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From Ron Chiste in 2005:
6th Bn, 40th Field Artillery, 3AD
I've kept the enclosed Overseas Weekly (or OW)
article from 1971 all these years because I knew no one would
believe my story. OW was a tell-all, civilian-owned tabloid
published in Frankfurt during the 1960's and 1970's for U.S.
forces in Europe. The paper did have regular, often credible,
"whistled-blowing" stories. This was one of them. I
know, because I was there.
At the time I was the Battery Executive Officer and in charge
of a battery nuclear weapons assembly team stationed at Francoise
Kaserne in Hanau. My unit was C Battery, 6th Bn, 40th Artillery,
3rd Armored Division, which operated the M110, 8-inch (203mm),
self-propelled howitzer. We had an assembly training room located
in a single-story building situated near the center of the kaserne,
which was well-guarded and surrounded by a high wall. The windowless
building had thick masonry walls, and heavy, well-locked doors.
It housed other similar rooms that were used by two other battery's
for the same purpose, which was to train in the assembly of 8-inch
nuclear howitzer shells. Our particular room was also used by
a separate assembly team that trained for the Red-Eye missile,
which was a non-nuclear, shoulder-launched anti-aircraft missile,
but also Secret in terms of its technology.
Our room did not contain actual nuclear 8-inch shells. These
were kept at a NATO storage bunker at the nearby Fliegerhorst
Kaserne in Hanau. Nor were there actual Redeye's in our room.
Our teams trained instead with exact replica's, or simulators,
of each weapon, to include the most minute detail of their internal
workings. There were also technical manuals and other Secret
or Classified documents in the room.
All of this serves as background for what happened on a Monday
morning in July of 1971. My team of four enlisted assemblers
and I, having come from breakfast, unlocked the padlocked door
to our training room. There was a moment of stunned silence,
and a kind of a mutual "holy s--t!!" Our normally,
neat and clean room was in disarray, and there was dust and debris
on the floor in one area. And, to my astonishment, above that
area was a rope or cord hanging from the ceiling where there
was a hole large enough for a man to squeeze through.
It took only a few seconds to realized that someone had broken
in through the ceiling. I have to admit that a kind of panic
set in as we began to realize that storage cases for both 8-inch
nuclear simulators and the Redeye's had been opened. Our files
for training manuals and other documents had been rifled through.
And it only got worse. An 8-inch simulator had been opened (the
shell casing removed), exposing its internal parts, and, along
with a board used to also display the nuclear components, were
set up on a work table -- as if to be photographed. Nearby, there
was a Redeye simulator exposed and set up the same way -- as
if to be photographed. Some of the documents could also have
easily gone onto film. Though offering no solace, we would later
determine that, with the exception of a missing manual for the
8-inch weapon, nothing had been stolen.
Needless to say, we notified kaserne security and Battalion
S-2 (intelligence) immediately, and stood by as the kaserne was
locked down - no one could come in or out of the garrison, except
swarms of Army investigators and more guards. Somehow, only our
room had been broken into. In the following days and weeks, I
noticed no mention of the break-in by Stars & Stripes
or 3AD's Spearhead Newspaper. As far as I know, only OW
published the story, but it did no follow-up article about
results of any investigation. I know nothing about a later investigation
by personnel from the Pentagon. The event quickly drifted into
complete oblivion, as far as exposure to the public.
My concern would never wan. To this day, I marvel at the daring
that this break in took, and I wonder how such a miserable lapse
of security by kaserne personnel could occur. And I wonder where
the photos and information went -- surely to the Soviet Union
or East Germany. I wonder how much, if any, of the 8-inch shell
information was used by the Soviets in the area of technology
where the U.S. was then clearly superior - miniaturized nuclear
weapons - and the 8-inch was just that. Could that information
from a small Army kaserne in Hanau in 1971 still be out there
- but now in non-Russian hands? The incident has so affected
me, that I've recently written a novel exploring such possibilities.
It's a good read if it ever gets published.
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