Ramstein AFB is one of the largest USAmerican air bases outside the U.S. It once was a quiet little town in Germany.
Ramstein is in the federal state of Rheinland-Pfalz, which means "Rhineland/Palatinate". This state was once know as "the United States' biggest aircraft carrier" as, in the Cold War, it was full of USAF bases. Today, Ramstein AFB does mainly military logistics, and all the other bases have been shut down; but in the days of yore, there were Air Force bases with nuclear-armed bombers all over the land. There was also a huge chemical weapons depot somewhere, which has been evacuated about ten years ago. There were also missile bases, mainly for Pershing II and Lance missiles.
On August 28th, 1988, there was a terrible accident during an air show over Ramstein AFB. Aerobatics jets of the Italian Frecce Tricolori squad collided while doing manoeuvres in extremely low altitude, directly over the crowded field, killing three pilots. The jets crashed into the crowd; about 500 people were injured horribly, 71 of them killed. It has repeatedly been rumoured that the band Rammstein named themselves after that accident, although the band denies this. When the collision happened, I was at my uncle's house celebrating my cousin's birthday. I suppose every German recalls where he was that day.
Conspiracy theoreticists have it that Ramstein the catastrophe was rigged to kill two Italian pilots, who, years ago, played an important role in the affair around the accidental destruction of an Itavia DC 9 passenger plane over the Adriatic on July 28th, 1980, which happend probably because a Soviet MiG was trying to get away in that DC 9's wake, and a NATO interceptor's missile locked onto the wrong aircraft. Between the Itavia accident and the Ramstein disaster, 13 less important witnesses who might have seen the MiG or other evidence of what really happened died in mysterious way. There is an organisation of Ramstein air show survivors who firmly believes that the disaster was the monstrously cynical way the Man chose to kill off the two most important witnesses.