Military Air Traffic Control and Tactical Control structure in FRG and GDR ~1980s

[Rick Mave]

Hi everybody!
I am looking for information on the general structure of the military air traffic control structure in both the FRG and GDR around the 1980s.

What am I looking for specifically?
Anything which can provide specific information about agencies, their locations, frequencies used, their area of responsibility, etc.
Of high interest to me personally are: What are the stations a training flight in peace time would be flowing through when they take off at their home base to fly to a range or training air space in the FRG?

If anyone could help me out by shedding some light on this topic for me, please reach out!

Thanks and best regards,
Rohrkrepierer o7

Edit: https://www.atc-ansa.org/english/publications-books-archive?pk_vid=991edeafc5d1919b1756746863222bfc Here you can find a series of great books by Frank W. Fischer on the topic.

Edited Monday at 05:15 PM by Rick Mave

[NomadActual]

I am looking for the exact same information while trying to produce a 1986-era peacetime server. I have found ranges, training areas, and basic corridor outlines produced on GoogleEarth, but little detail or context.

[Rick Mave]

On 9/5/2025 at 11:56 PM, NomadActual said:

I am looking for the exact same information while trying to produce a 1986-era peacetime server. I have found ranges, training areas, and basic corridor outlines produced on GoogleEarth, but little detail or context.

I spent the last week (majority of what was supposed to be a vacation) reading the Frank W Fischer books, particularly the stuff related to the cold war period.

Very interesting, the only thing is that his time working as a controller he was working the higher flight level information regions, not the lower level stuff that most DCS sorties take place in.

I did find some older layouts for the TRAs in West Germany but none from before the German reunion, which is a real bummer.

From what it looks like though the TRA204 Eifel and the TRA205 Lauter did exist back in the 80s so I have decided to use the layout that was closest to the timeframe I was looking for, which is the layout from just before the TRA204 was closed down and 205 was adjusted.

Not sure if this is more realistic or historically accurate but it's better than nothing for now.

[Volator]

1 hour ago, Rick Mave said:

TRA204 Eifel and the TRA205 Lauter did exist back in the 80s

According to my original VFR charts from 1989 there was no TRA204. It must therefore have been before 1989.

[Rick Mave]

57 minutes ago, Volator said:

According to my original VFR charts from 1989 there was no TRA204. It must therefore have been before 1989.

I had a conversation via Email of the representative of the protest movement against the TRAs Eifel and Lauter. They told me that they were affected by inacceptable noise levels due to military training flights starting in the 80s (because that is how far back they can remember, meaning they could have been there before that as well). It has to be mentioned that it could also have been flights moving through the nighttime flying corridor system that leads straight through that area as well.
Additionally, I have found these images:

This image is from the book series by Frank W. Fischer, indicating that there have been 3 TRAs in the greater area around Ramstein AB.

Then there is this image laying out the dimensions of TRA 204 Eifel. This is the layout that appears again after the 1989 VFR charts that you used for your CWG miz template @Volator.
This also seems to be in place all the way until TRA204 was closed down again in the early 2000s.

This is what TRA205/305 looked like up until the change in the early 2000s. This layout seems to reach back until 1989 at the very longest as indicated by @Volator's VFR chart again.

The layout of the both TRAs next to each other and an internal memo about the negotiations at the time (again early 2000s so this would be reaching back some time but at most until 1989)

And an excerpt showing a reunified Germany featuring both TRAs Eifel and Lauter, and the old layouts for the TRAs in the North. I have not been looking into the TRAs around Hamburg yet as I have been focusing on trying to research layouts for the TRAs most relevant to our day to day training routines.

It has to be said that the source most accurate to the time the CWG map is set in, is @Volator's 1989 chart, and that what I posted here is only the beginning point (the original image from Frank W. Fischer's books) and the end with the relatively recent changes to TRA205/305 and the dissolution of TRA204.
I am awaiting answers to requests from the german Bundesarchiv on airspace layouts during the mid 70s and the 80s but I would not get my hopes up on that front.
For our purposes in JaboG35 the addition of TRA204 is very important as it does provide us with more playground space that doesn't break immersion for us. Considering that the original TRA layout (from Frank W. Fischer's documentation) indicates that there were three TRAs even, this is an acceptable compromise to us internally.

I do encourage you all to read the books about Rhein Control however, as they are extremely thorough and very well illustrated. 

Edited 2 hours ago by Rick Mave