In 1952, work began on the British Forces Maintenance Area West of the Rhine. Part of the project included the construction of a joint British Army and Royal Air Force headquarters for the British Army of the Rhine in Rheindahlen. Colonel Henry Grattan was Chief Engineer of the construction project. HQ BAOR moved from Bad Oeynhausen to Rheindahlen in October 1954, centralising headquarters functions previously located across several towns in Northern Germany. It was originally the HQ of the Northern Army Group, Second Allied Tactical Air Force, British Army of the Rhine and Royal Air Force Germany. Some 12,000 military personnel moved to the "town within a town" in a few weeks. By the early 1970s the facilities in the complex included a NAAFI superstore and a smaller NAAFI store, German shops, a petrol station, a travel agent, two German banks, two post offices, dress shop, YWCA Bookshop, libraries and cafes. There were separate full British Army and RAF Medical & Dental Centres, five British primary schools and a Belgian school. There was one secondary school, later Headquarters British Forces Germany, which was the administrative HQ of the British Army in Europe. It was also home to the Allied Rapid Reaction Corps, which relocated to Imjin Barracks in Gloucestershire in 2010. There was an Army Garrison HQ on Collingwood Road to administer the Army element and an RAF HQ on Queens Avenue to administer the RAF element. HQ British Forces Germany moved to Bielefeld in July 2013. The Rheindahlen military complex was handed back to German federal authorities on 13 December 2013. In July 2015 some Arab investors submitted proposals to convert the site to a leisure park. In September 2015 the main gas, electricity and water services were reconnected from the main Hardt-Rheindahlen road along Queens Avenue to the West boiler house to facilitate temporary use of the site as a refugee reception centre. In November 2015 the site was still a ghost town with civilian security guards and in April 2016 it was revealed that the refugees would be accommodated in the billets area around the parade ground off Beresford Road.
Headquarters and units
A number of separate HQs and units were based at the JHQ complex during its time as a British and NATO base, these included:
