Huge U.S. Troops Airlift To Europe

Press, Volume CII, Issue 30269, 23 October 1963, Page 13

Huge U.S. Troops Airlift To Europe

(H.ZP.A .-Reuter—Copyright) WASHINGTON, October 22. The largest ocean-spanning airlift of troops in history—involving an armoured division of 14,500 combat-ready American soldiers —began early today.

The air lift will test the speed of the United States response to an emergency call from the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation allies. One troop transport an hour roared down the runways at five airfields to speed across the Atlantic on a 5700mlle flight to bases at RheinMain, Sembach and Ramstein, West Germany.

In addition to the main combat force, a 116-plane tactical air force of 1500 men has been ordered to fly to bases in France and Germany.

They will join the division in N.A.T.O. field exercises at the end of the operation, which is scheduled to last three days. Military authorities in Fort Hood, Texas, intimated that they expected the airlift to remove military obstacles to

any later political decision to reduce the number of United States combat troops in Europe. Chief aim of the exercise is to determine how quickly a division can get into position with heavy equipment stored in Europe for the last two years. It will be the troops' job to draw the equipment as quickly as possible and simulate a counter-attack to recover territory presumed to have been lost during a lightning enemy attack. Winds from a hurricane developing off , the United States Atlantic coast threatened possible disruption of the exercise's flight plans, the Associated Press reported. General Paul D. Adams, chief of the strike command, said in Fort Hood that flights over the southern route to West Germany by way of Bermuda and the Azores might have to be diverted north.