For those of us who worked at Ferihegy Airport in the 60s and 70s, military service was a simplified affair. Just one month of ground-pounder training (as opposed to the two years meted out on the less fortunate) where after we went back to our civilian jobs of, in our case, controlling aircraft. The assumption was that if NATO came invading Lake Balaton and the Great Hungarian Plain, we would be doing the same job, albeit in uniform…
Training for the worst
As controllers, we were of course aware of the location of each military airport in Hungary, those used by the Russians as well as the few nominally under Hungarian control.
The airport of Papa in the South-West was one of the biggest of the military fields and when the flyboys of that place took to the air, civilian air traffic suffered mightily. Those Migs needed a big chunk of real estate to exercise their skills.
For us recurrent training took the form of a one day briefing given by a bored colonel. He did his best trying to explain why and how the Warsaw Pact armies might need to take Austria (he never used the name though, “enemy” countries were given colours) and what foolproof tactics we would be using but he was no fool. Facing that bunch of pilots and air traffic controllers, he could see the general sentiment that said: the Warsaw Pact armies would probably get bogged down at Shopping City Sud just outside Vienna…
Remembering Papa
A news item on TV last night brought back these memories with a vengeance.
Luckily, we never had to test whether the theory about conquering Shopping City Sud was true, even if Hungarian is the second most spoken language after Austria’s native German at SCS to-day.
The airport of Papa still exists and has just embarked on a new renaissance. The Migs are long gone of course… But yesterday, three Boeing C-17s with Hungarian registration, have taken up residence there to support NATO’s peace missions. The Mayor of Papa was very pleased when he was interviewed on television and his smiles went out to the several hundred flying and support personnel of diverse nationalities who are taking up residence in the area.
I do not know whether our bored colonel is still alive… I hope he is. May be he will also stop at Papa to watch a few C-17s take off and land… then drive on to Shopping City Sud for a beer.