United States to Return History-Drenched Rhein-Main Air Base to Germany

The United States said Tuesday that it will give Germany back the Rhein-Main military airfield, a key Cold War staging post used by U.S. planes to carry out the 1948-49 Berlin Airlift.

Frankfurt Airport, continental Europe’s largest, lies just south of the sprawling air base and will take control of the 375 acres from the U.S. Air Force, the state-owned airport said.

The historic Rhein-Main airfield, one of the key staging sites for the round-the-clock airlift that kept West Berlin alive after Soviet dictator Josef Stalin blockaded it, has been under U.S. control since the end of World War II.

Its airstrip runs parallel to Frankfurt Airport’s civilian runways and has long given travelers there unusual glimpses of all sorts of camouflaged aircraft.

Frankfurt Airport, despite some controversial expansion projects, has been plagued for decades by capacity problems and has long coveted the military runway. But the U.S. Air Force held on to it even after Washington began reducing its troop strength in Germany after the Cold War.

Frankfurt Airport officials said they expect the agreement with federal and local government authorities to be approved by the U.S. government, the airport’s supervisory board and the Hesse state parliament in about two months.

The Rhein-Main air base has a long and colorful history.

It was used extensively by the United States to support the North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s bombardment of Yugoslavia during the Kosovo conflict.

It welcomed home dozens of American hostages held in captivity in the Middle East during the 1980s and early 1990s, and it served as the linchpin in the West’s efforts to drive Iraqi forces from Kuwait in 1991.

The U.S. Air Force said the base’s active-duty and civilian population is down to 3,000, a fraction of its size during the Cold War, when more than 300,000 American service personnel were based in West Germany.

The airfield started out as a launch pad for German airship operations in the 1930s, including the ill-fated Hindenburg.

It was used by the Luftwaffe during World War II.

More recently, the air base welcomed the 52 Americans who were held hostage in Iran from 1979 to 1981 and received the bodies of the 241 U.S. Marines killed in the 1983 suicide car bombing at the headquarters of the U.S. peacekeeping force in Lebanon.

Two years later, an attack by the German fringe left Red Army Faction killed two people there.

Klaus Busch, an airport spokesman, said the air base would eventually serve as a parking ground for planes and cargo and that a third terminal could be built there.

Earlier this month, the airport said it would pay for most of the more than $381 million cost of transferring troops to nearby U.S. bases and said the complete transfer should take three to five years.