Low-Flying NATO Jets Annoying West Germans

A fighter jet swoops about 250 feet over farmer Bernh Buschmann and his wife, Anna. The roar spooks their horse and scatters the hens across the barnyard.

NATO warplanes skimming over trees, farms and villages in mock battles have been a common sight in West Germany for years.

Airmen from seven nations in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, including West Germany, take part in 70,000 low-level training flights in this country each year, more than in any other NATO land, according to the West German Defense Ministry.

But thousands of West Germans are saying they’ve had enough of it.

“I know the defense of our country is important, but these low-level fliers are annoying,” said the 56-year-old Buschmann, whose farm is just outside Borken near the Dutch-West German border.

“Those jets are really a nuisance, and the animals don’t care too much for them either,” said his wife.

50 Flights in One Day

On one recent day, about 50 military jets were in the air over the Borken area, many of them in low-level maneuvers.

Opposition to the low-level flights soared after two recent crashes. On March 30, a French fighter jet crashed near a nuclear power plant in Bavaria. A day later, a U.S. F-16 plummeted into a West German town, destroying homes and killing a resident.

About 60,000 West Germans belong to grass-roots organizations pressuring the federal government to do something about low-level military flights, activists say.

West Germans complain such flights give them nightmares, impair their hearing, cause high blood pressure and make their children irritable.

“I get these very ugly dreams,” said Daerbel Stechel, a 45-year-old activist who lives in Wischhafen, near Bremen, and hears NATO jet fighters screeching overhead nearly every day.

“In one of them, I’m swimming in a very beautiful lake and suddenly jet fighters are falling all around me into the water. This is very bad,” she said.

Earlier this year, the respected Wickert Institute polled West Germans and found that 15% want NATO to stop its low-level military training flights.

Two-thirds of the 1,710 people polled said that such flights were necessary but that the number should be reduced, the institute said.

“Most people who oppose these flights are not members of the Greens (West Germany’s environmentalist party) but just citizens who cannot stand the noise any longer,” said Udo Rinner, a 45-year-old engineer and activist who lives in Muenster.

“For example, I am a conservative and am vehemently against the low-level flights.”

The low-level runs, in which the warplanes fly at altitudes as low as 250 feet, are limited to seven areas less densely populated than other parts of the country. Five areas are in the north half and two in the south.

Forty percent of the low-level flights are by the West German air force, said Ruediger Jaeschke, a spokesman for the West German Defense Ministry.

The remainder are flown by Americans, British, Dutch, French, Canadians and Norwegians, he said.

All NATO flights in West Germany are coordinated by a West German air force’s control center in Porz, which is between Cologne and Bonn.

The NATO allies refuse to divulge how many warplanes are based in West Germany, which is temporary home to about 900,000 foreign soldiers.

Important for Defense

Jaeschke said the low-level flights are important for NATO’s defense of West Germany.

He added that NATO is considering a “midday break” of a couple hours a day when the jets would have to stay on the ground.

In addition, he said, the NATO allies are always looking for new technological means to soften the jets’ roar.

“Much has been done in the last few years to lower the level of the noise from the jets,” Jaeschke said.

But he strongly rejected activists’ views that low-level flights should be stopped.

The Warsaw Pact, the Soviet Bloc’s defense alliance, has a numerical advantage over NATO in several areas, Jaeschke said. “If our pilots train too little, the Warsaw Pact advantage becomes greater.”

U.S. Air Force authorities also say low-level training flights are necessary.

“They are required to provide realistic training to NATO air crews,” Maj. Gen. Richard Pascoe, commander of the 17th Air Force at Sembach Air Base near Kaiserslautern, said.