to as Frankfurt-Hahn.

~~~
chiph
Yeah, there's a bit of misdirection in that name - if you land there expecting
to be in Frankfurt am Main - there's a 90 minute bus ride ahead of you. But
the airfare is cheap.

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Isamu
This is a surprisingly interesting article about a time and place we don't
hear much of.

> In 1988, an A-10 went down over the little town of Remscheid, setting fire
> to several buildings and killing five people on the ground. I remember an
> evening news comment that the “images remind you of a bombing raid.” There
> were rumors that the A-10 had carried uranium-coated ammunition. On the
> internet, you can still find some Remscheid truthers convinced that it was
> so.

Well, the depleted uranium round was one of the options for the A-10. But
"uranium-coated" sounds like a misunderstanding, as if they coated the bullets
to spread something radioactive around. But depleted uranium is used because
of its density. The fragments are highly toxic though.

From an A-10 site: Using the cannon, the A-10 is capable of disabling a main
battle tank from a range of over 6,500m. The cannon can fire a range of
ammunition, including armour-piercing incendiary rounds (API) weighing up to
0.75kg, or uranium-depleted 0.43kg API rounds.

~~~
walshemj
The du rounds are not highly toxic per se the radiation level is low you might
have some problems if you inhaled dust with uranium particles - if for say you
where in a tank hit by a du round - then again if you successfully bail out of
a brewed up tank any life after that is a bonus.

A mate of mine was in GW1 and told a story that he and some mates where
investigating a brewed up Iraqi tank - they jumped out when they realised that
not all the crew got out and one poor sods boots with feet inside where still
in the tank.

How ever the German Tungsten squeeze bore rounds used in ww2 also had the same
problem and a crashed burning plane probably kicks out a lot of potential
nasty chemicals

~~~
inferiorhuman
> The du rounds are not highly toxic per se the radiation level is low you
> might have some problems if you inhaled dust with uranium particles

Uranium itself is toxic. It also decays to Radon which is itself toxic.

~~~
nradov
Depleted uranium doesn't decay. That's kind of the whole point.

~~~
lostlogin
Agreed, but it isn’t all depleted. And once it is I’d rather not have it
around either.

~~~
walshemj
I am sure a MBT crew would disagree - they want the best round for killing
other MBT's

------
skookumchuck
The attitudes of Germans towards Americans, and vice versa, were completely
transformed from fear and distrust to friendship by the Berlin Airlift.

The hedge-hopping was risky but accepted because that's how you evade enemy
radar and anti-aircraft batteries. They had to ensure the Soviets knew they
couldn't win an air attack on the west.

~~~
chiph
The Germans really put up with a lot. When armored convoys went through towns,
there was usually a jeep with a junior officer following them, and he would
write checks to property owners that suffered damage (perhaps an Abrams would
cut a corner too closely and knock over a fence or the corner of a building).

The damage wasn't all one way - one REFORGER exercise a crew in an M-113
personnel carrier were killed because they failed to lower their antenna
before crossing a rail line with it's electric wire overhead.

~~~
skookumchuck
> The Germans really put up with a lot.

I'm sure they did. But they also had recent experience with what it was like
to be invaded by the Soviets, and knew what was going on under Soviet
domination in the DDR. You'd put up with a clipped corner now and then, too.

It's not really possible to have a well trained, ready military and not do
lots of hard training, and the hard training inevitably results in damage and
some deaths.

------
baxtr
I remember the low-altitude flyovers in West Germany too well. It was as if
you’d live in a war zone (or I guess more like as of you’d live close to a war
zone).

~~~
dingaling
I remember we were told that all critical facilities in the border areas were
spaced wider than a 20 kilotonne blast radius. That really brought home the
nature of the threat.

------
toss1
Definitely interesting article. Notes about an author he'd read seemed
prescient:

>Pausewang wrote one more dystopian novel in which the Nazis had come back to
power, and that in some way made explicit what these books had been about all
along. Never again were young Germans to close their eyes before some change
in the macroclimate. Pausewang was turning the children of the 1980s into
little Geiger counters ready to register the faintest contaminants.

Turns out the inoculation is well-needed as the Nazis return in the guise of
the Alt-Right, across the EU and US (and promoted by Russian bot armies).

~~~
toss1
Interesting, this is getting to be a distinct pattern. Even in even in
otherwise innocuous comments, every mention of known activity by a certain
country to undermine western democracies & alliances, is downvoted.

~~~
dang
That's likely because it's flamebait that leads to partisan flamewars, which
are off topic and destructive of the site.

Also: the HN guidelines ask you not to post insinuations about astroturfing,
shillage, and so on, unless you have actual evidence of abuse, in which case
you should email us at hn@ycombinator.com so we can investigate.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

~~~
toss1
Thanks for the tip -- definitely not my intent to start partisan flamewars (my
actual intent is to raise awareness of these influences and tactics). Seems
like that's out of context, so I'll refrain.

As to the consistent downvoting for mentions of a certain country's online
influence campaigns, I've got insufficient data to make a hard accusation,
just a handful of starkly consistent data points and no way that I've noticed
to track downvoters (is there one I don't know about?).

Thanks!

