Action Lindwurm

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Guard building with tower of the SAS Clausen.

During Operation Steel Box (also: Operation dragon) were in the year 1990 poison gas grenades from the US military depot near the town Clausen ( Rheinland-Pfalz , district Südwestpfalz ) over the Miesau Army Depot for Lower Saxony Harbor Nordenham transported. From there they were shipped to the Johnston Atoll in the Pacific for later destruction .

prehistory

For years, camped in the US - Depot NATO Site 59 near the town Clausen various warfare agents, including 400 tons of the deadly nerve agents acting VX and sarin . A total of 102,000 poison gas grenades were transported away.

The citizens and politicians in Clausen were not aware that the depot was storing toxins. Even demonstrators ran up in front of a wrong camp for years, because it was suspected in the early 1980s that the chemical warfare agents were also in the Fischbach camp (Southwest Palatinate district), where so-called “ special weapons ” in the form of nuclear warheads were stored.

In 1983, the United States Department of Defense finally confirmed the existence of chemical weapons in Germany.

The withdrawal of chemical weapons was preceded by an agreement between the then heads of government, US President Reagan and Chancellor Kohl in 1986. According to this, all chemical weapons of the US military stationed in the Federal Republic of Germany should be withdrawn and destroyed outside the country by 1992 at the latest. Then the planning for the transport began, which took a total of three years. Among other things, all planned vehicles had to be checked for their safety and the planned traffic routes blocked. On March 6, 1989, the US Secretary of State James Baker announced in Vienna an instruction from President George HW Bush , who has been in office since that year , that a faster removal of these weapons was intended.

Removal and destruction

Transportation by road

For the removal, three possible routes came into the closer planning:

For a long time it was unclear whether the route via the not yet completed federal motorway 62 could even be used. It was only shortly before the start of the operation that this stretch was selected as the main route, as it was expected to have the fewest obstacles in ongoing traffic. Since the road between the Hörnchenberg tunnel and the motorway junction was still not completed, this section was given a particularly graveled surface. During the operation, it was decided every day which route was used on each day. Once, when a sniffer dog noticed something suspicious on the route scheduled for that day, another was used. Beginning on July 26, 1990, the toxins were transported away with trucks at walking pace through the narrow streets of Clausen and then mainly on the federal highway 62 . From there it went via the federal highway 6 to the Miesau Army Depot . Most of the containers were removed via the main route due to the minor problems. The procedure took a total of 28 days.

Transport by rail

From September 12th, trains took over the transport to the North Sea. The depot itself is connected to the railway network via a siding. The grenades had to be stored in special capsules. In order to exclude any impairment of the electrical operation in the network of the German Federal Railroad , it was also decided to carry out the removal completely with two diesel locomotives of the 218 series . The Kaiserslautern railway depot was responsible for this and received locomotives from the Karlsruhe, Munich and Nuremberg federal railway departments. In addition, a route was set that should avoid densely populated regions such as the Ruhr area . Accordingly, the transport took place via Ludwigshafen, Worms, Darmstadt, Aschaffenburg, Gießen, Kassel, Löhne and Bremen.

The operation lasted until September 19 and was always performed in the evening and at night. Several security measures were included in the planning, so there was always an escort train for all transports, and emergency braking, fires and a terrorist attack were simulated before the actual removal.

Further measures

During this operation, helicopters , the police , the Federal Border Police , the railway police , medical escort of the Bundeswehr, specially assembled units from various Bundeswehr fire brigades , as well as a number of Bundeswehr NBC tracer tanks were used . In addition, the airspace was secured by the FlaRakGrp 42 with Roland surface-to-air missiles .

They were then transported by train to the port of Nordenham in Lower Saxony , where they were shipped and brought to the Johnston Atoll in the Pacific for later destruction .

Critical voices

The US military tried to symbolize the doubting citizens in Clausen and on the railway lines with modern technology. In contrast, when examining the tractors used for removal, the German authorities found some massive safety deficiencies such as defective brakes.

After the withdrawal

Clausen, former US depot, memorial plaque

In 1990 the withdrawal was celebrated with a big ceremony in Clausen. The then Federal Chancellor Helmut Kohl was one of the guests. A memorial to peace was erected next to the depot, consisting of a cross made of red sandstone and a memorial plaque. All those involved in work, both on the German and the American side, received a non-wearable, bronze commemorative medal.

literature

  • Fritz Engbarth: From the Ludwig Railway to the Integral Timed Timetable - 160 Years of the Railway in the Palatinate . 2008, p. 41–43 ( Online [PDF; 4.1 MB ; accessed on November 29, 2013]).

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Jochen Badelt: cbw chronology: January - December 1990
  2. ↑ 49 ° 15'53 "N 7 ° 42'46" E
  3. ^ DOD's successfull efforts to remove US chemical weapons from Germany. United States General Accounting Office, Washington DC 1991.
  4. ↑ a b c dc-ramstein.de: OPERATION STEEL BOX . Retrieved November 29, 2013 .
  5. ↑ a b Fritz Engbarth: From the Ludwig Railway to the Integral Timed Timetable - 160 Years of the Railway in the Palatinate . 2007, p. 41 .
  6. ↑ a b bahnpolizeiderdb.de.tl: Large scale operation of the railway police - transport order: "Action Lindwurm" . Retrieved November 29, 2013 .
  7. ↑ Fritz Engbarth: From the Ludwig Railway to the Integral Timed Timetable - 160 Years of the Railway in the Palatinate . 2007, p. 42 .
  8. ↑ Chronicle FlaRakGrp 42 1990–1995
  9. ↑ Website for the commemorative medal