Photo By Amy Stork | Aerial view of Bad Aibling Station, Bavaria. (Courtesy photo)... read more read more
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by Fiona G. Holter, USAICoE Staff Historian
On September 30, 2004, the U.S. Army closed Bad Aibling Station (BAS) in Bavaria, ending a fifty-two-year American intelligence presence on the World War II German airfield.
Bad Aibling was first established in 1936 by the Third Reich as an airfield to support military operations. The airfield was home to the Luftwaffe’s Messerschmidt BF-109 fighters during both the Spanish Civil War and the Second World War. After the war, the U.S. Army occupied BAS, initially using it as a prisoner-of-war camp and discharge station. The Third Army established an interrogation center on the base to interrogate and interview Nazi soldiers, including captured members of the Wehrmacht’s signal intelligence service. Control of the station then transferred to the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration and the International Refugee Organization, which worked to release prisoners and supported humanitarian efforts in the region by housing displaced persons and orphans on the station.
In 1952, the Army Security Agency’s (ASA) 328th Communication Reconnaissance Company (CRC) assumed command of BAS. Three years later, when Austria declared its neutrality and outlawed the presence of foreign military bases in their country, the U.S. Army relocated its communications capabilities in Austria to Bad Aibling. The latter then became a vital Cold War communications monitoring center. For the next twenty years, the Bad Aibling field station continued to operate until the ASA began to drawdown its European operations in 1972. The ASA then transferred its remaining operations to Field Station Augsburg and, for the remainder of the Cold War, the National Security Agency became the primary occupant of BAS.
On August 17, 1994, the U.S. Army Intelligence and Security Command (INSCOM) took command of BAS, once again bringing the post under Army control. For the next ten years, INSCOM primarily focused on rapid radio relay and secure communications, as well as the test and
evaluation of communication equipment. During the many contingency operations in Europe during the 1990s, the command’s presence at BAS allowed military intelligence units to “provid[e] timely, tailored, and actionable intelligence to deployed U.S., NATO, and multinational forces.”
By 2001, the Department of Defense decided to combine the operations at Bad Aibling with similar efforts at Menwith Hill Station in England and announced the closure of BAS for September 2002. After the terrorist attacks on 9/11, however, Congress halted the closure of the field station, allowing the 108th MI Group, in command at BAS, to support operations in the Global War on Terrorism.
Closure procedures eventually began, however, and in April 2004, the Army held a farewell festival at BAS to celebrate the long history of U.S. military operations on the post and to honor the local residents who became like “a small family.” On 20 September 2004, the station officially closed and the site was turned over Germany. Bad Aibling Station is now a German satellite tracking station, operated by a signal intelligence unit of Germany’s Federal Intelligence Service.
| Date Taken: | 09.27.2022 |
| Date Posted: | 09.27.2022 13:03 |
| Story ID: | 430175 |
| Location: | FORT HUACHUCA, ARIZONA, US |
| Web Views: | 2,173 |
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