Word: rstenfeldbruck
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1970-1979
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Both sides had other intentions. A 727 was flown to Fürstenfeldbruck, a West German airbase 16 miles outside Munich. No crew could be found that was willing to take the plane out again loaded with Arabs and Israelis; that scarcely mattered, since the Germans did not intend to let them leave. Already, plans were under way to transfer sharpshooters to Furstenfeldbruck. The Germans hoped that if the intransigent white-capped leader of the Arabs could be killed, his followers might surrender. The Arabs, as it turned out, were equally misleading about Cairo. When they finally did reach...
They were driven through a tunnel under the village to a strip of lawn 275 yards away that had been converted into an emergency helicopter pad. Two choppers took the Arabs and their hostages on a 25-minute ride to Fürstenfeldbruck airport; a third preceded them, carrying German officials and Israeli intelligence...
When the helicopters set down at Fürstenfeldbruck, two Arabs hopped out and walked over to check out the 727. Two more jumped out and, although they had promised not to use Germans as hostages, ordered the helicopter crews to get out and stand by their choppers. The sharpshooters -three of them posted in the control tower 40 yards from the helicopters and the other two on the field-had been instructed to fire whenever the Arabs presented the greatest number of targets. The cautious terrorists never exposed more than four of their number at a time. To complicate...
...were "an abhorrent crime" conceived by "sick minds." Egypt, on the other hand, blamed Bonn for everything. "The commandos and the Israeli hostages were killed in a German ambush, by German bullets and in a U.S. base in Germany," said a government spokesman, ignoring the fact that Fürstenfeldbruck is a German airbase and that the hostages, according to all evidence, died from fire or automatic weapons like the fedayeen Kalashnikovs, rather than the sharpshooters' rifles...
Still, it is difficult to put much of the blame on newsmen. Indeed many reporters, barred from the climactic scene, hesitated when word of the captives' safe release first came from the Bavarian state police, who were responsible for security at the airport in Fürstenfeldbruck. A few journalists were apparently misled when a local pub owner, Ludwig Pollack, passed a rumor near the airport gate that the terrorists had been seized; from this it was inferred that the hostages were safe. But it was only after receiving confirmation from Conrad Ahlers, official spokesman for the West German...