Detachment A

Detachment “A” (often shortened to "Det A") was a clandestine United States Army Special Forces unit based in West Berlin during the Cold War. Officially designated as the 39th Special Forces Detachment (Airborne), it operated from 1956 until its inactivation in 1984. Detachment A was tasked with operations behind enemy lines in the event of a conflict with the Soviet Bloc, including sabotage of key targets and organizing stay-behind resistance in East Germany. Its existence and activities remained highly classified throughout its service.

History

In August 1956, six modified Operational Detachment Alpha teams and a staff element selected from the 10th Special Forces Group left Bad Tolz in privately owned vehicles for West Berlin. Each team was composed of one senior NCO (a Master Sergeant) and five enlisted team members; with the staff, the group comprised approximately 90 men. Days later, these forces would form Detachment A on 1 September 1956. Within the Army, its unclassified nickname was “Detachment A,” while its formal unit title – 39th Special Forces Detachment – and its actual mission were kept classified. By 1958, after several moves, the unit rehomed at the Andrews Barracks, West Berlin, and was reassigned to HHC, US Army Garrison, Berlin. To maintain secrecy, in 1962 the unit was again reorganized and nominally listed as the Security Platoon, Regimental Headquarters, 6th Infantry Regiment, part of the U.S. Army’s Berlin Brigade. By this time the ODAs had reorganized into five (later six) mission task forces, each with compartmentalized priorities, such as dive operations or free-fall. The unit continued to operate under strict cover until it was finally inactivated on 30 December 1984. Its role was considered unique, and few official records were kept due to the sensitive nature of its assignments; only decades later were details of Det A’s activities publicly acknowledged. The unit is now widely acknowledged to have been illegal under the Four Powers Act due to its status as an "elite" unit.

Mission

Penetration of East Germany

Preparation for covert infiltration into East Germany was a primary mission for Detachment A in both peacetime and war. Det-A teams covertly acquired safe houses through associates in the German community, along with Volkswagen vans and buses with the American license plates swapped out for German ones when they wanted to recon the border. On one occasion in 1971, a team was scouting penetration areas through the Berlin Wall when authorities in the British sector arrested them, though they were released a few hours later. Team One SCUBA found that moving through the canals by scuba proved an effective way to infiltrate and exfiltrate. Members of the unit were specifically selected from language-qualified soldiers, most of whom were former German and Eastern European immigrants serving through the Lodge-Philbin Act and seeking a "fast-track" to citizenship, some of whom included former Nazi soldiers, including members of the Waffen SS. Americans numbered only approximately 15 of the original group. The European soldiers taught their American teammates how to blend in as a local for undercover operations using local mannerisms to avoid Soviet countersurveillance. The soldiers were trained to communicate using common intelligence tradecraft measures such as dead drops, utilizing invisible ink, and running surveillance detection routes. They dressed in civilian clothing purchased in both West and East Germany, and carried false identification. Det A members had to blend in as civilians and work undercover in an environment saturated with enemy spies. Some members carried one-shot cigarette-lighter guns known as "stingers". Other teams used diplomatic passports. Because of the extreme secrecy surrounding Detachment A’s activities, the unit “remained in the shadows until history and discretion allowed a public accounting,” as former U.S. Army Special Operations Command commander Lt. Gen. Charles Cleveland later observed.

Unconventional Warfare

The primary mission of Detachment A was to conduct clandestine unconventional warfare (UW) in the event of a war with the Soviet Union. Plans called for Det A’s special forces teams to covertly cross into East Germany at the outbreak of hostilities and attack critical infrastructure and military targets. These targets included railways, communications networks, military headquarters, fuel depots, supply sites, utilities, and inland waterways. Such sabotage operations were intended to disrupt Warsaw Pact forces and buy time for the defense of West Berlin and Allied forces in Europe. In addition, Detachment A teams were tasked with organizing and training local guerrilla fighters drawn from the population, using pre-stockpiled caches of weapons, explosives, radios and funds hidden around Berlin. The theory was that a single 12-man Special Forces team could mobilize and lead a much larger resistance force in occupied territory if war erupted. Det A was at one point equipped with special coal that was filled with C-3 explosive for use in sabotaging the rail ring surrounding Berlin, as well as vials filled with metal shavings for the destruction of turbines. The unit was tasked by the CIA in 1978 with digging up old cache sites hidden around Berlin, to assess their condition and recommend replacements in case a stay-behind operation happened sometime in the future. Det A received specialized training in extreme downhill and cross-country skiing, as well as specialized demolition training (including from the CIA's specialized demolition course at Harvey Point).

Counterterrorism and Special Operations

In the late 1960s and 1970s, Detachment A also assumed an important peacetime counterterrorism mission in response to emerging terrorist threats in Europe as part of OPLAN 0300. Initial focus was on countering Palestinian terrorism; eventually a team was assigned to track the Baader Meinhof gang which was also considered a terrorist threat in the area of operations. By the mid-1970's, Det A had developed specialized sniper and SWAT teams, as a result of U.S. European Command ordering the unit to prepare for counterterrorism operations, building on its expertise in urban unconventional warfare. Det A operators trained to intervene in hostage situations and other terrorist incidents, working discreetly with West German police and allied special mission units such as the GSG-9, the Berlin SEK, and Special Air Service. Other operators attended the Danish scout-swimmers course, the German Ranger School, and the Special Forces Operations and Intelligence course. Det A divers were also sent to a specialized combat diver course conducted by SEAL Team 2 in Crete, in which the team was certified on state-of-the-art indigenous Drager diving systems, which they then used to train German frogmen. Six other members were sent to FBI air crimes training in Quantico to develop counter-hijacking expertise. These enhanced capabilities led to Detachment A’s involvement in the planning and preparation for Operation Eagle Claw, the 1980 U.S. attempt to rescue American hostages in Tehran, Iran. Members of Det A provided support and were on alert for the Iran mission, with a pre-mission reconnaissance operation in Tehran planned under the codename Storm Cloud and several teams inserted, though the rescue operation ultimately failed and was aborted before their direct engagement. Similarly, Det A was tasked with the American response to the Dozier kidnapping, but Italian police ended the situation before the detachment could deploy.

Legacy

In January 2014, nearly 30 years after deactivation, a special commemorative stone was laid at Fort Bragg to honor Detachment A’s valorous Cold War service, and the unit’s long-hidden colors were officially retired in a ceremony attended by former members.

Det A's unique status under cover as part of the Berlin Brigade caused a historical anomaly with it's unit colors. Unlike other SF units, whose colors are olive green, Det A's were "infantry blue" since they were technically part of the Berlin Brigade which was an infantry unit.

See Also

• Operation Gladio
• Office of Strategic Services (OSS)
• Blue Light
• Green Light Teams
• Delta Force