Urbex in France? Urbex in Luxembourg? Urbex in Belgium? Or urbex in Germany? That was the big question after our visit to the *Deportation Prison Birkhausen* was a unexpectedly short one – where should we continue our urban exploration day trip? There were plenty of options, but since Kaiserslautern (a.k.a. K-Town, especially amongst American military) was rather close we decided to continue our explorations there. The next place to visit: The USAREUR Communication Facility Lohnsfeld.
Very little is know about this former US military installment. The Energy Engineering Analysis Programm (EEAP) from August 1986 prepared for the Department of the Army, European Division, Corps of Engineers described it as “Located at Lohnsfeld, the station consists of a barracks and receiver building”. The facility was open from at least 1953 and on 1998-09-03 the U.S. Department of Defense announced that the Lohnsfeld Communications Station will be returned to the host nation, in this case Germany. It seems like my home country didn’t have any use for it and left the comm fac in the middle of nowhere abandoned, until… it was demolished in October of 2007. Which I found out about after I went there with my old buddy Gil – after we drove through the middle of nowhere for maybe half an hour, including dirt roads along some fields and an airport for model aircrafts. So maybe urbex in France, urbex in Luxembourg or even urbex in Belgium would have been a better alternative. (The place I really wanted to go, Villa Viktoriastift, one of the few abandoned mansions in Germany, became inaccessible a week prior when the new owner of the place was fed up by geocachers swarming the place – so he informed the police, threatened to sue some people (including the person who put the cache there!) and hired security…) Luckily Lohnsfeld wasn’t our last stop on our trip to Palatinate – and the last location made up big time to the first two less successful ones…
USAREUR Communication Facility Lohnsfeld
2011/11/11 by Florian / Abandoned Kansai
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I was stationed at the Lohnsfeld Receiver Station from 1968 to 1970. It was the High Frequency Radio Receiver station that received the transmissions from the US, Turkey, Iran, Greece & Ethiopia and relayed them to the command center in Pirmasens. The surrounding farmers fields were full of antenna towers and cables. There were usually 20 – 25 men stationed there
Thanks a lot for the additional infos! Rather small places that were abandoned before the age of the internet are always tough to do research on – especially military facilities.
I was stationed at the Lohnsfeld Receiver Station from Feb 1971 to Jan 1972. The command center in Pirmasens was a USASTRATCOM-facility.
There was a barracks and Kitchen at the site for those of us (20-25 men) who were not married.
Just over the hill from the antenna towers and cables was an olympic size pool at Winnweiler.
http://www.winnweiler-vgwerke.de/vg_werke_winnweiler/Schwimmbad/
It’s a shame that they demolished the station, but I guess it was outdated and they couldn’t find another purpose.
I hope you had a good year in Lohnsfeld! (5 years before I was born…)
I was stationed there 1980 thru 1986.