Austria Divided

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Over the next little while, I'll be posting my recently finished alternate history of post WWII Austria.

I'm in the process of editing and reworking sections of it and will be posting the reworked sections as I have them finished.

Along the way, I will also be posting some profiles of some of the subjects that appear in the story. Those profiles were done by Apophenia unless otherwise stated.

Sit back and enjoy 

All comments welcomed

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Introduction:

At the beginning of 1940, Austria found itself in the unfortunate position of not only having been essentially annexed by Germany, but also of watching the eastern front of the war pushing further westward towards it.

The Soviets had managed to position themselves so far west by systematically undermining the governments of the Bucharest Alliance, a tripartite body established in 1937 that consisted of Czechoslovakia, Poland and Romania. In 1939, a deal was struck to allow Soviet “assistance regiments” to be based inside Bucharest Alliance territory as a form of bolstering the existing forces against further German attacks.

In the military context, the Soviet regiments were quite helpful in deflecting and detering German attempts to push further eastward. However, politically, the Soviet presence proved to be the undoing of the Bucharest Alliance. By early 1940, the Soviets had successfully undermined the governments of all three countries. Britain formally cut ties with the Bucharest Alliance and the world formally recognised the body as defunct later the same year.

With nothing to stop them and a well equiped, though quite captive, force of non Soviet militia at their disposal; the Soviets systematically occupied the various countries south into the Balkans. Hungary was the first country to fall and officially surrendered in 1940.

In August of 1941, from bases in southwestern Czechoslovakia and western Hungary, the Soviets launched several heavy bombing missions into eastern Austria and all but flattened Vienna and Graz. German resistance had been pushed back to a point just west of Linz and the entire eastern section of Austria found itself under the Soviet bootheel by December of that year.

The Soviets quickly set up a land blockade that streched from Linz to Trieste to keep the Germans from trying to retake Austria and their former Balkan holdings. A treaty was signed between the allies and the Soviets stipulating that the Soviets would come no further west than that blockade line; they were to deter and deflect German attacks from that point, nothing more. To the surprise of many, the Soviets help up their end of that bargain. The blockade remained firmly in place, and grew more fortified, through the rest of the war and beyond.

At the end of hostilities in 1945, the eastern portion of Austria was still firmly in Moscow’s grasp. Despite several diplomatic attempts on the part of the west; Moscow staunchly refused to give up it’s hold on the territory.

The post war world adjusted to the idea of a divided Austria. An idea that would remain in place for many years.


Aircraft such as this Czechoslovak Avia Hurikan variant were used extensively by Bucharest Alliance forces in the occupation of eastern Austria.

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A Strong Foundation:

From it’s establishment in the late 19th century until the occupation of Austria by Germany in the 1930s and 40s; the Social Democratic Worker’s Party of Austria, SDAPO, enjoyed consistant support and influence in Austrian political circles.

In spite of being banned and heavily persecuted from 1934 to 1945, support remained strong and SDAPO reclaimed it’s position in post war Austrian politics.

Post war Austria lay divided into a Democratic west and a Socialist east. The West had quickly come under the wing of NATO and was placed under British and Canadian zoning with Salzburg established as the capital.

Meanwhile, in the east, the old capital of Vienna was largely in ruins and was in no condition to immediately be used as a capital. Members of the pre war SDAPO who had escaped German occupied Austria by being granted refuge in neighboring countries returned shortly after Soviet and Bucharest Alliance forces successfully overtook the eastern section in March of 1942. Linz was proclaimed as the provisional capital of Austria until some degree of order could be brought back to Vienna.

However, the SDAPO of post war Austria was not at all the SDAPO that Austria had known before. Indeed; politically, socially and geographically very little of postwar Austria bore any resemblance to what had gone before.

That SDAPO survived the war in any form at all was due largely in part to the Soviet presence and their growing influence in the region. Had Soviet influence not found some foothold in Czechoslovakia and, subsequently, Hungary; the members of SDAPO could very well have been helpless to find any meaningful shelter in either country. Growing Soviet influence and power all but guaranteed that they could find safe havens.

While SDAPO had been an independent and legitimate political entity on it’s own merits prior to the war; the SDAPO that emerged in the wake of the war was little more than a shell of any previous incarnation of the organization. It became undeniably clear that it was nothing more than a front that was taking orders straight from Moscow.

This did not meet with the approval of many of the party members that had come together to reform it. A few early objectors and their families were quickly imprisoned, or worse, and labeled “disidents” to serve as an example to others who might have been thinking of speaking out.

The Linz Line:

Slightly west of Linz, and continuing south along the Italy/Yugoslavia border to Trieste, was the fortified zone established by the Soviet and Bucharest Alliance forces to prevent German forces from returning to Austria or trying to retake any of their old Balkan territories.

The line actually stopped short of the border between Germany,Czechoslovakia and Austria. As the primary purpose of the line was more to keep Germany out of the Balkans than anything else, the northern terminus of it was slightly northwest of Linz. Areas north of that were patrolled regularly by aircraft rather than further fortified.

Many wealthy and well connected Austrians, and Austrian politicians, left Austria’s east portion via the gap north of the Linz terminus. This window, however, closed rapidly after the end of WWII.

In late 1946, the Venice Accord was enacted. The Soviet forces were showing no indication of any willingness to disolve the fortified region, SDAPO had no power whatsoever to order them to leave and the victorious allies had no intrest in aggravating what were already tense relations with Moscow.

Italy, who had actually called for the accord, felt it in their intrests to support a more fortified line between their territiory and the Balkan Peninsula which had, in it’s entirety, come under Moscow’s grip. Not only did Italy wish to protect herself from a potentially very dangerous neighbor, but also to prove herself as a former enemy who could now be trusted.

The Venice Accord formalised the conversion of the fortified line into a much more permanent structure with a demilitarised zone on either side of it. The accord also approved the extension of the structure and zone north to the border of Germany,Czechoslovakia and Austria.

With the formal establishment of the Linz Line, the new states of  West Austria (Federal Republic of Austria) and East Austria (Austrian Socialist People’s Republic) were born and internationally recognized in mid 1947.

Guardianship of “The Twins”:

“The Twins”, as the two Austrias were often informally refered to in western European political circles, quickly became subject to large scale military build up.

West Austria was split into a Britsh zone and a Canadian zone until a national military could be re-established and properly trained. In the most immediate post war years. The border between the provinces of the Salzburg and Tyrol was used to separate the British and Canadian zones. Salzburg and the sections of Upper Austria, Styria and Carinthia that lay to the west of the Linz line would be the British zone while the Canadian zone would consist of Tyrol and Vorarlburg.

Later, the Canadian zone was expanded in response to a period of higher political tension between Great Britain and West Austria in the late 1950s and early 1960s. This later rezoning gave Canada responsibility over Carinthia up to the Linz Line and the section of Salzburg that divided the two parts of Tyrol.

East Austria became signatory to the Warsaw Pact in 1955.

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East and West Austrian airpower of the late 1940s and Early 1950s

By no means a full cross section of military aircraft in use in either Austria at the time; here isa sampling of the more common types seen:

East Austria:


Avia Sv-2
Basic training aircraft of the East Austrian Air Force (LOVA) from the end of WWII until approximately 1955. It was also used to carry out a variety of utility tasks.


Yakovlev Yak-11
LOVA advanced trainer from late 1940s to mid 1960s. As with the Avia Sv-2, the Yak-11 found it's way into unit and station hack duties later in it's service life.


Messerschmitt Bf-109
Main fighter of LOVA from immediate post war to 1950 and carried on as a target tug until 1952. Worthy of note is that several LOVA Bf-109s were powered by Soviet Klimov engines.



Yakovlev Yak-23 "Flora"
LOVA's first, if short lived, jet powered aircraft. Exact service dates remain conjectural for the type's LOVA service, though most sources agree it was withdrawn from service in late 1954 or early 1955.
It's most notable role in LOVA hands was as a target tug for the Warsaw Pact's main air gunnery school at Souda Bay, Crete. In 1955, the school was moved to Cyprus and target tug duties were taken over by Il-28 bombers of the Hellenic Socialist Republic Air Force.

West Austria:


Mustang Mk.IV
Used by the West Austrian Air Force (OL) from the late 1940s to the mid 1960s, the former RCAF Mustangs carried out a wide variety of roles after their initial tasking as ground attack trainers was taken over by the DeHavilland Vampire. Several Mustangs found their way into museums and warbird collectors' hands after retirement from OL service.


Canadair Sabre Mk.4 and Mk.6
The backbone of OL air defence from the early 1950s to the mid 1960s, the Sabre replaced the Gloster Meteor completely in OL service. It was eventually replaced by Italian built F-104G variants.

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Immediate post-war and the  1950s:

Both Austrias had been very quickly equiped with tired, left over gear from the war. However, more modern equipment was being transferred in as soon as it could be made available.

While East Austria had initially been furnished with Yakovlev 17 and 23 aircraft for it’s air defence needs; the primary fighters for West Austria were DeHavilland Vampires and Gloster Meteors piloted mostly by RAF officers while Austrian pilots were being trained further west.

While the British zone skies buzzed with Meteors and Vampires, the Canadian zone was full of  Vampires and, to a lesser degree, Mustangs. West Austrian fighter pilots received their air to air training from the RAF in Britian and their air to ground training from the RCAF at home in Tyrol.

Soon, however, the Meteors, Vampires and Mustangs gave way to Canadiar Sabres and EE Canberras, The West Austrian air force was quickly furnished with and trained on the Sabre by Canadian crews. No sooner had the first Austrian Sabre units been set up when the British started training them on Canberras. This was just as well; the skies over East Austria had the MiG-15 as their new apex predator. It wasn’t just any MiG-15 either.

The East Austrian MiG-15 was produced by Steyr, who found themselves on the east of the Linz Line. The Steyr version dispensed with the three nose cannon of two different calibres in favor of a 30mm cannon in each wing root. It also had different communications and IFF systems; the mast and line antenna typical to most MiG-15s was absent and replaced by a pair of blade antennae on the fuselage underside below the cockpit and a pair of small blister type devices on the vertical tail.

A slightly later variation of the Steyr MiG included an infrared sighting system for an air to air missile of Austrian design. With this variant of the MiG-15, East Austria byspassed having any form of the MiG-17 in it’s inventory at all, opting to go directly to the MiG-19. The Steyr MiG-15, or St-150 Bolzen as it was properly known, was never exported.

After examining an example of this later Bolzen variant that had been used in a defection and detirmining that it was a cause for genuine concern, priority was placed on getting the new Hawker Hunter to RAF Austria units as quickly as possible.

At the same time, Canada was tasked with taking a more active and direct role in the air defence of West Austria. This was in no small way due to the fact the the Avro CF-100 interceptor was known about and very high priority was given to deploying it in Austrian territory. Not only was the CF-100 to counter the Bolzen, but also to deter the Illyushin Il-28 bombers that were becoming a more and more frequent sight along the border region.

Knowing also that The MiG-19 was on it’s way to East Austrian skies, but not knowing what form it would take should Steyr be tasked with producing it and allowed to take similar liberties with it as they did with the MiG-15, the West Austrian military made the decision that a dedicated interceptor would be a requirement for them. An order was placed for a fleet of CF-100 Mk.4 aircraft. Austria also placed an order for a fleet of Canadair built T-33 trainers at the same time.

While the first group of West Austrian CF-100 crews were in Canada training. A wing of the aircraft was established at RCAF Lienz. The first three Austrian CF-100 squadrons were set up at the newly opened air base at Reid, north east of Salzburg.

An additional three squadrons of the aircraft, now officially dubbed CF-100 Mk.4O, were established at Bischofshofen.

The CF-100 Mk.4O had a number of distinguishing features of local design that set it apart from the standard RCAF Mk.4B that it was based on. Chief among these were two hardpoints under each wing and improved wing tip rocket pods. It wasn’t unusual to see an Austrian Clunk sporting six of the locally designed and produced rocket pods at a time or a combination of four rocket pods under the wings and long range tanks on the wing tips.

The Austrians also successfully married the CF-100 to the DeHavilland Firestreak missile. It was a difficult marriage but, with the MiG-19 appearing in larger numbers in East Austria’s inventory in the late 1950s, an air to air missile of some sort was deemed essential by the West Austrian Defence Ministry. The Aim-7 Sparrow was showing quite limited performance in it’s early stages while the Firestreak was rather more sound.

The sale of the Firestreak to Austria did create a good deal of tension in relations with Britain. Initially, Britian insisted that the Firestreaks could not be purchased without an order for the Gloster Javelin aircraft. The Austrian crews were quite happy with their CF-100s and were in no hurry to give them up in favour of the Javelin, which had left Austrian pilots who had been sent to Britain on exchange to train on the type quite cold and underwhelmed.
After a good deal of wrangling, Britain agreed to a counter proposal in which they would sell the Firestreak to Austria in conjunction with an Austrian offer to purchase the Bloodhound SAM. However, damage in relations between the countries had been done and would be remembered.

The Firestreak armed CF-100 was a rare sight and the small fleet of aircraft that had been modified were distributed among the six Austrian squadrons. Part of the modifications was the replacement of the fuselage gun pack with a an avionics package for the missile. Typical configuartion would be fuel tanks on the wing tips with four missiles on the underwing pylons for rapid reaction scrambles or two missiles under the wings for standard patrols.

The most common duty for the Austrian CF-100s was shadowing Illyushin Il-14 aircraft that routinely flew along the border. The Illyushins were usually East Austrian or Soviet, but West Austrian crews more than once reported Czechoslovak ones as well. Frequently the Illyushins were in airline livery, but the suspicious lack of a predictable schedule for their flights indicated they weren’t always on airline business.

The MiG-19s were occaisionally encountered at a distance and were, for the most part, unprovocative. As with the Bolzen, the Steyr MiG-19 was first seen via a defector’s example. The pilot had set his aircraft down on a strip of road near Wels. He’d set out on a routine border patrol from his base at Selzthal and used the opportunity for his defection. The aircraft was quickly transported to Reid. The aircraft was based on the MiG-19S day fighter and had similar modifications to it’s communications and IFF systems as Steyr had made to the MiG-15’s, beyond that, the Austrian MiG-19, or St-190 in official terms, was much closer to the Soviet standard version than their MiG-15 had been to it’s Soviet counterpart.

According to the pilot, the St-190 had not been so radically modified as it had been built under much tighter supervision than the Bolzen had been. Styer had gotten themselves into some hot water with Moscow over the liberties they took with the MiG-15 modifications, the top management at Steyr was seriously restructured  prior to MiG-19 production starting . The task of supervising the Styer St-190 production line was given to Czechoslovak inspectors from the Avia company, which was producing most MiG-19s after the MiG bureau switch it’s emphasis to developing and producing the MiG-21.

This news was of no small relief to West Austria and western intrests in general. If their Bolzen was anything to go by, who could guess what a MiG-19 would come out like had Steyr been left to build them unsupervised.

While the 1950s had been a decade of intense development of the air and infantry elements of the West Austrian military; the armor and artilery aspects were left underdeveloped and in need of modernization. That, however, would change with the visible influx of more modern Soviet armored vehicles entering East Austrian service in the early 1960s.

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Steyr St-150 Bolzen
NATO codename: "Flintlock"

The East Austrian variation on the MiG-15 was a shock to many when first identified as something distinctly apart from the main MiG-15 line and it's exact nomenclature was initially a matter of great debate among western authorities.


This profile shows the camoflage that became standard to the Bolzen fleet between the late 1950s and late 1960s when they were taken from front line air defense duties and retasked as tactical strike trainers.


The Steyr Bolzen and Yak-11 in the above profile were involved in the dramatic defection of a high ranking LOVA officer in the late 1950s. The defection was successful after the Bolzen pilot chased the Yak to lower altitudes and subsequently crashed, killing the pilot.

[apophenia]

Excellent start 'north! Nice to see the 'Bubble-cane' again 

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Thanks!

Hopefully as things go on, later instalments might give you some inspiration for profiles of machines later in the story.

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The 1960s and Britan’s Cold Shoulder:

West Austria entered the 1960s with the map of it’s NATO divisions redrawn. The debacle over the Firestreak missile purchase was still a raw nerve between Britain and Austria. As a result, Britain had reduced it’s forces in the country and Canada took over responsibility for Carinthia up to the Linz Line and the section of Salzburg between the two parts of Tyrol.

Britain was also making it difficult for West Austria to support it’s existing equipment of British origin or to make make purchases of new gear. West Austria had to reduce it’s active fleet of Canberras and use older airframes for many spares as it was growing increasingly difficult to obtain them from Britain. A similar situation was facing the Hawker Hunters that West Austria had purchased, the fleet was relatively fresh but quickly turning into a real chore to keep airworthy. The effect was felt even more keenly in the helicopter end of things as the Westland Whirlwinds would need replacing, considering the myriad tasks they were used to carry out, finding a suitable replacement would certainly be difficult.

There was a similar problem in the air defence side. As popular as the CF-100 was with it’s crews, more supersonic types were being seen on the eastern side during border patrols. A subsonic interceptor, as good as the CF-100 was, just wasn’t going to get the job done. Sukhoi Su-7s and Yakovlev Yak-28s were becoming much more common along the Linz Line; West Austria needed a supersonic solution.

Canada had nothing to offer in replacement of the CF-100 as the Avro Arrow had been cancelled. The RAF would not be bringing any new air to air assets into West Austria nor selling any to them. The new English Electric Lightning, which West Austria was quite interested in, would clearly never be theirs.

A similar situation was affecting West Austrian ground forces who operated a large contingient of British armored and soft skinned vehicles. The Centurion tank was getting old and it’s ability to effectively fight the latest versions of the T-55 and the new T-62 tank were very much a concern.

While Britain had refused to sell West Austria any new air assets, the British aviation industry heading into a crisis of it’s own through the 60s, they were somewhat more willing to sell ground assets, but only somewhat. While the RAF’s presence in Austria was being scaled back, the Britsh army was still quite strong in the region and carried out routine excercises with the Austrian and Canadian army units.

Britain offered the new Vickers Chieftain MBT to West Austria in a deal which also included the FV432 infantry fighting vehicle. However, Britain offered them in substantially downgraded versions. West Austria declined and investigated other options for MBT/IFV combinations. The German Leopard MBT / SPz 12-3 and French AMX-30 MBT / AMX-VCI   were ultimately to be chosen from.

However, West Austria was heading into a socio-political crisis in the 1960s.

Salzburg in Flux:

Having spend the bulk of the 50s quite dependent on other NATO nations for defensive needs, many West Austrians were keen to find some way to show self sufficiency in some internationally visible and meaningful way. That the trade tensions between West Austria and Britain had spilled over from the military segment to other segments of the economy served to fuel the fire for self sufficiency that so many Weast Austrians were voicing a desire for.
Since the founding of West Austria, the Social Democratic Party of Austria (SPO) had been in charge in the halls of power in Salzburg. Supporting labour unions, high levels of state run industry and high government subsidies; they made life in West Austria look comfortable on the surface. The tourism and service industries that were powering the country’s economy were receiving very high government subsidies indeed. However, under the surface, the country was accumulating a large debt that the average citizen was starting to feel by the early 60s.

The right leaning Freedom Party of Austria (FPO) took full advantage of the growing debt to drum up support for itself. Touting ideas of Full self sufficency for West Austria and the removal of Britsh and Canadian militaries from Austrian soil. Further, they called for a wide segment of industries and services to be privatised and the generous government subsidies extensively curtailed.

In 1963, the FPO’s rhetoric was providing them only modest gains in popularity, they were working towards much higher support when the next national election was due in 1965. As it turned out, events over the next year or so would help their cause emensely.

The SPO was the heir apparent to the pre war SDAPO and much of West Austria’s work force were old enough to feel a certain loyalty to the old stalwart party. By 1963 and 1964, a new generation of young West Austrians were entering the work force, and the electorate, and found themselves in an uncomfortable and clearly stagnating work situation in the country. Promotions were very hard to come by and nepotism was running rampant in most work places.

Many young West Austrians left their homeland out of frustration and found greener pastures in other western European countries. Those who could not leave found themselves drawn to the FPO message. Many were already voting age, those who weren’t most likely would be by 1965.

The West Austrian military was facing not only an equipment crisis, but also a personell shortage. Young people weren’t interested in being conscripted into a military that was known to have old and difficult to service machinery, in fact many were very creative in the ways they found to avoid mandatory military service. A change of government could only help the military. The SPO didn’t seem to place the Austrian military’s needs at a very high priority while the FPO was promising to make sweeping modernisations to it.

West Austria was becoming more polarized politically in 1964. Demonstrations for or against the two parties were a regular occurrence in Salzburg. There were also more than a few demonstrations by young FPO supporters at British and Canadian bases telling the NATO forces to go home.

The Innsbruck Incident:

1964 was not all socio-political unrest. A welcome break came in the of that year’s Winter Olympic Games in the Tyrolean capital, Innsbruck. The event went well for the most part until a trio of aircraft were seen over one or two of the prominent venues a few days before the closing ceremonies.

To the casual observer, it was simply a familiar Britannia transport being escorted by a pair of equally familiar CF-100s, hardly worth a second look.

More savvy observers with good binoculars, and there were more than a few at the venues, could pick out a few more things about the trio: The CF-100s both had four Firestreaks each and the “Britannia” had red stars on the wings and a pair of peculiar pods on the fuselage.
As it turns out, they were witnessing the intercept of a Soviet Illyushin Il-18 that had made it deep into West Austrian territory before being detected. It had bypassed Salzburg based radar posts invisibly before a T-33 on a routine training mission made visual contact and reported it.
A pair of Austrian CF-100s on standby at Bischofshofen were scrambled and caught up to the Illyushin quickly.

The Austrian fighters tailed the Il-18 over the Alps and across the German Border. Just over the border, the Illyushin jettisoned both pods from it’s fuselage and another object through a chute in the aft fuselage. All three devices were destroyed upon hitting the ground.

The trio of aircraft were joined by a pair of Luftwaffe F-104 Starfighters fully armed for air to air intercepts and were escorted to Landsberg-Leck AB in Bavaria. Meanwhile, the German army dispached a unit into the Alps to recover whatever they could of the three devices the Soviet aircraft had dropped.

The Soviet crew of the aircraft were questioned at great length about their mission. The most they would say was that they were certainly NOT defectors and that their mission was to test radar jamming systems. They claimed the devices they dropped were the jamming pods and a communication relay device that sent the results of the test to a ground base. The Illyushin’s flight recorders had nothing on them to elaborate on the crew’s story. The crew was returned to East Austria without further incident.

Despite vain attempts to hush up the entire matter, several photographs had found their way into newspapers around the world. An international event, such as the Olympics were, attracted many professional photographers. There would be no hiding this incident from the world.

This incident would come back to haunt the SPO in 1965.

Vienna Ascending:

 Additonally, in September of 1964, Vienna had officially be reinstated as the capital of East Austria. While far from her former glory, she was back in order on all crucial fronts and ready to take back the mantle of capital. A political envoy from West Austria was invited to Vienna to attend the official reinstatement ceremony. For a moment, tensions eased and there was celebration by Austrians on both sides of the Linz Line at the news of Vienna getting back on her feet.

1965:

The FPO had been spouting their usual rhetoric through 1964 and certainly didn’t squander any opportunity to use the “Innsbruck Incident” as fuel to demonstrate that the SPO wasn’t taking national security seriously enough to furnish the nation’s military with modern equipment that would have detected the Il-18 before it crossed into West Austrian space and turned it away at the border.

More young people sympathetic to the FPO were joining the electorate. There was also a growing FPO sentiment within the ranks of the West Austrian military as well. Being made to work with British equipment that Britain was no longer supporting was causing frayed nerves right to the top ranks of the Defence Ministry.

The Salzburg Standoff:

National elections were scheduled for October of 1965. The various parties, including the SPO and FPO, were putting their campaigns into high gear.

Things went smoothly until the SPO campaign office in the centre of Salzburg was hit by a pair of fire bombs. Fortunately, it was early in the morning and no staff were present, but the office was gutted by fire. Soon after, the police arrested two young men not far from the office. Both admitted to the fire bombing and claimed to have been paid by an FPO representative to do it.

In the face of the media, the police and the SPO; the FPO vehemently denied any connection to the firebombing and condemned the act themselves. The police investigation supported the FPO claim of not being involved in the bombing.

In the wake of the incident, demonstrators both for and against FPO became much more vocal and confrontational. This came to a head in May when pro and anti FPO factions demonstrated near the West Austrian Parliament.

The police and military were called to the scene as the demonstration showed clear signs of breaking out into a full scale riot. As the police, who were very well subidised by the SPO, stood ready on horseback or on foot in riot gear to subdue the pro FPO demonstrators; the military was making it’s way to the scene.

The military arrived with a large contingent of Saracen APCs, mostly with turrets fitted, and immediately placed their vehicles between the police and the pro FPO demonstrators, turrets directed towards the police. The military had grown tired of waiting for the SPO to initiate any sort of modernization and were set to support the FPO if it meant they might finally get new gear.

The Saracens were accompanied by a regular rotation of Whirlwind helicopters flying low over the site with gunners clearly visible in the doors.

Demonstrators on both sides fell into a hush and a nation held its breath. Inside the parliament, an emergency meeting between the President, the Minister of Defense and the top generals of the West Austrian military was taking place.

The world also seemed to be taking notice to some degree. In Berlin, another emergency meeting between the Chancelor, Minister of Trade, Minister of Defence and generals of the Bundeswehr was also taking place.

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Cold War Within a Cold War:

After many tense hours of waiting for something to give in front of the West Austrian parliament building and a decision to come from those inside, Salzburg seemed frozen in the moment. It’s people completely polarised. Regional capitals were seeing smaller demonstrations, but nothing coming close to the tension in Salzburg.

Throughout the country, in homes, in pubs and even at electronics shops; people were transfixed on televised coverage of the goings on in their capital. The world was also watching.

Some demonstrators tried to aggravate and incite the tensions to something more tumultuous; but for the largest percentage of the crowd, the armed police and military presence was more than enough to deter them from following suit with the handful that would willingly engage in hooliganism.

Eventually, many demonstrators tired and simply went home.

In the end, the Salzburg Standoff, as it would be called in the history books, lasted nearly 48 hours. Many considered it no small miracle that in the over 100 injuries and arrests connected to the event, that there was only a single fatality. A young female university student from the FPO side of the demonstrations was spotted and shot dead by a gunner in a passing Whirlwind helicopter as she charged out between two army Saracen vehicles while preparing to throw a Molotov cocktail at the police line in front of the SPO supporters.

The standoff ended after tense negotiations in the parliament resulted in the defence ministry receiving a written promise from the president that the SPO would, with all expediency, resolve the supply and equipment issues that were plaguing the military. The military also pushed for a reduction in the NATO presence in West Austria, siding with the FPO stance that the country should strive for self-sufficiency where possible. The military and FPO were not so fortunate in getting that written into the promise.

However, the promise was enough to mobilise the military and police together to disperse what remained of the crowd in front of the parliament.

With the election looming, FPO power growing and the SPO capitulating to a defence ministry demand to end the standoff, many West Austrians were left wondering who really held the power in their nation.

The level of tension and polarisation caused by the Salzburg Standoff did not ebb easily in the minds of the people and a pall of general distrust, sometimes hedging towards paranoia, hung over the nation and it’s people.

Cold Summer:

Typically, summer would see parliament out of session. However, West Austria was in an official state of national crisis and parliament would see no holidays prior to the election.

Negotiations and arguments were the typical order of most days within the parliamentary chambers in the summer of 1965. The FPO and the SPO were fighting over the wheel of a ship that was finally being tested by the sea. The decisions made in the wake of the standoff would redefine the nation.

Outside the parliament, people tried to get on with their lives, but it wasn’t easy. A readily visible police presence had been an accepted part of West Austrian life almost from the very moment the two Austrias were internationally recognised as political entities. The SPO had funded the national police service very well. Indeed, by geographical area and population, West Austria had one of the best manned and best equipped national police forces in Western Europe. Some would say they were grossly over funded compared to other government agencies.

Overnight, the once readily visible police became omnipresent and, seemingly, a good bit more powerful. It would be sheer understatement to say that the residents of West Austria were resentful of seeing the national police hold any greater degree of power than the near lion’s share they already did possess.

The public behaved themselves, the police behaved themselves; but nobody was really comfortable that summer.

Germany Blinks:

Tense negotiations in Berlin over the current, seemingly destabilising situation in West Austria called into question the very logic and wisdom of keeping their offer of the MBT/IFV combination available to the country.

At the time, Germany had very strict rules governing the sales of military equipment. They would not sell to dictatorships at all and many in positions of influence did not want to sell to any nation that seemed the least bit unstable, such as many considered West Austria to be quickly becoming.

Consideration was also given to the fact that Royal Ordnance manufactured the Leopard MBT’s gun. West Austria’s current lukewarm relations with Britain were well known and Germany was not keen to get involved in that debacle and perhaps find themselves on Britain’s bad side.

Ultimately, in mid August of 1965, Germany formally withdrew from West Austria’s MBT/IFV competition. West Austria’s perceived destabilisation and the British content of the Leopard MBT were citied as the primary reasons for the withdrawal.

By all appearances, West Austria was left with no choice but to look to France for military supply in the immediate future.

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Life East of the Line:

Like a large section of the rest of the world, East Austria was keeping itself abreast of the political goings on of its western “Twin”.

For the population at large, it was mostly concern for the well being of family and friends that they had in West Austria. Communication across the border was possible, but quite limited and always open to some degree of censoring. One had to be very careful what one said in communication, regardless of which way it went over the border.

Austrian values and Socialist expectations often stood at uncomfortable impasses in East Austria. Overnight, a strongly Catholic population found itself subject to a regime that actively discouraged the practice of any religion and often imposed stiff sanctions on those who openly showed their faith.

Monasteries and major points of worship were swiftly shut down and religious leaders imprisoned. Smaller churches and chapels were left accessible and unlocked, but state agents discreetly monitored the doors. Anyone seen entering those buildings would be approached upon exit, or later at their homes, and receive a stern warning at the very least about the possible repercussions to their lives, and particularly their family members’ lives, if they were seen showing their faith so openly.

One case in point revolved around an army colonel who had been in command of a division of T-62 tanks:

The T-62 was not popular with its crews. It had many shortcomings and the East Austrian army particularly was having extremely bad luck with it. Most who were assigned to work with the machine preferred to be working outside of it than inside it.

After a rash of injuries and even some deaths connected to working with the vehicle had put the morale of his division, and several others, at a severe low; the colonel was at his wit’s end.

At a loss for anything else to do, he turned to his faith. He knew well enough to stay away from churches in obvious places, but he knew of a few small chapels a fair distance from his home and his base. One weekend, in the early hours of Sunday morning, he set out for one of the chapels. He parked his car on an inconspicuous side street in the sleepy village where the chapel was located and walked to the other side of the town where the chapel was.

He concluded his prayers, returned to his car and went home. He had been approached by no one and felt his safety to be intact. However, upon returning to his office the following day, he was greeted by the base commander and a government agent.

The agent presented the colonel with photos clearly showing him at the chapel. His commander relieved him of his command and discharged him from the military. As a senior officer, he was not given the luxury of a warning.

The colonel, in his pleas for some flexibility explained that he felt he could do nothing else but pray. Given that he could do nothing about how the T-62 was engineered and thus could do little to provide greater safety for the men under his command, he felt that faith was all he had left. His commander, and fellow Catholic, seemed moved. The commander knew the T-62’s reputation for being more dangerous to it’s crews than any enemy could be, the commander’s own son had been permanently disabled when he was hit by a shell casing that didn’t eject properly and ricocheted around inside the turret instead.
The government agent, however, was unmoved. As the agent could over rule the commander, the commander’s hands were truly tied. The end of the colonel’s career was not, however, the end of the repercussions for his family.

While the colonel was from the Tyrol region and most of his family were living there, thankfully, out of reach of the Socialist regime’s hands; his daughter was in the east as well; entering her final year of university in Graz.

The day after her father was stripped of his command, she found herself expelled from university and her very impressive academic records erased. She was an honours student in architecture and well liked among both the faculty and her peers.

The colonel and his daughter had nothing to stay in the east for any longer. They had been stripped of any meaningful occupational futures and the home that had been furnished to the colonel by the army.

They made their way southeast with the intent to defect to Italy via Yugoslavia and then travel to West Austria from there. However, border guards detained the colonel. His daughter watched the heated exchange between her father and the guards in the mirror of the car; soon the commandant of the border crossing joined her father and the guards and the exchange seemed to grow more heated. The exchange ended and the commandant accompanied the colonel back to the car.

The commandant and the colonel had been friends for many years before Socialism had torn Austria apart. Unlike the colonel, the commandant and his family were all from the area around Klagenfurt, firmly in the east, and he could not let the colonel carry on further without risking sanctions being brought against his own family.

The commandant explained to the colonel’s daughter that he had no choice but to arrest her father. However, he did have the authority to allow her to carry on alone and recommended strongly that she do so. He told her to go to a specific border crossing between Yugoslavia and Italy where he knew the commandant and could reasonably assure her that she stood at least some chance of getting through there.

As she got out of the car to go to the driver’s side, she and her father embraced in a tearful farewell. He gave her what remaining money he had and showed her some additional money and valuables he had stowed in the car in case they needed to bribe border guards along the way. With that, she started the car and tearfully watched her father disappear into the distance in the car’s mirror.

Her voyage to the border crossing recommended by the commandant was uneventful. The commandant of the crossing into Italy greeted her and he seemed to know who she was without her needing to explain anything. After a brief exchange regarding how much of the bribe money she would have to part with for the commandant’s willingness to wave her through, she entered Italy.

She was immediately detained by Italian border officials and questioned extensively. The Italian authorities were generally sympathetic to her and granted her a temporary stay while the required red tape and interviews at the West Austrian consulate in Venice regarding her repatriation to West Austria were dealt with.

Despite the fact that she had been born in Tyrol and, as such, was eligible for repatriation under West Austrian law, the process took nearly a month before she was reunited with her family in the west.

She did eventually earn her degree in architecture and became very respected locally.

The colonel was imprisoned until 1990, when Socialism ended. He lived long enough to see his daughter again and to see his grandchildren, but his health had suffered greatly in prison. He died, in relative comfort, in his daughter’s home near Innsbruck six months after his release from prison.

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Vienna Vexations:

It was said that nobody was more grateful and jubilant about Vienna being reinstated as the Capital than the good citizens of Linz had been. They were more than happy to see the politicians on their way elsewhere and get back to something resembling a normal life.

No sooner had Vienna come back to life as the capital than it inherited all the frustrations that came with having largely ineffective politicians all over the place that could do nothing without Moscow’s say so.

The ministry of industry wanted some latitude for East Austrian manufacturers to be able to design and build vehicles for the country’s military that were more specifically tailored of East Austrian needs. However, Moscow forbid the design of any combat vehicles that did not originate from a Soviet drawing board to come to fruition. Austrian manufacturers were left with only being able to design and build their own non-combat vehicles. This was unfortunate as there were excellent MBT designs on the boards at Steyr and OAF that would ultimately come to nothing.

The ministry of defense sided with the ministry of industry that much of the Soviet equipment, as provided, did not entirely suit East Austrian requirements at a variety of levels and so there should be some extra degrees of latitude for adjusting the designs of combat vehicles to suit requirements. It was particularly pointed out that a company such as Steyr, with a long history of both vehicle and firearms manufacture, should be able to produce guns of their own design to adapt to the Soviet designed tanks that they found themselves license producing. Citing that the T-62 had a very unreliable main gun and breech assembly and that Steyr was perfectly capable of designing and adapting a new set up that would render that aspect of the tank safer.

Ultimately, largely due to the Steyr built MiG-15 fiasco, East Austrian companies were very limited in how they could deviate from the Soviet standard when building vehicles. They were strictly limited to modifications to communications and suspension systems. Any modification to weapons or propulsion systems was expressly forbidden.

Tanks to the West, Tanks to the East:

West Austria was not the only one facing issues of equipment procurement in the military.

The East Austrian air force was usually given priority over the army and it showed in the state of equipment. The air force had fresh MiG-21s of the latest model in large numbers while the army had a dwindling stock of serviceable T-55 tanks that they struggled to keep running and a larger stock of temperamental and unreliable T-62 tanks that nobody wanted to work with if they could at all avoid it.

The East Austrian air force was ready to effectively combat anything that came across the border while the army’s armor divisions nervously waited for the T-64 and later T-72 to come into service and take relative comfort in the fact that the infantry units were faring better in the equipment stakes.

East Austria, in fact, had an overage of T-62 tanks. The tank was also not terribly popular with Soviet forces and East Austria seemed to have the misfortune being the one to usually have “surplus” T-62s foisted upon them.

On the upside, this did give East Austria MBTs to sell to smaller nations, many in Africa, with Socialist leanings or other forms of dictatorial regimes.

This was a very small upside indeed, as it was done without Moscow’s consent. Orders were put forth to immediately forbid further sales of East Austrian T-62s and any remaining T-62s that Austria deemed surplus to it’s needs were confiscated and redistributed to other Warsaw Pact members. To drive the point home, Moscow made clear that East Austria would be receiving no T-64 tanks when they became available.

 

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Election Day 1965:

October 1965 arrived on the heels of the tensest three months anyone could recall in West Austria. Mostly it was simply low-level tensions and mistrustful looks on the street. However, the beginning of the academic year saw demonstrations and near riots at several universities and trade schools in the country as students fought to stop an FPO proposal to severely limit state sponsored post secondary education and institute a student loan system.

Indeed, the FPO used the country’s mounting debts as justification to demand privatization of many state held industries which they felt could be more profitable, and helpful to debt reduction in private form. The traditional economic engines of services, agriculture and tourism were of some help in paying debts but they clearly couldn’t shoulder the full burden.

The FPO liked to make large of the country’s fledgling technology sector and said it should also be supported and allowed to flourish; this was the dawn of the age of computers after all. Young people were being drawn to technology and the FPO, consequently, both youth issues and supporting a future economic engine of the nation figured high on the FPO’s platform.

The SPO went to great lengths in its campaign to remind voters that the FPO had some very unrealistic aims in light of the country’s debt issues, not the least of which was their insistence that the nation should strive for full self sufficiency and political neutrality by the end of the 1960s. The SPO felt such overt nationalism was irresponsible and an aim of neutrality akin to national suicide with debts at their current levels.

As the nation went to the polls, it was very difficult to predict what the result would be. West Austria would not simply come out of the election with a new government, it would come out with a new face to the world.

As the rhetoric died down in the last hours of voting and the polling stations reported their results; what appeared to be a minority government was confirmed by a recount. The nation was no more relieved after the election than it had been before.

Of  Debts and Deals:

If the SPO and FPO could agree on nothing else, they both could agree the debt had to be reduced. The three traditional engines of the economy could only do so much. West Austria needed more export products to offset the imports it was bringing in and to compensate for the loss of the old Austrian industrial base that had all ended up on the other side of the Linz Line. The newly forming technology sector that the FPO was so fond of would provide the solution, eventually.

The FPO had gained enough power and the SPO lost enough, that compromise truly was becoming the way of things. Privatization of several sectors was beginning and showing benefits. At the same time, the country was holding firm to its NATO commitments and various other alliances.

Then there was the military issue. The written promise of the president to the minister of defense was not forgotten. But how could the nation modernize it’s military without incurring significantly deeper debt?

Three Offers:

In the few months running up to the election, West Austria seemed to have very limited options on where it could obtain new military equipment from. Indeed, the only realistic option seemed to be from France.

France was quite keen to throw support behind the FPO and their nationalistic and largely Eurocentric agenda. To that end, the proposed a very wide ranging offer to help modernize the West Austrian military.

The proposal would see West Austria supplied nearly immediately with the latest Mirage III fighters, Noratlas transports along with helicopters and trainers. Additionally, they would also be supplied with the MBT/IFV combination that had been on the table before the election and a variety of soft skinned vehicles.

However, the deal was not without it’s problems:

1: West Austria’s debts to France were relatively small. Taking the French deal would drive debts deeper.

2: France wanted options for military bases in West Austria for nuclear weapons. International agreements forbid nuclear weapons in either Austrian territory.

3: While the proposal offered West Austria a lot of new equipment, France wasn’t granting them a lot of flexibility in how it could be configured.

The British Deal

Britain seemed to be doing an about face towards West Austria. With the Labour government that had come into power in the 1964 election and it’s drive towards increasing exports, the Chieftain MBT, plus a good deal more British military gear was back on the table For West Austria

Unlike the previous offer of a significantly downgraded MBT/IFV combination, the new offer featured vehicles much closer to the current British operational standard and included options for the Austrians to configure them locally to their own requirements. A variety of soft skinned vehicles were also put on the table.

From an aviation perspective, Britain offered a buy back deal on the Austrian Canberra fleet and a refurbishment deal on their Hunters. Westland Wessex helicopters were also put on the table. However, the British deal stopped short of offering an option on the EE Lightning .

The pros and cons of the British deal:

Pro: The British were offering a good part of their package as offsets to the debts West Austria had to them. Debts significantly higher than those owed to France.

Pro: Britain was offering a good deal more flexibility in equipment configuration options.

Pro: West Austria already had the infrastructure for the Hawker Hunter in place to support refurbished ones.

Con: West Austria would still be without their very much needed supersonic interceptor

Con: Britain wanted an additional two bases on West Austrian soil.

Italy steps up

To the surprise of many, Italy joined the stakes in offering to help rearm West Austria.

Italy’s offer was exclusively aviation related and featured a package comprising the Fiat built F-104 Starfighter, Aermacchi MB-326 in both trainer and light strike variants and the SIAI-Marchetti S.260 basic trainer.

Italy also offered an option on the Fiat G.91 light strike aircraft.

Like Britain, Italy was willing to be quite flexible to the requirements of West Austria in allowing West Austria to integrate domestically developed technologies into the offered machines.

Pros and cons of the Italian deal:

Pro: Italy was offering a debt offset deal to West Austria in much the same way Britain was and West Austria’s debts to Italy were nearly as high as those to Britain.

Pro: West Austria would finally get their supersonic interceptor.

Pro: A full system of aircraft from basic trainer to combat aircraft was being offered.

Con: No land vehicles were being offered.


None of the offers covered all the holes in West Austria’s defense needs. However, they were all starting points.

The Decision

Ultimately, the West Austrians were able to strike a deal that was a combination of the British and Italian offers.

The army would find itself in solidly British gear. The air force, however, would be a bit more of a mixed bag.

The Italian offer of the S.260, MB-326 and F-104 was too good to pass up. The Austrians had seen the F-104 up close, courtesy of the RCAF that was systematically replacing their CF-100s in Europe with it. The Austrians saw it as an acceptable alternative to the EE Lightning, which they weren’t being offered.

However, the Hawker Hunter refurbishment option was favoured over the G.91 on most fronts, not the least of which was that the Hunter was very popular with its crews and the basic airframe support infrastructure was already in place.

The Canberra left Austrian skies. The Austrians had difficulties keeping the Canberras going, but the aircraft still had a lot of life in them. Rather than a buy back deal, the Austrians were able to trade the Canberras back for more Hunters. Strike would take a lower priority in West Austria’s new defensive mandate and Hunters and MB-326 aircraft would take the Canberra’s job.

France was not completely snubbed in the stakes to rearm Austria, if fact they were instrumental in filling the helicopter requirements. Austria found itself purchasing a fleet of Alouette III helicopters and later Gazelles. Austria also chose the Super Frelon helicopter over the Westland Wessex when France offered an option on the upcoming Puma helicopter.

That left West Austria with a transport gap. The mixed fleet of Bristol Britannia and Canadiar Yukon transports had to be replaced. Revenues from the various sectors that powered West Austria’s economy allowed the country to purchase a small fleet of C-130E Hercules transports to modernize that end of the air force.

By the end of the 1960s, the roar of Canberras, CF-100s, Britannias had gone from West Austrian skies completely.

The West Austrian military was on the road to recovery, some additional debt had been incured along the way but nowhere near as much as might have been had the Italians and British not been open to debt offset deals.

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The West Rides Out the 60s:

The military modernization of West Austria began in late 1965 with the delivery of a fleet of SIAI S.260 basic trainers to replace the well used Percival Provosts. At the same time Macchi MB-326 jet trainers began arriving to supplement and replace the T-33 fleet.

The first deliveries of the F-104 and strike version of the MB-326 were slated for late 1966 or early 1967. The first West Austrian pilots were sent to Italy to train on the F-104 almost as soon as the purchase deal had been inked. The first of the refurbished Hawker Hunters arrived in West Austria in late 1966.

The RCAF wing at Lienz had sent the last of its CF-100s back to Canada by mid 1966 and had three full squadrons of F-104s. Meanwhile, The base at Reid was being prepared for the first Austrian AF wing of F-104s and final close out of CF-100 operations. A second wing of F-104s would be formed at the newly reactivated base at Bad Ischl.

The new mandate for West Austrian air defense took a good deal of priority away from strike operations and put heavier stress on point air defense and mobility. As such, the two large fighter bases at Reid and Bischofshofen would see significant changes.

The Reid wing would ultimately consist of two F-104 squadrons and a squadron of armed MB-326 aircraft. Bischofshofen, despite it’s fighter heritage and seniority to Reid, would see rather more radical changes.

Part of the British deal stipulated that British forces would get two new bases in West Austria. A new RAF base was to be established at Zell, nearby Bischofshofen, and would be home to a wing of Buccaneers. Bischofshofen was transferred to the army, redesignated a garrison and was made home to the training depot of the West Austrian army armor divisions. The first Chieftains, FV432 IFVs and their freshly trained crews arrived from Britain at the old garrison at Scharding, which was slated for closure, in late 1967.  A new base in the north was being built at Andorf to replace Scharding and house a fully operational armor division

Bischofshofen was fully converted and declared operational as a garrison in mid 1968, at which point Scharding was shut down and the armor division headquarters and training depot moved to Bischofshofen.

Braunau, with it’s proximity to both Salzburg and Reid, would see tremendous development as the headquarters of West Austrian AF Transport Command. Transformation of the former Canberra base started almost as soon as the last Canberra left to return to Britain. By the end of the 1960’s, Braunau had attained the status of a “Superbase” in NATO and was the largest military instalation of any sort in the country. It was home to West Austria’s fleet of C-130 Hercules transports, Super Frelon helicopters and, before the 60s were out, the first members of the country’s DHC-5 Buffalo and DHC-6 Twin Otter fleet.

The Buffalos and Twin Otters were procured partly by the return of the bulk of West Austria’s CF-100s to Canada and a series of export agreements focussing on the burgeoning technology sector in the small country. Initially, the deal called for enough aircraft to furnish one squadron of each type, in the end however, the order was cut somewhat and the aircraft were used to form a single unit.

The end of 1968 saw West Austria with it’s full complement of aircraft from the initial Italian deal. All the aircraft were proving popular and a significant amount of Austrian technology was to find it’s way into the upcoming F-104S variant.

The Hunter refurbishment program was also completed and considered a success. Hunters and their crews were happily flying again in the skies over Ebensee. Ebensee was also the last home of the dwindling West Austrian T-33 fleet.

The basic training base, now teaming with SF.260s and MB-326s was, as it always had been, at Mayrhofen.

Most helicopter activity was spread through western Tyrol and Vorarlburg with the main tactical and rescue helicopter base at Landeck. However, all helicopter basic training was done in Hallein.

West Austria’s political stability was, despite the minority government which held office for the remainder of the decade, no longer in doubt through the late 1960s. Faith in the country’s dedication to NATO and it’s other alegiances was largely restored and a broken fence with Britain seemed well mended.

Young people who had left West Austria in the stagnating pre 1965 economy were returning to the country with hopes restored that there was some sort of meaningful future for them there. The new technology sector, which was quickly gaining more of the world’s attention, was not only drawing the country’s own children home, but attracting many foreigners to West Austrian soil as well.

With a modern economic engine to power it, foreign workers and foreign investment on the rise; West Austria seemed justified in looking ahead brightly to the 1970s

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Eastern Shake Ups:

Witnessing the modernization of it’s western twin’s military and the burgeoning technology sector also present; East Austrian politicians were getting more than a bit restless with the general lack of concern that Moscow was showing over the matter.

The West’s Chieftain tanks were operational and very modern while the East’s T-55s were barely serviceable and the T-62s were as maligned as ever by their crews. True to Moscow’s word, there were no T-64s coming to East Austria.

However, after many heated debates between the East Austrian president, minister of defense and their counterparts in Moscow, the Soviets did at least do an about face and allowed Steyr to exercise their firearms making heritage by creating a new main gun, breach and casing ejection system for the East Austrian T-62 fleet.

By the time Steyr was finished, the T-62s had not only the new main gun, breach and ejection systems; they had completely new turrets. The new turrets were bigger and, ergonomically, much more appealing to the crews. Part of that appeal was the fact that the new gun and breach were designed around an auto loading system; so an entire crew position had been eliminated with the turret.

The stigma that existed around crewing a T-62 never quite lifted fully, but the new turrets did much to put crews minds at ease. New turrets were approved for enough of the fleet to see the East Austrian army’s armor divisions through the 60s and into the early 70s, when the first T-72s were delivered.

The turrets were a blessing to Steyr. Their MiG-19 assembly line had been closed not long before and it had been decided that East Austrian MiG-21s would come from Czechoslovak or Soviet assembly lines

Indeed, the MiG-19 turned out to be the last aircraft type built by East Austrian hands.

The last MiG-19s had been withdrawn from East Austrian service by the end of the 60s, replaced completely by MiG-21s. Very few Steyr built MiG-19s survive today as many were put to use as targets on gunnery ranges or fire fighting training. The irony of shooting up retired MiG-19s was not lost on gunnery school students who were getting their first taste of weapons delivery training in the cockpits of Bolzens!

The backbone of East Austrian helicopter forces were the geriatric and well used Mil Mi-4 Hound and the more numerous PZL built Mil-2 Hoplite.

The Hound fleet was reduced so that some of them could soldier on until the Mi-8 Hip could be delivered in the late 60s. With the PZL lines quite strong, the Hoplite fleet was set to carry on for several more years with no problems.

The strike component was borne largely by the Sukhoi Su-7 Fitter, which the East Austrians had in significant numbers.

The late 60s also saw the end of the piston engined transport days when the last of East Austria’s fleet of Ilyushin Il-14s were replaced after specialized versions of the Antonov An-12 and An-24 took over the surveillance and ELINT roles that the few remaining Il-14s had been used for.



The Ilyushin Il-18 fleet was in the process of being reduced through the late 60s. Most had been sold to a variety of civil operators after the An-12 took over the general transport role. A handful of the aircraft had been kept on in the VIP transport role, but was soon phased out with the arrival of Tupolev Tu-134s and Yakovlev Yak-40s custom fitted to that role.


Shuffling the Bases:

Just as in West Austria, East Austrian military installations saw a number of changes in the late 1960s

Selzthal was closed as a military airport. After conversion to a civil airport, it was mainly used for sport flying and sailplanes.

The Selzthal interceptor wing was a large one, so it was decided to divide it. One half of the wing was transferred to Zeltweg while the other half transferred to Obergrafendorf, which was in the process of expansion.

Obergrafendorf was already home to an operational wing of Sukhoi Su-7 strike fighters and the Su-7 training wing. The first phase of the expansion was the reactivation of a dormant section of the airfield and the refurbishment and replacement of the buildings in that section. The reactivated section would become home of the newly founded Tactical Strike Training Establishment. The Establishment’s fleet was largely Su-7 and MiG-15 based and was set up primarily to facilitate and ease conversion from the Su-7 to the Su-17, which East Austria was slated to eventually receive.

The second phase of Obergrafendorf’s expansion centred on the fresh construction of facilities to house the MiG-21s transferring from Selzthal. Obergrafendorf was the largest base in East Austria at the time the expansion had been completed.

The airbase at Linz, which had housed the country’s VIP transport wing fell largely quiet after Vienna resumed the status of capital. The VIP transport wing had been relocated to Wiener-Neustadt, nearVienna, and the military presence at Linz airport had been reduced to one corner of a now civilian airfield and consisted of a single unit of Mi-2 Hoplite helicopters for rescue work in the region.

The air base at Klagenfurt, the source of so many of the special mission modified Il-14s that routinely traced paths along the Linz line, remained busy in those missions. The only change was that the Il-14 fleet had been replaced by An-12s and An-24s.

Officially, Klagenfurt came under Transport Command jurisdiction. However, the true heart of  East Austrian transport activities was Graz. Very little transport actually took place at Klagenfurt. It was clearly a special missions centre in spite of where it fit in the command structure.

A small, forward air base was established at Steyr to house a single unit of interceptors and a regiment of ground based anti aircraft artillery. The interceptor units were drawn from the wings at Zeltweg or Obergrafendorf, which rotated through the base on a quarterly basis. The anti aircraft regiment was permanently assigned to the base.

Basic flight training, starting with Yakovlev or Zlin piston engined trainers then working up to Aero L-29 Delfin jet trainers, was carried out in Feldbach.

With the exception of the Mil Mi-4 fleet, which was largely based at the army garrison at Wolfsberg, the East Austrian helicopter force was quite decentralized. Every base, army or air force had at least a detachment, if not a full squadron of Mi-2 Hoplites assigned to it for general utility purposes.

In the latter half of the 60s, the most numerous combat type in the East Austrian arsenal was easily the Sukhoi Su-7. Outside of the substantial wing at Obergrafendorf, there were also smaller Su-7 operations at Bad Leonfelden and Ferlach.

The army was also seeing some changes. The main garrison at Wolfsberg was home to the infantry, while armor was split between the training depot at Amstetten and a forward base at Turnberg.

Turnberg wasn’t a popular base to be posted to. It was too small to properly accommodate the vehicles, units and personnel required to carry out routine operations. Aside from the T-62 MBT division, Turnberg was also home to an engineering brigade and a regiment of ZSU-23 Shilka anti aircraft vehicles. With the base housing and barrack blocks full to capacity and more personnel coming in as well as the various units squabbling for adequate access to the base’s inadequate vehicle maintenance facilities, something had to be done.

The first move was the relocation of the anti aircraft regiment. Turnberg was quite close to Steyr, which had anti aircraft artillery as well. Steyr’s artillery was soon to be supplemented by a regiment of newly acquired SA-4 missiles, so there truly was no need to have so much anti aircraft equipment concentrated in such a small geographic region.

It was decided to relocate the Shilka regiment to either Bad Leonfelden or Ferlach. As Bad Leonfelden had a good complement of SA-2 missiles in it’s immediate vicinity, the decision was made to move the Shilkas to Ferlach.

Tragedy at Turnberg:

While further decisions of how to remedy the overcrowding at Turnberg were being mulled over, base expansion wasn’t feasible and so was ruled out early on as a solution, fate stepped in.

An Antonov An-12 on it’s way back to Klagenfurt from a surveillance flight along the Linz Line started suffering mechanical problems. With warning lights flashing on the flight deck, the pilot decided to land his aircraft at Steyr until it could be checked out.

No sooner had the pilot been granted access to the Steyr landing circuit than one of the inboard engines burst into flames and the aircraft’s hydraulic systems began to fail rapidly. The barely controllable aircraft could not remain in the circuit and was heading directly for Turnberg.

Though quickly descending, the aircraft did manage to miss the Turnberg town site itself. Unfortunately, it crashed directly into the main barracks block at the Turnberg base. As the crash happened in the early evening, many of the base personnel had just returned to their quarters. The loss of life was staggering to the tightly knit community and made headlines worldwide.

The complete destruction on the main barracks block and extensive damage to surrounding buildings led to a decision to simply close the base permanently. The land was handed over to the municipality and a small memorial park and monument were established to mark the tragedy.

The Turnberg accident was a dark spot for East Austria in the late 60s, but darker spots were yet to come for the country before the decade was out.

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Running with the Pact:

As a member of the Warsaw Pact, East Austria was obligated to participate in and support the defense of other Warsaw Pact states and the overall security of those territories. These obligations did put the country in the unenviable position of getting their hands dirtied by a couple of notorious events in the late 1960s.

The Israeli Civil War:

The Kibbutz Movement, which had provided Israel with many high profile leaders in industry, politics and the military, had been in a fractious state since Israel had been reestablished in 1948.

Traditionally, the Kibbutz Movement had leaned towards Marxist values of Socialism in the early 20th century. However, in the post war years, many in the movement wanted to disregard Marxism and Socialism due to the atrocities and anti-semitism so overtly displayed by the Stalinist regime in the Soviet Union.

The traditionalist side of the movement argued that Stalin was just one man and was not a representative of Socialism as Marx had defined it. They further believed it was entirely possible to construct a Socialist state by following Marxist principles that could show a suspicious world what true Socialism could accomplish for people and that Stalinism, and the Leninism that had gone before it, were only masquerading as Socialism and giving a good form a of government a bad name.

Arguments between the two camps were routine occurrences in the Israeli parliament. The arguments grew more frequent and more heated as the 50s and the early 60s rolled on. Rifts and divisions grew deeper and people in the street were visibly arguing the matter with each other and often coming to blows over it.

If the two camps could agree on nothing else, they agreed that Israel should be unified as one country, not be the fractured state it had become.

With pressures from external tensions between Israel and its Arab neighbors and growing internal pressures on the direction the country’s political future should take, something had to give.

Matters finally came to a head in June of 1967 when the Six Day War had destabilized Israel internally past a point of no return. In a grasp for power that saw two prominent leaders of the Marxist Kibbutz camp assassinated by members of a small extremist faction of the non-Marxists, the Israeli Civil War had begun almost as soon as the Six Day War had ended.

The world watched as the nation began to collapse on itself. Moscow had sent word to the Warsaw Pact countries and Socialist friendly ones in the region to provide assistance to the Marxist side of the conflict. Turkish forces were still in Syria as they had been mobilized to assist in the Six Day War. Turkish, Greek, Egyptian and Soviet naval vessels were carefully monitoring the Israeli coast.

No overt actions were being taken by outside countries. For a while, the world just sat and watched. However, things had been going on under the surface.

Through the months of June, July and August, a series of moonlight airdrops had been recorded over various parts of Israel. The aircraft flew low and a bare minimum of illumination was used in the drops. The aircraft also were equipped with an array of countermeasures so that locking onto them or identifying their origin proved impossible.

As the airdrops continued, the Marxist faction gained an upper hand in the conflict. Quite clearly, whoever was conducting the airdrops was supporting the Marxists.

The drops continued with impunity until mid September, when an Israeli naval ship opened fire on a low flying Antonov An-24 heading south over the coast to Egyptian territory. The aircraft had been seen dropping supplies further north along the coast and so the ship was watching for it.

The Antonov was hit and the pilot managed to ditch it in shallow water just inside Israeli territory. The uninjured crew was rescued by the Egyptian military before the Israeli forces could reach the crash site.

In the week that followed the incident, the wreckage was recovered and examined in great detail. The aircraft was seemingly devoid of all national markings and the cockpit instruments and placards were in Cyrillic language only. It’s exact origins a mystery.

As the investigation of the wreckage continued, an investigator decided to try stripping some paint. His attempts were rewarded when a partial East Austrian national insignia was revealed under the paint. The world’s eyes, and criticisms, fell squarely on East Austria as photos of the revealed insignia hit the media.

Through late September and October, a well-developed support network from the Warsaw Pact to the Israeli Marxists had been revealed. The various aircraft that carried out the airdrops were primarily An-24s of East Austrian or Greek origins.

These points proved to be purely academic, as the damage had been done. By November, the non-Marxists had conceded defeat and the conflict was over. Israel emerged as a soft Socialist state and Soviet friendly.

Almost at once surplus military gear from with the Warsaw Pact started being sent to Israel. Not surprisingly, the East Austrians jumped at the opportunity to rid themselves of a few more of their non modified T-62 MBTs.

East Austrian troops were also sent to Israel to oversee and facilitate to reunification of the Israeli state, oversee the drafting of new Israeli-Arab peace treaties and the reintegration of disputed territories.

Prague Spring:

The reformist movement in Czechoslovakia that had become visible in 1968 put East Austrian policy makers in a very difficult position. The Soviet Union and various other Warsaw Pact countries tried to quell the reforms through a series of meetings with Czechoslovak representatives before taking invasive military action near the end of August.

Ultimately, East Austria opted to stand in protest of the invasion of Czechoslovakia and opened its borders to Czechs and Slovaks fleeing from the occupational forces. East Austria was still receiving some harsh criticism at the international level for it’s part in supporting the Marxists in the Israeli Civil War less than a year earlier and was not the least bit interested in attracting more negative press to itself.

Orders were given to East Austrian military units to ignore any orders given to them by Soviet commanders to take part in the invasion and to create a series of obstacles and delays along the border region to slow any Soviet land advance into western Czechoslovakia from the south.

Orders were also given to congest the airspace as much as possible in the vicinity of the two Soviet airfields in East Austria to deny flight operations from them during the invasion.

None of this sat well with the Soviets, of course. However, they were already suffering the international negative press from invading Czechoslovakia and opted to forgo any reprisals against East Austria for their refusal to join the invasion force and interference with Austrian based Soviet military operations during the invasion.

Three deaths occurred in East Austria in connection with the invasion, all of them military personnel. A single Zlin 526 trainer that was among the aircraft being used to congest air traffic over the Soviet air base at Klosterneuburg was hit in the tail by a shotgun blast as it passed low over the runway. The trainer promptly crashed into the forward fuselage of an Antonov An-22 transport, which was pointlessly awaiting clearance to depart on the homebound leg of a routine supply run.

The Zlin’s wing cut into the Antonov’s cockpit, killing the pilot and co-pilot instantly, while the rest of the trainer crashed on the ground just under the transport’s wing. The Zlin’s pilot was killed instantly in the ensuing fireball that engulfed the trainer and did severe damage to the port landing gear and inboard engine of the Antonov. The transport’s loadmaster and load handlers were able to evacuate from their aircraft unharmed.

That East Austria escaped any major sanctions from the Soviets or other Warsaw Pact nations for their choice of actions in response to the invasion of Czechoslovakia is, even today, considered by some to be one of the political miracles of the 1960s.

In the Wake of a Decade:

The East Austrian armed forces, particularly the army, were heading out of the 1960s in notably better shape than they had gone into the decade.

The last of the Mi-4 helicopters was replaced by Mi-8s. Facilities at Obergrafendorf were being updated in anticipation of the Su-17 fleet and the force of second generation MiG-21s was already in the process of being replaced with third generation variants.

The last unmodified T-62 MBTs had been withdrawn and gladly turned into range targets.

There was one thing new in East Austrian territory that was not such good news, bombers.

In a clearly provocative move, and much to the displeasure of most East Austrians, the Soviets established a regiment of Tupolev Tu-22 “Blinder” bombers at Klosterneuburg. The Soviets insisted the regiment was a reconnaissance unit only, though this was met with some skepticism in the west. Soviet bombers were not unheard of in East Austrian airspace, but they’d never been based in the country until that point. The occasional transitory Yak-28s and the impending Su-17s were one thing. Permanently based Tu-22s were a point of much greater concern.

If having the Tupolevs within striking distance did nothing else, it succeeded in sending West Austria shopping for a strike type and generally reconsidering it’s stand on the importance of a strong strike element in it’s air force.

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The West Goes Shopping:

The presence of the Soviet Tu-22 Blinders permanently based on East Austrian soil was not particularly welcomed by Austrians on either side of the Linz Line. Both Austrias were firmly non-nuclear states in both civil and military contexts and preferred very much to stay that way.

Knowing that the Blinder was capable of carrying nuclear weapons, despite what the Soviets had said about the Austrian based ones being purely reconnaissance versions, was controversial at all levels of Austrian life on both sides of the line. Protests to have the aircraft transferred to a Soviet base elsewhere in the Warsaw Pact were quite commonplace, but ultimately ineffective.

In a move of “good faith”, the Soviet military attaché to East Austria formally invited NATO to send a small envoy of experts to Klosterneuburg to see the aircraft up close. The envoy was satisfied that about half the aircraft they saw were indeed true recconaissance variants. However, they came away a bit more suspicious of the nature of the remaining aircraft. When pressed, the attache conceded that some conventional strike ability had been retained in those aircraft, though any ability in them to carry nuclear devices had been permanently diabled. This really did very little to ease the suspicions among the envoy members and they returned to debrief at the West Austrian ministry of defense with the recommendation that West Austria immediately reinstate tactical strike into it’s defensive mandate and that NATO would subsidise any aircraft that the West Austrians chose for the job.

With a blank cheque from NATO in hand, the West Austrians went shopping.

Decisions, Decisions:

In the late 1960s there was not so much in the way of tactical strike types to choose from. The TSR.2 had been cancelled, the F-111 was having teething problems and the newer strike types, like the Sepecat Jaguar and Mirage F.1 were still on drawing boards. 1968 was drawing to a close and West Austria had a decision to make.

France

The first offer came from France. In the wake of the TSR.2 Cancellation, Dassault had hoped to sell Britain on the idea of a Spey engined Mirage IV. Ultimately, this went nowhere. However, hopes to export the Mirage IV were rekindled when West Austria came looking.

Dassault went to great lengths to make the aircraft as attractive as they could toWest Austria. They had strengthened the fuselage and added several hard points along it for greater weapons carriage. The volume of the faired over recessed weapon bay added some much needed internal fuel capacity and the ability to carry more bombs on fuselage stations meant that the wing stations could be reserved for the much needed drop tanks and ECM pods.

France also offered wide freedom to West Austria in tailoring the aircraft to their own specific needs as far as avionics were concerned, this would certainly be welcome news to the country’s technology sector, which was very quickly developing a reputation as a world leader.

An option to buy the upcoming Mirage F.1 was added shortly after the initial Mirage IV offer was made as an added incentive.

The primary dowside to the French offer was that the Mirage IV was known to be a purpose designed nuclear strike type. Despite the alterations to make it solidly non nuclear capable for Austrian stipulations, there was little doubt that the Soviet Union and Warsaw Pact in general would contest it’s presence in West Austria every bit as much as the Tu-22’s was in the east.

Great Britain

Great Britain came with what most considered a predictable proposal.

Their offer of the venerable Blackburn Buccaneer was not at all surprising. A widely respected and known quantity as strike aircraft were concered, it certainly was a serious contender to bring strike back into the West Austrian air arsenal.

The RAF already had a wing of Buccaneers in West Austria and so the Austrian forces had plenty of chances to see it up close and work with it, or against it, in joint excercises. They, as most anyone who encountered the aircraft has been, were impressed by it in most aspects.

Despite the fact that the Buccaneer was proven and solid, and that it had been offered to West Austria with some latitude for the country’s domsetic technology sector to upgrade systems in it, there were a few sticking points:

The primary concern was that the Buccaneer was the oldest design being offered and, like the RAF, the Austrians would be getting refurbished FAA machines. There was no escaping the fact that they would be getting second hand gear in the Buccaneer.

Second was the upgradability of the aircraft. It was a 50s design and had been in service since the early 60s, there was some serious debate about just how much upgrading could be done to it.

Third, it was subsonic. The West Austrians wanted a supersonic striker if they could get it.

U.S.A.

Despite knowing the decidedly eurocentric leanings of West Austria, two offers came from America.

McDonnell Douglas offered their F-4D Phantom II with an option for the upcoming E version.

The West Austrians were rather luke warm to the D version as they felt it represented design traits of earlier generation Phantoms. However, they were very interested in the E. The aircraft did have clear potential for upgrades and some flexibility for domestic systems tailoring was included in the offer.

The only obvious downside to the Phantom offer was that the year was 1968, the US was still mired down in South East Asia and McDonnel Douglas clearly stated that there might be some delay in the delivery of a batch of E variants if West Austria chose to order them. USAF needs for the aircraft had to be met first.

The second American offer came in the form of General Dynamic’s F-111

The West Austrians were more than a bit sceptical of the aircraft from the very moment the offer was put on the table. While it was a new design, and supersonic, it’s teething problems were well publicised.

While not ignorant of the fact that the F-111 was full of new technology, which certainly needed time to mature, the loss of three USAF F-111’s earlier in the year due to malfunctions during Combat Lancer operations weighed in heavily on the West Austrian decision to ultimately drop it from their short list. Shortly after the decision, a West Austrian general who had been taken for a flight in the F-111 said this of the aircraft:

“It was a delightful flight in all aspects and this is clearly an aircraft of tremendous potential. I have no doubt that, should it survive this clearly long and painful birth that it is enduring, it will become an aircraft that those who work with it will feel honoured to do so. It is a true pity that my nation’s needs are too immediate for us to wait for this aircraft to be fully born.”


Flyoffs and general wheeling and dealing

The short listed aircraft were systematically and rigorously demonstrated for their operability in the high alpine environment as well as lower flatland terrain. The Mirage, Buccaneer and Phantom were in a very tight race indeed, all performing admirably with seemingly very little left to choose between them. Even the Buccanner’s firmly subsonic performance seemed to be a near non issue, being easily offset with some of the most accurate weapons delivery demonstrations of the three types.

The Mirage IV’s redisigned lower fuselage with it’s hard points was working perfectly, with no diminished performance in any aspect.

The Phantom was the Phantom, rock solid all around and not leaving much to want for.

The final decision would be very difficult indeed. The French seemed to be ahead based on the high degree of flexibility they were willing to give the West Austrians in domestically upgrading the Mirage and the option for the Mirage F.1 when it was ready.

Britain and America needed to come up with some counter incentives.

The first option fielded by Britain was an option to buy the upcoming Sepecat Jaguar, built to the British standard.

Second was an option to buy the Rapier SAM system to replace the Bloodhounds that the Austrians currently had in use

The Rapiers were more interesting to the Austrians as the Bloodhounds were getting more difficult to maintain. If the Tu-22s were indeed to be a permanent fixture in East Austrian skies, the option to show them some quite modern SAMs were on hand to counter them was attractive.

The Jaguar prototype had only just flown earlier in the year, so it was too early to tell if it would lead to anything. It was also known that the Sepecat consortium was having disagreements as to exactly what form the aircraft would ultimately take. The Jaguar seemed too much of a gamble at the time to be of much intrest.

American incentives seemed a bit on the limited side.

The first incentive was the immediate provision of  a loaned fleet of USAF F-4D aircraft, plus training on them, until an order for the F-4E could be filled. With West Austria’s rather cool reception to the D model and McDonnell Douglas being somewhat non commital about when an order for the E model could be filled, it was almost more of a disincentive.

McDonnel Douglas, in lieu of anything else immediately combat realted to provide, offered the newest version of their DC-9 airliner to replace the few remaining Vickers Viscounts that were still soldiering on in West Austrian hands. While certainly outside the scope of a competition to choose a combat type, the offer of the DC-9 did hold a certain appeal, the Viscounts couldn’t go on much longer.

The Decision:

After much heated discussion, the West Austrian ministry of defence, with no small pressure from the economic development ministry, opted for the Mirage IV.

Many were immediately critical of the choice due to the aircraft’s original purpose a nuclear weapon carrier. Some felt the aircraft was too much for the nation’s requirements, that the country had set out to buy a tactical strike aircraft and brought home a full out bomber. The arguments against it were numerous. However, the arguments for it were more economic than military. It was one more way for the country’s now very proud technologies sector to shine, not to mention fully diversify into avionics. They had gotten their feet wet with avionics contributions to the Fiat F-104Gs they had bought and were even more deeply involved with the F-014S which was very soon to enter service. They were ready for more and the Mirage IV, as France had offered it to them, gave them a near blank canvas to show off on.

The criticisms and controversies would follow the Mirage IV-O through most of it’s career, but the decision was made and would go ahead.

Outwardly, the Mirage IV-O was a slightly different looking beast than it’s standard French counterpart. Gone was the radar on the underside of the fuselage, it’s volume replaced with additional internal fuel. The fuselage forward of the cockpit had been completely redesigned to hold all of the radar equipment in a nose radome. It was, in many ways, a much more capable radar than the French aircraft had. The Mirage IV-O was also subject to regular cockpit upgrades through it’s life. West Austria ultimately was the Mirage IV’s only export customer though many of the systems that the West Austrians created for it were purchased by other countries and adapted to other aircraft types.

Eventually, some of the IV-O upgrades were purchased and retrofitted to some French Mirage IVs. Despite having it’s nuclear abilities removed from it with the advent of the Mirage 2000N in French service, the Mirage IV-O upgrades allowed the ADA Mirage IVs to remain potent conventional bomb haulers for several years on.

In accordance with the French deal, West Austria also became the first export customer of the Mirage F.1, which replaced the remaining Hunters shortly after being  introduced.

Western Base Shakeups:

Of course, a place was needed to keep the new aircraft, but the only runway long enough to handle the Mirage IV safely in West Austria was at Braunau. A decision was quickly made to hand Braunau from transport command over to tactical. The Hercules aircraft went to Salzburg, the Buffalo and Twin Otter unit went to Innsbruck and the Super Frelons went to Landeck.

The Mirage F.1s were a rather simpler matter to house; they simply took the place of the Hunters at Ebensee.

Transports and SAMs:

As a footnote, West Austria did buy the Rapier SAMs and a small fleet of DC-9s through separate competitions.

The DC-9 just slightly beat out the BAC 1-11 in the transport competition. It was chosen more for it’s potential longevity than anything else.








 

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Examples of West Austrian Airpower in the 1970s


DeHavilland Canada DHC-5C Buffalo
Taken on strength by the OL in the late 1960s as DHC-5A models with General Electric engines, the West Austrian fleet underwent a rewinging and re-engining program in the 1970s that saw them emerge as C models complete with Rolls Royce engines. Ultimately, West Austria was the only user of the C model.


DeHavilland Canada DHC-6 Twin Otter
Entering OL service alongside the Buffalo, the Twin Otter was immediately popular with West Austrian crews for it's abilitiy to operate from airfields in the mountains that many other conventional aircraft  could not.


Dassault Mirage IV-O
Controversial even before it entered OL service, the Mirage IV-O was followed by international criticism and protest through the duration of it's roughly decade long service in the OL. Despite this, it was a reliable and well liked aircraft by it's crews.


Transall C.160
"The transport that wasn't", as the OL came to know the C.160, was initially offered to West Austria early in the 1960s. However, the internal political instabilities West Austria was experiencing at the time created arguments between Germany and France as to the wisdom of keeping the offer open. Tired of waiting, OL opted for a small fleet of Lockheed Hercules instead.

Toward the end of the 1970s, when OL was looking for a transport to supplement their Hercules fleet, Germany offered a number of refurbished ex-Luftwaffe Transalls to them. West Austria had however, through strong ties to Italy, reached a better deal for factory fresh G.222 transports.

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Relations with Israel:

East Austrian military personnel and equipment had been stationed in Israel continuously since the end of the Israeli Civil War to ensure that peace was kept on both sides of Israel’s redifined borders.

Largely the duty was uneventful and when they weren’t patroling borders and keeping the peace, the Austrians were training the Israelis on the latest Warsaw Pact produced military gear that was entering service there. Prior to the civil war, Israel was set to dedicate vast amounts of its budget to establishing a very large domestic weapons industry. The Marxist victory in the conflict rerouted the money towards other sectors such as medical research and infrastructure. Coming out of the conflict as a Socialist state ensured that Israel would have no problems acquiring a reliable source of foreign made gear for it’s military.

A formal contract was struck in 1970 for Israeli air force pilots to be trained in East Austria to fly the MiG-21,  Su-17, An-12, An-26 as well as the new Aero L-39 Albatros jet trainer; all of which would form the backbone of the Israeli air arm in the 70s and into the 80s.

Fighter and strike training all took place at Obergrafendorf and All Israeli pilots who successfully completed their training were required to put in six months of operational duty at forward LOVA bases, Zeltweg or Steyr for air defense graduates and Ferlach or Bad Leonfelden for strike graduates.

L-39 training for instructor pilots was carried out, as all basic and lead in training was, at Feldbach. Graduates of the L-39 instructor pilot course returned to Israel to form the nucleus of the Israeli air arm flight academy at Beersheba.

Transport training was at Graz with graduates of the course returning to Israel for stationing at Nazareth or Hebron.

Training the reformed military of a reformed state was not easy work. The post civil war map of Israel included previously disputed territories as part of the redefined borders. While the map was new, many old animosities remained.

The new Israeli military was largely conscripted and nobody was exempted from service based on ethnicity or religious standing. The idea was to have a military that reflected all of Israel’s people equally. As is so often the case, theory and practice found themselves at odds with each other frequently for the first few years. Forcing people who normally wouldn’t look at or speak to each other to work together towards a common goal for the nation seemed impossible.

The animosities showed not only within the borders of Israel, but also in East Austria and any other Warsaw Pact country that was taking part in training Israeli personnel. One near disaster at Graz early on underlines the problems, a retired Austrian flight instructor relates:

“One morning we were briefing an Israeli crew for a routine training sortie on the Antonov An-26 aircraft. This particular training group was two thirds through training and, up to that point in time gave all the signs of being an effective crew.

They were a true mixed bag. The pilot was Palisitinian, co-pilot was Israeli with strong Marxist leanings, The flight engineer was Israeli with rather more right wing leanings and the loadmaster was from the Golan Heights somewhere.

I and the other instructor who went up to inspect that flight had both spent some time in Israel and had seen how fractious it was despite the new government’s attempts to put a friendly and harmonious face on it to the rest of the world. We looked at the crew and despite their success so far in training, our instincts told us it was madness to put this group together, but the Israeli authorities insisted on such mixes.

The inspection of the aircraft and pre-flight checks went without a hitch and we took off without incident. However, about a third into the sortie, things went to Hell very quickly on us. The pilot and co-pilot were working very competently together and the flight had been reasonably smooth, then there was a short verbal exchange between the co-pilot and flight engineer in Hebrew and before we knew it, they were out of their seats and getting ready to come to blows over the comments.

Myself and the other instructor were struggling to keep them apart while the pilot was doing his level best to fly the plane. The co-pilot was about my size so I could control him, he was also a fairly young man and could be reasoned with fairly easily. The flight engineer was a rather larger man and my colleague needed the help of the loadmaster to fully control him.

No sooner had the loadmaster gotten the engineer off of my colleague then the engineer spat some form of obscenity at him. The loadmaster landed one solid punch to the engineer’s chin and knocked him into a daze. We took advantage of the engineer’s momentary incapacitation to firmly bind him to a seat in the cargo hold.

My colleague took over the engineering duties, we cut the training sortie short and returned to base. Needless to say, there were a lot of questions given the state of how we returned. We knew the engineer had some right wing leanings and was a bit critical of the new Israel, but once the flight recorder had been analysed and the full scope of what he had said to the co-pilot and loadmaster had been translated, we ceased his training immediately and had him on the next flight back to Israel. For a few months after that, no Israeli transport training flight took off without at least two large security guards from the base aboard.

Thankfully, we never experienced another incident to that degree, but we were used to hearing insults and seeing dirty looks flung between crew members and took it to be something routine and to let it go unless it physically interfered with the crew’s ability to get the job done.

The first few years were quite difficult and we frequently questioned why we were even bothering to do it, beyond Moscow telling us that we had to. However, as younger crews came to train, it got better. We found the younger trainees, regardless of  their ethnicities or religion, to be much more flexible and less fixed in their views than some of the more veteran trainees that had served in the pre civil war Israeli military.”

Outside of controversial crew arrangements, there was also more than a bit of dissent among some Israelis regarding any involvement by East Austria in their affairs. After all, Austria had been allied to Germany in WWII and surely bore some degree of responsibility for attrocities committed against Jewish people.

There was also the matter that East Austria had taken an active hand in throwing the civil war in the Marxists’ favour. Clearly a very biased and provocative move.

The Marxist government tried to disuade people from seeing Austria as a co-conspirator with Germany against Jews in WWII and rather see them as a country and people unwillingly forced into that alliance who would have done things differently if they’d had the choice.

The Marxist government was also active in discouraging ultra-orthodox religious practice of any sort within the new Israel. They would not discourage religion in general, but encouraged much more tolerant and liberal practice of  any religion in the region.

As for East Austria’s involvement in the civil war; the Marxists tried to convince the Israelis that East Austria had no choice in the matter and that they were ordered to carry out the night drops by Moscow. However, this was not very convincing to most people as East Austria’s refusal to be part of the Prague Spring made headlines around the world so people knew the country wouldn’t always do what Moscow told them to.

Israel was not a popular posting for East Austrian military or diplomatic personnel. Anyone who had spent significant time in the new Israel left with severe misgivings about the nation’s ability to stay that way without a constant foreign military presence within it’s borders.

In time, those misgivings would prove prophetic.

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Business as Usual in the West:

West Austria went into the 1970s without much major change in its order of battle.

Like so many other NATO countries, the F-104 was a dominant shape over West Austria with both Canadian and OL forces using it concurrently. The only change was that the bulk of the OL F-104G fleet had been replaced by the F-104S.

The OL Base at Ebensee was making final touches to base upgrades to house the Mirage F.1s, the first of which arrived in 1973. That year also saw the last remaining T-33s retired from OL service, the Hunters relegated to the unit hack and utility roles.

The OL’s light strike capability was squarely on the shoulders of the Aermacchi MB-326 fleet, which was in the process of being upgraded from the B to the more capable G model. With the Hunter out of the strike picture and the Mirage F.1’s own strike abilities yet to be employed, the Macchi was one of the most active air assets in the West Austrian arsenal through the 1970s.

The initial controversy over the Mirage IV O purchase had died down from its initial intensity, but still existed in some quarters. The most frequent protests about them came from the citizens of Braunau in regards to the noise levels, particularly when RATO take offs were being conducted.

Salzburg based Hercules were joined by a small fleet of DC-9 aircraft for VIP transport.

The Buffalo and Twin Otter fleet at Innsbruck was as dependable as ever and an upgrade program for the Buffalos was being strongly considered in the early 70s.

The SF.260 and MB-326 fleets at Mayrhofen were still churning out well qualified fresh pilots.

OL Public Relations on the Wing:

The OL flight institute at Mayrhofen became the home of a display team for West Austria in 1972, when a group of instructor pilots set up a team of SF.260s to perform at various air shows around Europe and to generally drum up interest in West Austria’s youth in a military career.

The team consisted of six aircraft, rotated in and out of Mayrhofen’s generic pool of SF.260s and existed as a part-time operation initially. The team proved popular enough both inside and outside the country for the first two years of its existence, but the 70s were well into the age of the jet and a decision was made to stand the team down through the 1974 season and reactivate them in 1976 with the MB-326.

In late 1974, a group of ten fresh MB-326 aircraft were purchased specifically for the team. The team was increased from six to eight aircraft in the flying program and two reserve aircraft. The team was also made full time so it could be free to develop more complex and exciting routines, this was carried out throughout 1975.

The “Not so Super Frelon”:

The early 70s saw OL helicopter operations facing a dilemma in regards to its increasingly under utilised Super Frelons. The helicopters were either too large for the smaller transport duties or not big enough for the larger jobs.

The OL found itself happily getting smaller jobs done with their Pumas, or unhappily imposing upon NATO air arms with heavier helicopters, usually Germany and their CH-53s, to get the bigger jobs done while the “Not so Super Frelon” as they had come to be called, sat idly on the ground at Landeck.

The Super Frelons were sold back to France in 1974 and West Austria carefully considered how to fill the heavy end of its helicopter airlift requirements.

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Going Over the Line:

Early one morning in May 1976, a Mirage IV O departed Braunau on a routine TFR training sortie.

The aircraft flew a perfectly normal and standard sortie through the Tyrolean Alps and was turning north to return to Braunau. The loop back home took the aircraft close to the Linz Line, again, a perfectly normal thing that nobody worried about. By all appearances, the sortie truly was “nothing to write home about”.

Shortly before the pilot would have turned the aircraft to the west for the homebound leg of the trip, the aircraft ingested a rather large bird into the left intake; which consequently started a catastrophic engine fire. While the on board fire suppression system did extinguish the fire quickly, fragments of the engine had done damage to the flight control system and the aircraft was growing increasingly unresponsive to pilot input.

With the aircraft largely unresponsive, proper procedure would have the crew abandon the aircraft. However, the aircraft was heading directly for a suburb of Linz and letting it crash would result in a high number of civilian casualties. Additionally, though both the pilot and navigator were born on the west side of the Linz line, they had family east of it. The pilot actually had family in Linz itself. The thought of abandoning the aircraft was entertained by neither man; it was simply unthinkable from a personal standpoint.

The pilot brought full power up to the remaining engine and used what little remaining control he had over the vertical movement of the machine to keep it aloft just long enough to clear the southern suburbs of the city and belly land the aircraft in an empty field just east of it. The residents of that part of Linz got an impromptu airshow they wouldn’t soon forget; quite a few windows were broken and people shaken up a bit, but nobody was killed.

Needless to say, the Mirage was quickly impounded and the crew taken into custody by the local army regiment until specialists from Klagenfurt could arrive to inspect the wreckage and interrogate the crew.

Accolades and Reunions:

The crew were questioned at length as to exactly why and how they had crossed into East Austrian territory despite the fact that it had been obvious to the wreckage inspectors from the very moment they arrived at the crash site that an ingested bird had brought the plane down. The blood and feathers plastered to the fuselage side just ahead of the intake, in conjunction with the burned out engine, told them everything they needed to know to be able to quickly dismiss any notion that in was an intentional crossing by the crew.

The news was a buzz on both side of the Linz Line over the matter. Speculation was rampant in spite of the fact that investigators considered the case an open and shut accident. While views differed here and there, media outlets were unanimous in praising the pilot’s flying skills. The mayor of Linz even thanked the crew personally for safeguarding the citizens by staying with the aircraft.

When the crew told the mayor that they both had family in or near Linz that they would like to meet with, the mayor used his influence to grant them a few hours of visiting time as further thanks.

The pilot was quickly acquainted with his uncle, aunt and cousin who lived in the north part of the city. He had only known this part of his family from photographs and letters as his parents had left Linz for points west in 1946, before he was born.

The navigator had an aunt and a cousin who were eager to come to Linz from Amstetten to meet with him. As with the pilot, this was the first time the navigator had seen these members of his family in person.

It was an emotional day for all family members involved, many stories were told, lots of photos were taken, but the few hours that had been granted came to an end all too soon. With some tearful farewells, the two crewmen were taken to the small corner of the Linz airport that belonged to the military until the transport aircraft from Graz arrived to fly them home.

Their flight home was uneventful. The LOVA Let 410 Turbolet was given clearance to take them as far as the OL base at Ebensee, where a Twin Otter was waiting to take them the rest of the way to Braunau.

Mirage IV O, the Controversy Continues:

While the pilot and navigator were safely back home, their aircraft was in for a longer stay in the east. As was standard practice, the east offered to return the wreckage. As was also standard practice, the west declined the offer; writing the aircraft off as a loss.

The Mirage was moved from Linz to Klagenfurt for deeper analysis. The aircraft was largely intact, but certainly not fit for flying again.

Both Soviet and East Austrian military intelligence were aware that this particular variant of the Mirage IV had all of its nuclear weapon carrying abilities designed out of it to make it capable of only conventional bomb hauling.

They were taken very much by surprise during the dissection of the aircraft, when they found that all of the internal airframe structures to accommodate the semi recessed stand off weapon that the French version was known to carry were largely intact in the IV O and, by initial appearances, likely recoverable to give the IV O the ability to carry such weapons itself.

The accusations against West Austria for concealing a nuclear ability in their Mirage IV fleet came quickly and furiously; accusations against France for enabling such a situation were also flying. Harsh questions were not only coming from the Soviet Union and Warsaw Pact at large, but also from the highest levels of NATO.

France and West Austria countered the accusations and questions by claiming that the IV O had been built primarily to haul conventional bombs, with a secondary purpose as a tactical reconnaissance platform and that the ability to recover the recess in the aircraft’s belly was so that a camera pod could be fitted. They went further to say that only a few machines in the OL Mirage IV fleet could be fitted with a camera pod.

The explanations were met with staunch scepticism and West Austria was ordered to make its Mirage IV fleet available for inspection by a delegation of NATO and Warsaw Pact experts immediately. The presence of representatives from the OL procurements division and Dassault were also requested at the inspection.

The delegation and representatives gathered at Braunau on a rainy day in late June 1976. Most of the OL Mirage IV fleet was neatly lined up on the tarmac outdoors, while two more were in hangars with a variety of access panels opened up for deeper scrutiny. Additionally, two Mirage IV of the French standard were flown in specifically for close comparisons between their standard belly recess and the recoverable one in the OL variant.

The camera pod was also available for inspection, not to mention proof that it actually existed.

The day culminated with a demonstration of what would be required to refit an OL Mirage with the camera pod. The process took about three and a half hours. Most inspectors agreed that such a time interval wasn’t really practical if a nuclear capability was needed quickly. That fact, in conjunction with the generous amount of Mirage IV O specific information that the Dassault representatives provided did seem enough to, for the time being, satisfy the inspectors that nuclear ability in the IV O, however much it may or may not have, was highly unlikely and would be ridiculously impractical to install into it if it were possible.

Rolling Heads and a Stay of Execution:

With the smoke clearing over the latest Mirage IV O debacle, hard decisions were being made in the higher echelons of both the West Austrian Defence Ministry and NATO.

The head of OL procurements was very swiftly relieved of his position and found himself facing legal charges revolving around hiding the ability of the Mirage IV O to be a photographic platform from NATO and other allies.

Heads were also rolling at Dassault, where the head of the Mirage IV O program was sacked for preserving the recessed belly on any of the IV O line when it was never authorised to be so.

A very complex network of under the table deals and bribes were found involving the now former head of OL procurements, former head of the Mirage IV O program at Dassault and the man who had been the West Austrian Defence Minister at the time the Mirage IV O deal was formalised. That minister was still in the government, but had been given the Minister of Energy and Resources portfolio not long after the Mirage IV entered OL service.

Ultimately, there was enough evidence to arrest the minister and charge him with several counts of fraud and bribery. He was to spend the next several years under house arrest.

The future of the Mirage IV in OL service was very much in doubt. The machine had been controversial from the beginning and NATO saw this latest controversy as a tremendous embarrassment and some were moving to have the aircraft removed from OL service immediately in favour of having the RAF handle strike duties in West Austria. The Sepecat Jaguars that had recently replaced the Buccaneers, were seen as perfectly capable, and much less controversial.

The West Austrian Parliament itself was torn on the issue. Some saw the retention of the Mirage IV as an essential sign of the nation’s ability to defend itself, while others felt the continuing controversies surrounding the type, from both inside and outside the country, simply made having the aircraft more trouble than it was worth.

In September of 1976, NATO issued a strong recommendation to West Austria to either seek out a replacement for the Mirage IV or hand over strike duties in West Austria to the RAF and phase the type out of service by the end of the decade.

While it was not an order in any official sense, it might as well have been one. NATO had clearly had its fill of the Mirage IV O and the political problems that it tended to cause.

The aircraft had time, but not much. January 1, 1980 was the agreed upon deadline for it’s withdrawal from OL service. A replacement aircraft type was seen as preferable to handing the strike mission over to foreign hands, as friendly as those hands might be.

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Shifts in the East:

Just as the western “Twin” had seen the 70s in with base and equipment shifts, the east was also getting it’s share.

Most notably, the T-72 MBT had finally arrived and the last T-62s had been put out to pasture to the delight of many a tanker in the army. The bulk of the T-62s were put out on the range at Obergrafendorf for the TSTE to use as MiG-15, Su-7 and now Su-17 fodder.

The Su-7 was entering it’s last years in LOVA service and the first Su-17 arrived at Obergrafendorf in mid 1972. The bases at Bad Leonfelden and Ferlach were both being prepared for the arrival of their Su-17s and were fully ready by early 1973. 1975 would mark the very last LOVA Su-7 flight.

Another type to leave LOVA service were the Mi-4 Hound helicopters, the last one retired in 1973 after adequate numbers of Mi-8 Hip aircraft had been taken on. All Mi-4s were scrapped as the airframes had largely hit their maximum allowable flight hours.

Training aircraft were getting perhaps the biggest shakeup of all. By 1971, the Zlin 526 had been totally replaced by the Zlin Z-42 in the basic trainer role. The L-29 would soldier on for a while into the late 70s, but the L-39 Albatros started replacing it in 1973.

The arrival of the L-39 Albatros also signaled the impending end of MiG-15 service in LOVA. With the arrival of the Albatros, many L-29 Delfins were transferred to base and unit hack work to replace the MiG-15s doing such utility work. With the introduction of the weapons capable L-39Z in the late 1970s, the last LOVA MiG-15 flight occurred in late 1978.

Rotors Over Linz:

The smallest LOVA base by any measure was at Linz. A small corner of a civil airfield housing a handful of Mi-2 Hoplites fitted out for search and rescue work. To many, it seemed impractical to keep such a small backwater of a base operational and many moved that it should be closed in favour of a fully civil airport. The arrival of the Mi-8 Hip changed all that.

Initially the majority of the Mi-8 fleet started by being based at the army garrison at Wolfsberg, just as the Mi-4 had been. However, there wasn’t really enough room at the garrison for all the Hips and the army was unwilling to give more room to aircraft at the base.

There was no specific helicopter base within LOVA at that time; the Mi-2s were scattered at based around the country, rotary wing aviation had been very decentralized in LOVA to that point in time. A decision was made to create a central helicopter base and command centre and Linz would be it. Work began on an expansion to the Linz airport to house the helicopters.

The Mi-8s that would not fit at Wolfsberg, along with the resident Linz Mi-2s, found a temporary home at Obergrafendorf. MiG-21 training was drawing down in anticipation of the MiG-23 entering service in 1976 and so enough space was available at that base for the helicopters until the expansion at Linz could be completed in late 1975.

Banished Blinders:

Soviet operations at Klosterneuburg ceased in 1975 and with them so did the presence of the much maligned, at least to the Austrians and NATO, Tu-22 Blinder aircraft in Austrian skies.
The base was officially handed over to the Austrians and was temporarily closed for refitting as a storage depot for retired LOVA aircraft awaiting scrapping or sale. LOVA had a large number of Su-7s that they needed to keep somewhere and anticipated a similar situation with MiG-21s before the 70s were out.

The Blinders were transferred to Cyprus. The island had, between the Soviets, Greek and Turkish militaries; been largely transformed into a fortress like place with one half of the island housing a huge military airport and the other half and equally large naval harbour.

Traditionally, the airbase section of Cyprus was a transport hub. However, tensions were rising in Israel again and the Soviets felt a dedicated surveillance regiment closer to that country was essential. With the Soviets tiring of the constant protests against the Tu-22 in Austria, they took the opportunity to permanently reassign that regiment to Cyprus.

Needless to say, there were no broken hearts among the Austrians when the last Blinder left Klosterneuburg.

Sibling Rivalry:

Just like any other siblings, the two Austrias were not immune to the temptation of trying to one up and outdo each other in certain ways.

In light of the OL forming an air demonstration team, LOVA decided to follow suit and create one for itself.

Initially, the intent was to use the new L-39 Albatros trainer for a jet based team. However, the L-39 was seen as too valuable for such “frivolous” uses. The L-29 was also seen as too valuable.

LOVA did eventually find a mount for it’s display team in a most unexpected form; the Mi-2 Hoplite. The team existed from 1975 to 1980 and built a solid reputation for itself as an original and entertaining team at air shows across the Warsaw Pact countries. Their popularity resulted in official invitations to the Paris and Farnborough air shows in the late 70s.

The disbandment of the team was a very sudden move. The pilots were all very experienced and their flying skills were required for an emergency deployment to Israel.

[upnorth]

Moving on the Mirage:

Feeling the bite and pressure to find a replacement for their Mirage IV O aircraft, West Austria was weighing the options carefully.

The technology sector of the West Austrian economy was still highly respected and the avionics they had developed for the F-104S and the Mirage IV O were used as bargaining chips to get the country’s foot in the door of the multi national MRCA program, which would come to life as the Panavia Tornado.

However, West Austria would not be a majority partner in the program, so there was only a guarantee that they would get Tornados; there was no guarantee of when they would get them. The nation’s need for a strike aircraft was immediate enough that they couldn’t put all their eggs in the Tornado basket.

Salvaging the Next Step:

A mid life upgrade program was in the works for the Mirage IV O when the order to replace it came down.

The program was a sweeping avionics upgrade, which included a new generation of TFR that was completely developed domestically. The upgrade also included a state of the art laser targeting system. To cancel the upgrade program would have made the loss of the Mirage IV O felt that much more deeply, something had to be kept.

The systems being developed were designed to fit into a large aircraft of the Mirage IV’s size, but the OL had no other combat aircraft of that size. Knowing that the Panavia Tornado was likely less than a decade away from entering service, nobody was keen on spending money on fresh airframes to replace the Mirage IV.

Eventually, the system was scaled back somewhat in complexity so that it could be made to fit into the Mirage F.1s that the OL had purchased to fly air cover for the Mirage IVs. Without the Mirage IV, the Mirage F.1’s seldom used strike abilities would keep it relevant in OL service.

A Bridge of Imperfection:

The first fully refitted Mirage F.1 flew in early 1978. The handling of the aircraft was good, but the strike systems were a handful for the single crewmember. They truly had been made with a two man crew in mind.

After the first one or two TFR practice runs through the Tyrolean Alps proved utterly harrowing even for the seasoned test pilots, the aircraft were taken back into the hangar for more testing and evaluation.

The system was simplified yet further, to the point where several of the advantages it would have given to the Mirage IV were sacrificed so as to keep the workload reasonable for the single crewman of the much smaller Mirage F.1.

After another six months of testing, they had a workable strike aircraft in the F.1 that did not overwhelm the pilot. The order was put forth to convert the entire OL F.1 fleet to the new strike variant immediately and commence training so that the Mirage IV could be retired by the January 1980 deadline.

Memories of Mayrhofen:

In 1978, Mayrhofen was the oldest OL base with a proud tradition of turning out well rounded pilots for the OL; that all came to an end in 1978 when it was announced that a base would be closed.

The deliberations over which base to close were heated; it came down to Mayrhofen, Hallein or Ebensee.

Both Hallein and Ebensee had some growth and development potential that Mayrhofen lacked. The town of Mayrhofen had grown to nearly surround the base and that was not an ideal situation for any military installation, particularly one focused on training.

Mayrhofen had been opened by the RCAF and used to train the first OL pilots on ground attack techniques using Mustangs and Vampires; it’s runways had seen Chipmunks, Harvards, Provosts and T-33s all prior to the SF.260s and MB.326s that called it home in 1978.

The training academy was moved to the increasingly quiet Braunau. Mirage IV sorties were growing few and far between and part of the base was already being converted to a storage facility for when that aircraft was ultimately retired.

Braunau and the largely quiet northern reaches of West Austria were a particularly welcome change for the pilots of the OL display team; the move gave them much more room to develop and practice routines than Mayrhofen ever did.

Heavy Lift Solution:

Lacking a heavy lift helicopter component following the return of Super Frelons to France, the OL proposed a solution that was much bigger than West Austria alone. A solution scoffed at by some, championed by others and a very daunting idea to even entertain making a reality. It did become a reality and went by the acronym: H.E.L.L.E.N

Heavy Lift and Logistical Engineering Network

The concept was a common network of heavy lift helicopters under direct NATO command. The Boeing CH-47 Chinook was chosen as the core machine and a fleet of them were distributed throughout the European NATO nations that chose to take part in the program.

Three main bases were established: Madrid, Spain; Eindhoven, Netherlands and Naples, Italy. From these three points, the helicopters were deployed to cover Three geographic zones:

Western Zone (HQ Madrid): Portugal and Spain
Southern Zone (HQ Naples): Italy and West Austria
Northern Zone (HQ Eindhoven): Netherlands, Belgium and Denmark

The aircraft had mixed crews from all participating nations and carried standard NATO markings in place of any specific national markings.

HELLEN was formally established in 1975, with HQ at Naples. Beyond the three main bases, which also served as main service depots for the regional fleets, each participating nation had a smaller base to serve districts inside the main three regions.

The division at Naples were tasked with central and southern Italy; a smaller division at Venice was tasked with northern Italy up to the Dolomites; the West Austrian division, at Landeck, was tasked with all of West Austria and the alpine region that made up the Italian border including the Dolomites.

HELLEN also consisted of EOTP (Environmental Operational Training Program) in which crews from the participating nations would be assigned to a train in one of the other countries to become familiar with operating in different environmental and climactic conditions than they would find in their own lands.

This resulted in Danish personnel learning operations in hot and arid regions in central Spain and Spanish personnel learning operations in the hostile and unpredictable environs of the North Sea and Baltic.

EOTP did much to bolster the image and credibility of the West Austrian armed services and show the rest of NATO at large how capable they actually were. The country's unpredictable equipment procurement habits that had resulted in a mixed bag of gear had often been a cause for concern among some in NATO. West Austria’s exemplary performance in joint operations put such concerns quite soundly to rest.

The Austrians were in charge of EOTP training in the alpine environment, which was considered one of the most challenging and nerve wracking training environments outside of the North Sea and Baltic environs trained for in Denmark.

Germany, Britain and Norway had all held out on joining HELLEN. Norway was simply sceptical of the idea from the outset; Britain was also initially sceptical of the idea, but became an associate member in 1978; Germany, with it's CH-53 already firmly filling it's own heavy lift requirements, simply saw no reason to join the program.

As with Britain, Canada became an associate member in 1978. Being associate members, British and Canadian aircraft were retained in their respective national markings and units were not under direct NATO command.

Britain made good use of EOTP to build a well trained body of Chinook air and ground crew to man the RAF Chinooks that were on order at the time.

Canada formally established an EOTP depot at CFB Edmonton in late 1978. The primary advantages of Canada joining the program were that the European program members gained valuable access to additional operating environs, including Arctic operations. They also gained access to less congested airspace and larger dedicated training areas than they would have in Europe.

Lightening the Load:

While EOTP was paying dividends that nobody involved could deny, H.E.L.L.E.N. itself was a near nightmare in command and administrative contexts. Eventually, in early 1980, H.E.L.L.E.N. was dissolved. EOTP, however, was kept intact and regularly developed for several more years.

The Chinook fleet was distributed and all aircraft were repainted with their respective user’s national markings. Aircraft optimised for EOTP carried a special badge, usually on the nose, to identify them as such.

Ultimately, OL found itself with a fleet of ten Chinooks. Six were standard heavy lift machines based at Landeck while the other four were EOTP alpine optimised trainers flying from Hallein.


 

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Boeing TH-47 Fohn
EOTP alpine optimised variant


This particular machine is shown in an early 1980s post H.E.L.L.E.N. scheme.

While the EOTP alpine training was headquartered at Hallein, it was not unusual to see one of their machines on temporary rotation to Landeck to periodically test the regular crews there.

[elmayerle]

A truly fascinating and plausible history.  I'm surprised that the Italian package didn't include some MB.326C trainers for the Starfighter (not built in RL, but a very suitable way to get equipment training in flight without having to worry so much about the aircraft).  You've got some beautiful art to go with the story, too.