Airfix 01758 NATO Ground Crew

NATO, that is the North Atlantic Treaty Organization or the North Atlantic Alliance, is a military alliance of the countries of Western Europe and North America, concluded in 1949 as a response to the aggressive foreign policy of the USSR at that time. It assumed the collective defense of all member states in the event of a possible aggression by the Soviet troops, and from 1955 - by the troops of the Warsaw Pact. NATO includes countries such as the USA, Canada, Italy, Great Britain, West Germany (now West Germany) and - since 1999 - also Poland. It is estimated that at the end of the 1980s, the total number of combat aircraft in NATO forces amounted to approximately 11,300 machines, of which approximately 7,300 were part of the American armed forces. Of course, this huge number of machines required a properly trained ground crew. In most NATO countries in the 1980s, it was composed of professional soldiers and well-paid civilian workers, which in turn translated into a high degree of professionalism and good or very good training. Very often, the ground staff at NATO bases had modern technical and diagnostic equipment, which allowed for the efficient operation of the aircraft. It is assumed that the average time to prepare a machine for flight in the 1980s was shorter or much shorter at NATO air bases than in the Warsaw Pact. Electronic electronics, which were often of much better quality than in the Warsaw Pact, were also used on a larger scale. The largest NATO air bases in Western Europe at that time included Rammstein in Germany and Waddington in Great Britain.