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Some light entertainment. What did you do during the Cold War, daddy?

Canada's National Film Board and the Department of Nat'l Defense filmed this. It was shot at CFB Baden, West Germany, in and around the base. It's a bit grainy, but I found it on Youtuber. It was filmed in the early 1980s, but looks straight out of WWII! I have triple checked this video, but cannot see myself anywhere!

If you look closely, you will see the various air weapons and personal weapons we used. Can you spot the SMGs? How about the 2.75 inch rockets? Others?

Admittedly, it's cheesy. Especially with Col Jack Frazer issuing orders throughout. He was the base commander. He went on to be a federal MP in BC, I believe.

Some of the footage was pieced together from other film shoots, or shot to pad out the production. There is a scene where weapons are being towed to the flight line from the bomb dump (possibly by me) for loading on the flight line (possibly by me). One of the weapons that rolled by was napalm. We were still using it back then, but it never got loaded for exercises, or if the balloon actually went up. Napalm doesn't keep and has to be mixed prior to use. Still, it was a hoot to watch everyone mug for the cameras here.

You will see old timey M904 bomb fuzes, BL755 British made cluster bombs, and other stuff, but you have to watch carefully.

Au bon marché! Enjoy.

A lifetime ago!!
Never had a Germany posting but was in Lahr for 8 weeks on course in 1980.
They held a Snowball while there, we had no gear, no weapons, no position. They forgot about us, friggin hilarious.
Jeff

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

Old times there not soon forgotten....

Look away! Deutsch-e-land!

I was quite surprised to see the number of Internets pix from the 1970s and 1980s in and around Baden.

We managed to muddle our way through the callout. We reported to the hospital as per what we assumed would be appropriate just to be sent back to the shack for the duration.
Looking back on it all, I'm not surprized that it was a schiett show. You would think that they would be better organized given the Cold War state of affairs.
I always thought the CF-104s looked pretty cool. Much like the cars and trucks of those days, aircraft still had a distinct character to them.
Jeff

If I could go back in time, I would have passed on a Germany posting. I came out top three in my trades class and got the posting I wanted. But one cannot go back, and we played the cards we were dealt.

I did get to tour a lot though.

Quite the look back! I had a CO that got a chance to fly the F-104 (as well as the F-101) when he did a joint tour at the USAF Test Pilot School. He loved it but said at 250 kts you were out of airspeed and ideas.

We flew with the CF-18's at Comox AB quite a bit to provide EW training and then with the CT-33's to provide EW training to our and your ships. They had a radar signal simulator in the nose. We would carry an AST-6 pod to simulate a Mirage or whatever else was needed then we would kiss the CT-33's off and they would radiate Exocet seekers and close on the ship. We'd then switch to Exocet and then screen with our normal ALQ-99 jamming to simulate large scale jamming for the crews to work through. A lot of fun flying low over the water at 200' and 500 kts.

Here's a picture I took over San Clemente Island. Mostly the Canadian crews were happy to be at Miramar in San Diego in February I think! The orange pod on my wingmans station #1 is a TACTS pod for range telemetry and recording the exercise. Good times indeed.

We were still flying the 104 and the 101 well past their best before date! It hardly seems possible, but one could say that about F-18s now.

I was stationed in Comox from 1988 to 1992, but was with 407 Sqn. They are an anti-submarine warfare unit, flying the Aurora (P-3).

All my flying was as a Flight Medic. Lots of missions on Huey's, Griffons and just before retirement, on the Gazelle the Brits fly in Suffield. The vast majority of my time though is on Hercs, tactical out of Sarajevo and intercontinental medevacs on the Air Bus. Absolutely love the Herc!
We also spent an interesting day flying on the AWAC as observers for a Maple Flag while in Edmonton. That was a cool day, put a different perspective on how an air battle unfolds.
While in Bosnia, I flew one mission on a Hip as it was the only airframe available on short notice that day. Sketchy!
Jeff