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German Air Force signal intelligence 1956: A museum of comint and sigint
Cryptologia, Jul 1999 by van der Meulen, Michael
The most difficult, and at the moment least organized, part is the archive. The Association cooperates with the Federal Military Archive and collections at the Navy and Army Signal School and others. The documents of the former NVA are unclassified, but the Association is still in the process of getting formerly highly classified material declassified, a slow and thorny task.22 The exhibition ranges over 12 areas on the two floors of Building 112. The ground plans of both floors are shown in Figures 2 and 3. The exhibition is not limited to the rooms but extends into the corridors presenting details and contributing much to the atmosphere of the museum. At the evaluation center the impression is created that work is continuing every minute and the enemy air situation is being updated. The workplaces are equipped to the last detail of forms, stamps, filing cabinets with files, handbooks, service manuals, dictionaries and whatever is needed for daily work. In this room, the visitor can imagine the excitement when, in 1968, then-private 1st class Hans Frommer was one of the first (from the Air Force) to report the invasion of the Soviet Army in Czechoslovakia to the duty watch officer.23
Area 1: Tradition of COMINT and ELINT of the Air Force;
Area 2: HF-Intelligence, Direction Finding and SIGINT evaluation, Air Force and NVA;
Area 3: Air Traffic Intelligence VHF/UHF/HF;
Area 4: ELINT, RADAR;
Area 5: Intelligence Directional Radio, Data Transmission procedures;
Area 6: Airborne Collection and Analysis;
Area 7: Situation Evaluation, Report;
Area 8: Communication Radio, Phone, Data Transmission, Directional Radio;
Area 9: Operation Support, Engineering, Workshop;
Area 10: Operation Support, Data Processing;
Area 11: Electronic Warfare;
Area 12: Amateur Radio.
IV. SELECTED ITEMS
The count of exhibited hardware and documents of the museum and archive exceeds a thousand, and the author admits that he chose the items illustrated biased on his own interests.
Everyone concerned with the subject of COMINT/SIGINT will find hardware and support materiel to match his interests, such as the report books , the Russian receiver (Figure 4), and the Russian visual RDF (Figure 5). To illustrate the whole museum would require an entire book.
The reunification of Germany included the takeover of the Nationale Volksarmee24 (NVA) with predictable results. With the reunification, the Bundeswehr got its hands on NVA equipment of Russian manufacture, accounting for the Russian items shown.
The SIGINT towers of the Air Force were the main listening posts for intercepting communication signals for many years. Today the old towers are no longer active but are utilized as training facilities for new operators. However, the design of the Schneeberg towers is presented in panels. The Schneeberg, a hill of the Fichtelgebirge range, belonged to Signal Sector E during the period 1959 to 1993. The construction of the concrete tower started in 1963 and replaced the interim structures.
Workplaces and installments were distributed on several floors within the towers and the base building. Not only did the Air force use the SIGINT towers but the facilities were shared with the Federal Intelligence Service. The earliest intercepted Russian and East German radio traffic was HF-Morse and a former workplace is reconstructed at the museum (Figure 6). It is fully functional and outfitted to last detail including official empty report forms. The operator can just sit down, listen in, and fill out Intercept Report Telegraphy (Morse) forms.
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