FRANKFURT, Germany — The runways that once helped feed a blockaded Berlin, bade Elvis farewell after his Army service and provided the first glimpse of freedom for hostages returning from Iran now stand empty.
A hub of U.S. military activity for decades, Rhein-Main Air Base is being given back to Germany and its logistical functions taken over by bases at Ramstein and Spangdahlem. Ceremonies set for today will mark the handover, which will take until the end of the year.
"The mission has moved," said U.S. Air Force Col. Tom Schnee, who is overseeing the shutdown. "We're all set for the symbolic closure."
Since 1945, the air base has played a role in nearly every major conflict for the U.S. military, from ferrying troops to Europe and abroad, to providing support for the 1990 Gulf War, and again in the 2003 invasion of Iraq.
The pilots who flew nonstop during the Berlin Airlift took off from the runways of Rhein-Main. For Marines injured in the 1982 bombing of their barracks in Lebanon that killed 242, the base was the first glimpse of home away from home. In January 1981, the 52 Americans held hostage for 444 days in Iran flew to Rhein-Main aboard C-9 Nightingales.
"It was a key base, the gateway to Europe for about 60 years," said Dr. Earl Moore, a Dallas physician who was a U.S. Navy aviator during the Berlin Airlift from 1947-48 and flew from Rhein-Main to West Berlin most days and nights. The Soviet Union cut off ground traffic in an attempt to starve the Allies out of Berlin in the first stand off of the Cold War.
Moore recalled having to sleep in cold, wooden barracks with no running water except for the first floor, barracks that used to house Nazi SS troopers.
"It was the diamond in the rough out of which we flew 24 hours a day for about a year-and-half to save those 2 million people in Berlin," he told The Associated Press this week. "We were on the far side of the field and we had to gun the engines just to get the planes out of the mud and onto the taxi-way."
As time passed, though, the field was improved and the runways, taxi-ways and buildings were modernized and heated.
"The aircraft stopped flying in and out of here on Sept. 30. Now, we have 50 days to vacate the 196 buildings," said Air Force Col. Brad Denison, a Vacaville, Calif., native and commander of the 469th Air Base Group, which is overseeing the closing of the facility.
The closure also marks a passing for Frankfurt, the financial center of Germany and Europe.
American soldiers and airmen brought jazz, cheap cigarettes, hot dogs and other Americana to the city immediately after World War II, and were a part of the Friday and Saturday night bar scene in the city's Sachsenhausen district.
A young Elvis Presley flew from Rhein-Main back to the U.S. when his Army service ended.
"I can close my eyes today and hear all those engines waiting to take off," said Moore, the Navy aviator and Berlin airlift veteran. "There goes the gateway to Europe."
On the Net: www.rheinmain.af.mil