"Ed Rasimus" wrote

I don't know when you were at Ramstein, but it's been a very long time
since Ramstein had Victor. (I was there at USAFE Hq from '78-'81 and
Victor was no longer a Ramstein mission--except when hosting Crested
Cap deployment from the 49th at Holloman.)

My last TDY there, was during the Poland Crisis (Dec 80 - Apr 81),
and it was the tab-vee area on what I remember as the SE side of the base.

A Victor Alert area was always double-fenced chain-link and razor
wirer with corner guard towers and double-gate walk through access
points. You didn't just take a wrong turn on a taxiway and drive
through a Victor area. You may have been in the aircraft Tab-Vees,
which were a "restricted" area, but nowhere near the security of nuke
alert. Even if you had been in the alert area (which was Zulu or air
defense) you would have had to pass through a security access point
and couldn't have just driven through.

No, that certainly doesn't describe the area. They just looked like your
every-day alert stuff.

There's no doubt that you got "jacked up" but it's a lot tougher to
get in among nuke loaded aircraft than your story implies.

I suspect I was told they were nukes, so I wouldn't complain about the
new duties I had. You may have heard about our Colonel who tried to
give a bottle of whiskey to the alert ramp guards on Christmas of 80...
He went to the same steel cell :-) So, I no longer felt lonely about being
the "arrested one" on base.