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Hi Roy, Back in the days of the cold war we would get detachments to RAF Gatow in Berlin to fly Scout Helicopters around the wall and Border Fence,
They were fitted with cameras and I/R sensors,
At night we would drive to Templehof and fit out a US Army Huey with our gear and fly around the City perimeter, It got some quite interesting reactions from the East German soldiery in their towers
In the Hanger was a long timber Workbench with labels above sectioned areas of the bench, from memory they read Me-109/e/g then FW- 190 G, adjacent to these labels were the tags for Tempest, Meatbox, Sabre.
In the Airman's barracks were the original Rifle Racks.
I signed out a set of personal wheels in the shape of a Berlin Brigade 3 cylinder DKW Jeep ideal for driving in a big city.
Oh by the way I have every confidence the top will fit, Have you chosen the right sized hammer yet?
Shaun.

Great stories Shaun!

Reminded me of the story about the Military Liaison officers in East Germany tasked with gathering data and pics about Soviet forces and equipment. You can listen to one of them Michael Ennis speaking here:

https://www.spymuseum.org/multimedia/sp ... t-germany/

Apparently it was often a game of high-stakes poker, which once ended badly, for Maj Arthur Nicholson, who was shot by a Soviet sentry and died.

Each of the Four powers in Germany had a "Military Mission Team" the British Mission was named "Brixmis" the Soviet team was named "Soxmis",
Brixmis ran out of Potsdam in Berlin and in my time they mainly used big old Green Chevs,
I would love to tell some of the things that happened but even now the official secrets act causes me to hold back,
I can say that a certain Soviet Military vehicle was discovered under a railway flat car tarpaulin in a Dresden Marshalling yard one night (Don't ask) and was photographed and detailed drawings made in situ, The vehicle came as a total surprise to the Intelligence debriefer's when the team got back to base.
Soldiers in West Germany were under orders to block any "Soxmis" vehicle seen near any military installation and to call the MPs,
The allied teams in East Germany had a much harder time if they were seen in that kind of situation.
There was great fun to be had overtaking Soviet Army Convoys with the driver running flat out along side the Soviet vehicles with the L/O shouting at him to slow down at the next transporter I want a photograph and all the time the Russian drivers were trying to force the car off the road
Shaun.

jarndice wrote:Hi Roy, Back in the days of the cold war we would get detachments to RAF Gatow in Berlin to fly Scout Helicopters around the wall and Border Fence,
They were fitted with cameras and I/R sensors,
At night we would drive to Templehof and fit out a US Army Huey with our gear and fly around the City perimeter, It got some quite interesting reactions from the East German soldiery in their towers
In the Hanger was a long timber Workbench with labels above sectioned areas of the bench, from memory they read Me-109/e/g then FW- 190 G, adjacent to these labels were the tags for Tempest, Meatbox, Sabre.
In the Airman's barracks were the original Rifle Racks.
I signed out a set of personal wheels in the shape of a Berlin Brigade 3 cylinder DKW Jeep ideal for driving in a big city.
Oh by the way I have every confidence the top will fit, Have you chosen the right sized hammer yet?
Shaun.

I went though Checkpoint Charlie back in 1988; the year before the Wall finally came down (really wish I'd seen that in the flesh..er ..concrete, I mean). I almost expected to see Orson Welles lurking in the shadows, with Joseph Cotten. As we passed though the maze of barriers, that were part of some sort of filtration process, the hapless guy in a macintosh just ahead of us, was having a packet of kleenex x-rayed. How bizarre is that?.Was sneezing illegal in the East, I wondered? Hmm..mayve the tissues had secret ciphers in them in invisible ink. Ciphers that only became legible when sneezed upon....
I was then instructed to drive our camper van at no more than 5kmh to the next set of sentry posts, where our passports had arrived by some weird conveyer belt system.
We were then asked for the fourth time how many people were on board (me , the ex- and two kids..in fact). I think they were hoping to admit that we had a spy with us hidden somewhere in the van, The rest of the trip was just as bizarre. Everything was a nightmarish grey version of the West, complete with old bullet holes, sometimes.., and seen through an omnipresent fug of Trabant two-stoike smoke. There were guard towers everywhere sporting machine guns and expressionless guards.., and it was as if every war film I'd ever seen
had finally come to life, with me playing a starring role..
Instead of having traffic police cars at intervals by the Motorways, they had tanks, camouflaged and stashed behind bridges and in culverts.
What really struck me, though, was that the guards wore exactly the same uniforms that the Wehrmacht had worn in WW2. Had it had not been for the soviet pattern helmets, I could have been walking though the Germany of 1943...

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