Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Canada 1 CAG Story (1 Cdn Air Group)

Yeah, they weren't good with guests.

I might have been there when you were in Lahr. We used to deploy from Baden on what they called "Southern Safari". We used to play a game called musical locks. The artillery in Lahr used the hardened aircraft shelters for normal operations, but would deploy when a Snowball was called. We had to go to the Lahr airfield, cut the locks off the HAS doors, clean all the mud and dirt that fell off their vehicles, in preparation for the arrival of the planes.

We could never get the keys.

Every time we deployed, The warrant would send one of us to their garrison duty office. There was a duty gunner, duty bombardier, duty master bombardier, duty sergeant and a duty WO/MWO. "What do you want?" We'd ask for the keys, which they would deny us. We would go back to our boss and tell them. One of our senior NCOs would use bolt cutters, remove their locks and put new locks on the bldg. After the exercise was over, we'd leave, the battery would return, cut the locks off the HAS doors and park their muddy, FOD encrusted vehicles back inside.

Every trip was the same. The lock budget must have been thousands of dollars.

I found a couple of pictures. The first is a CF-104 in front of a HAS (Hardened Aircraft Shelter)



The second is our bartender Helmut at the Ambassador Lounge. AKA the Airmen's Club