Denmark and the UK: NATO Infrastructure Committees Visit

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For some reason Denmark and the UK always combined their trips. Denmark also had the distinction of not letting their delegate to the Infrastructure Committees take his wife on these trips, and consequently our spouses were not invited on the trip to Denmark. Therefore our spouses had to meet up with us when we arrived in Scotland. As my sister Carol was living with us, she babysat Tamara, allowing Linda to go with the other wives.

16 September 1986 Tuesday. We departed on a Danish military cargo aircraft from Melsbroek Air Base in Brussels to Karup Air Base on the Jutland Peninsula of Denmark. Upon arrival we had briefings and then toured the various airfield facilities funded by the Infrastructure program. We then had lunch hosted by the Danish military. Then we reboarded the plane for the flight to Bornholm Island in the middle of the Baltic Sea between Sweden and Poland. We checked into our hotel and had the evening free to explore the fishing village of Bornholm.

17 September 1986 Wednesday. The next morning we drove to the radar installation and learned some of the interesting history of the island. At the very end of WWII, the Soviets bombed and then occupied the island. They left a year later in April 1946 with the proviso that "The stationing of foreign troops on Bornholm would be considered a declaration of war against the Soviet Union." They were not particularly pleased when NATO built this radar sation which covered the air space of northern East Germany and Poland.

We stopped to see an ancient round church on the way back to the airfield. We then caught the military transport to Frederikshavn, on the northeast side of the Jutland Peninsula. There we again had briefings and toured the Danish Naval Base.

We then caught a bus to Skagan, the northern tip of the Jutland Peninsula, where we walked across the dunes to see the point where the Kattegat and the Skagagat meet. We returned to Fredrickshavn for a farewell reception hosted by the Ministry of Defense, and spent the night at a hotel there.

19 September Friday. We returned to the military airfield where a British military transport aircraft was waiting to fly us to northern Scotland. We arrived at a nearby air base where we then rode on a bus to the radar station. After briefings and a quick tour we returned to the air base where we were then flown to an air base near Glasgow. We took buses to our hotel on George Square in the heart of downtown. This is where we met our wives who had just flown in from Brussels. We had the evening free to explore the city.

20 September 1986 Saturday. As this was the weekend, the day was devoted to cultural activities. We boarded our buses to Edinburgh. On the way we stopped at a ruined abbey. In Edinburgh we toured the castle and at the other end of the Royal Mile, Holyrood Palace which is the Queen's official residence in Scotland. Afterwards we visited the Scottish Parliament. We returned to our hotel in Glasgow for the night.

21 September 1986 Sunday. We flew from Glasgow to London, where we checked into our hotel where we would be for the next week, and had the rest of the day to tour the town. Linda and I didn't wear ourselves out as we had been to London many times before. We just explorered the area around the hotel which was in the West End, and found a good restaurant to eat at.

22 -27 September 1986 Monday through Saturday. We used London as our base for visiting military and defense industrial facilities within a two hour drive.

The first day we had briefings at the Ministry of Defense in London.

Another day we drove to Stonehenge for a brief stop and then on to Greenham Common which was a Ground Launch Cruise Missle base. We were greeted by anti war and nuclear disarmament demonstrators. After Greenham Common, we stopped at the air base and British Air Museum at Yeovilton. Then it was a long drive back to London.

Another day we visited the British Aerospace factory on the outskirts of London where they were assembling the Skynet 4 satellites, a joint program with NATO. The NATO satellites were launched on US Atlas rockets in 1991 and 1993. They originally were going to be launched on the Shuttle, but with the explosion of the Columbia in January 1986, we had to go with an expendable launch vehicle. The French lobbied hard for NATO to buy their Ariane rocket, even taking the committee to see a launch in French Guyane; I wasn't invited, but would have turned down the invitation in any case. The president of Arianespace even criticizd me by name at a news conference at the Paris air show. I refused to allow France to participate since a NATO rule prohibited such participation by countries that did not contribute to that portion of the NATO Infrastructure program.

One day we visited the U.S. bases at Alconbury and Lakenheath. The briefing at Alconbury was the most "interesting." The U.S. based its long range TR-1 reconnaisence aircraft there. These aircraft are part of the Strategic Air Command, whose commanders follow in the footsteps of Gen Curtis LeMay, who was very plain spoken. The base commander described the mission of the TR-1 as putting the death ray on its target which would then die...alhtough he was more graphic. I was a bit uncomfortable with such warlike language, but our Allies needed to know that we were serious about the Cold War.

On Friday night we were hosted for a final reception by the Ministry of Defense at the St. James Palace. The setting was very impressive! Saturday we had the day free so Linda and I did our sightseeing on that day.

28 September 1986 Sunday. We went out to Northolt Air Base where the Queen's Flight is based, and took one of the RAF's VIP jets back to Brussels.

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