Uni Mog Stuff

"Re-Constructed 25 Oct 2001"

4th ATAF - Tiger 18 - Hornisgrinde, Germany

My first encounter with Unimogs was in Germany, south of Baden-Baden on a mountain site called Hornisgrinde just up from the valley town of Achern.

Here are some photos of Mog activity during the Fall/Winter/Spring of 1969-1970.

These shots are copied from slides. The quality is not the best, too much UV and snow and trying to image them from 35mm slides!
Clicking on the thumbnail opens a larger image.

The 404 Radio Vans were on loan from the Bundeswehr. We (NATO) were leasing them and the microwave equipment they contained. As a result I had little to do with the 404's. The diesel Unimog snow cutter was "ours" and I got to drive that extensively.

1. Just getting three 404 Microwave Radio Unimogs on site. The one truck in the left foreground was some sort of maintenance vehicle that accompanied the rest up to the site, about 4,000 ft elevation. Can't make out if it is a Unimog or not. Could be a maintenance unit similar to fire trucks. Our Mog snow cutter is off in the background on the right. Man, it was really snowing that day! We pulled the Siemens Microwave equipment to install in our fixed building. This was November and we already had a couple feet of snow and running out of places to pile it.

2. Unimog snowblower (Schmidt) cutting through a deep bank. Took a couple passes.

3. Snow really started to come down, after a day or so the Unimogs were getting covered. We began to blow the snow towards the end of the parking area because there was no more room to pile it up. Our radio site was at the end of a Cul de Sac and many vehicles used it to turn around. We had to keep it clean. The 404's got buried in a short time.

4. A break in the weather and the Mog/Schmidt snowcutter also had a break. We had over 3.2 Meters of measured snowfall that winter. Over ten feet! To the rear and right of the Unimog, underneath the pile of snow lie three 404's with trailers! We had no choice but to leave them as the blizzards covered them up quickly. We had to be careful when cutting into the snow in that area not to hit them with the cutter. (see slide 3).

5. Which brings up the next shot. We had a couple guys who were afraid of the Mog Snow Cutter and one in particular who rode the clutch constantly. You could smell the thing a hundred meters away! We had to have the Mog towed down the mountain TWICE for repairs, no cheap task! As a result, I sketched this cartoon on a 5x7 card and hung it on the bulletin board. Got laughs from all except one guy!

6. On a clear day, one of the troops, Jim Masuda from California, climbs up the snow bank forming next to the Unimog Radio trucks.

7. One of the buildings we occupied. The site was controlled by the French army. They had a small Unimog snow cutter, for the big jobs they called us for help. Theirs was about half the size of ours. Can't say for sure what model it was, it might've been a 411, hell, I'm not sure what model ours was. Didn't seem important at the time! We were a NATO communications group out of Ramstein AB Germany. 4th Allied Tactical Air Force (4th ATAF). There were also Luftwaffe radio troops located on the site.

8. Me, standing on the Unimog Snow Cutter.

9. A view towards the parked 404's, my '67 Corvair, a VW Bug and some unknown person walking by.

10. Man, I never saw so much snow. We had drifts 20 feet deep. This is looking back through the narrow cut made in shot #2 except the weather was now clear.

10.