"People Were Crying and Bleeding"

The 10,000 U.S. Air Force servicemen and civilian employees at the Rhein-Main Air Base call it the gateway to Europe, and with good reason. Located opposite Frankfurt International Airport, Rhein-Main is almost a city unto itself, the largest and most vital link in the U.S. military airlift command. For that reason it is a prime target for terrorists. Last week they struck with a vengeance, setting off a car bomb that killed a 19-year old airman on temporary duty and the wife of another airman assigned to a medical airlift squadron. Twenty-one people were injured.

The assault was the most serious on American uniformed personnel in West Germany since a car bomb injured 20 people at Ramstein Air Base, the Air Force's European headquarters, in 1981. President Reagan was awakened at 6 a.m. and told of the bombing. Later a White House spokesman condemned it as a "shameful act." West German Chancellor Helmut Kohl sent Reagan assurances that quick action would be taken "to cast light on the deed."

The day after the blast news organizations in West Germany received a 2 1/2 page letter in German jointly signed by two terrorist groups, West Germany's Red Army Faction and France's Direct Action. Composed on paper carrying the R.A.F.'s symbol, a five-pointed star overlaid with a submachine gun, the letter said in stilted, jargon-filled language that the attack had been the work of a joint "politico-military front in Western Europe with NATO as its main target." It called the Rhein-Main base a "pivotal point for war against the Third World and a nest of spies."

The attack showed all the hallmarks of the R.A.F.: clockwork planning, audacity and indifference to the innocence of victims. It began when a metallic green Volkswagen with forged U.S. armed forces license plates slipped past security guards into the parking lot between the 435th Tactical Airlift Wing headquarters building and a dormitory for supply and transport squadrons. At 7:25 a.m., as hundreds of G.I.s and German civilian employees were reporting for the morning shift, a quantity of explosives concealed in the car detonated, with such force that a 5-ft.-deep crater was left in the ground. Ceiling tiles on nearby buildings were peeled off, windows 450 ft. away were shattered, and 34 cars were damaged or destroyed. Captain George Silla was sitting in his office when he saw a bright yellow flash followed by an explosion. "I ducked under my desk," he said. "When I ran out of the building, there were people lying on the ground, crying and bleeding."

The R.A.F. is the successor to the Baader-Meinhof gang, which terrorized West Germany in the 1970s with a series of politically inspired murders, kidnapings and armed robberies. Only last month West German Federal Prosecutor Kurt Rebmann called the R.A.F. "the most dangerous organization in West Germany." He described its potential for terror as "un-diminished and acute." West German authorities say that since last December the group and allied gangs have carried out 156 bombing and arson attacks.

Direct Action, which shares the R.A.F.'s far-left tactic of attacking military and industrial targets, apparently drew its members from two older terrorist organizations and committed at least 18 assaults in France during 1979 and 1980. Direct Action first claimed to be aligned with the R.A.F. last January after gunning down the French Defense Ministry's chief of arms sales, General Rene Audran.

Officials at Rhein-Main insisted they had been observing "routine tight security" when last week's well-timed attack took place