Wiesbaden, West Germany

The move of Detachment A from
Wiesbaden, West Germany
to Giebelstadt, West Germany
October 1956 - November 1957

Courtesy of Chris Pocock - The U-2 Spyplane Toward the Unknown - ISBN:0-7643-1113-1

On 11 June 1956, Det A was moved to the busy USAF and CIA base at Wiesbaden near Frankfurt. Wiesbaden would be temporary, pending construction of suitable facilities at Giebelstadt airfield, 70 miles further east.

Website comment: - Det A eventually made the move from Wiesbaden to Giebelstadt over a period of six weeks, between October and November 1956.

On 10 December 1956, Carmine Vito departed from Giebelstadt on Mission 2029. This flight took him over Eastern Europe and countries such as Albania, Bulgaria and Yugoslavia.

In early 1957, all of the significant action in Project AQUATONE had taken place in Detachments B and C. There had been virtually no operational missions for Det A at Giebelstadt. Morale and discipline had suffered accordingly; the pilots had little to do except fly the Det's two T-33s and a single L-20 Beaver (for additional "taildragger" landing practice). After a series of incidents which potentially breached security, Det A commander Col Fred McCoy was replaced by Col Hack Mixon from Project HQ. In the fall of 1957, Project HQ made plans to close Det A.

Det A was alerted for some flights to the north. It was a long was from Giebelstadt to Murmansk and back, but the Det had just received its first U-2 with the GIANT STRIDE modification. This added a pair of external "slipper" fuel tanks to the wings, each carrying 100 gallons. The effect was to restore the range of the standard U-2A model which had dipped down below 4,000 nautical miles as verious elements of equipment had been added.

On 11 October 1957, while it was still dark, Jake Kratt climbed into Article 351 with its new slipper tanks, and took off from Giebelstadt on Mission 2037. He landed back at Giebelstadt nine hours and 53 minutes after take-off and he had travelled more than 3,900 nautical miles.

On 13 October at the same early hour, Article 351 again roared off the Giebelstadt runway, this time in thick fog with Hervey Stockman at the controls on Mission 2040 which lasted more than nine hours.

These two long flights to the north were to be Det A's swansong. Within a month, the unit was packed up and returned to the US. Henceforth, Giebelstadt was used only as a refueling point when U-2s were ferried to and from Detachment B in Turkey (this practice began in February 1958, as a better alternative to disassembly and transport from Edwards by the lumbering C-124s, followed by re-assembly at the Det). Most of Det A's personnel returned to the USAF, including three of the pilots. Colonel "Hack" Mixon, who had replaced Fred McCoy as unit commander, moved to the same position at Det C.