Grossenhain Airfield

Grossenhain Airfield
Characteristics
ICAO code	EDAK
Coordinates	51 ° 18 '42 "  N , 13 ° 33' 33"  E Coordinates: 51 ° 18 '42 "  N , 13 ° 33' 33"  E
Height above MSL	127 m (417  ft )
Transport links
Distance from the city center	1 km north of Großenhain
Street	B101, B98
Basic data
opening	1914
operator	Grossenhain Airfield UG
surface	110 ha
Runways
11/29	1415 m × 48 m concrete
11/29	950 m × 40 m grass

The airfield Großenhain is one of the oldest still operating German airfields. It was a historic military airfield and will continue as a civilian since 1991 airfield used. It is located one kilometer north of Großenhain city ​​center in Saxony .

history

Royal Saxon military aviation station (1913-1919)

From 1911 onwards, Saxon officers were trained within the Prussian Provisional Air Force , later the Royal Prussian Air Force . After the restructuring of the air force in 1913, a separate Saxon unit, the 3rd Royal Saxon Company of the 1st Royal Prussian Aviator Battalion, was created, for which Grossenhain was selected as a suitable place to build its own aviation station on Saxon soil. Under the then captain and later major Horst von Minckwitz , the new airfield was completely completed by the beginning of 1914. On February 21, 1914 flight operations began with the first landing of a DFW steel pigeon by the pilot Lieutenant Emil Clemens and the observer Lieutenant Rudolf Hasenohr. The total capacity was initially designed for sixty aircraft, which were mainly supplied by the manufacturers Albatros , DFW and Kondor .

With the beginning of the First World War , this first Großenhainer Fliegerkompanie was relocated to the Western Front. After that, the Aviation Replacement Department No. 6 , FEA 6 for short , was founded with a flying school. In addition to a staff, it consisted of four companies. The training also included courses for observers , air shooters, bomb droppers and aerial photographers . Some of the most successful German fighter pilots of the First World War can be found among the students and, in some cases, later teachers. The most famous fighter pilot Manfred Freiherr von Richthofen , called The Red Baron , received his observer training here. A total of around 60,000 men had been trained in Großenhain by 1918.

A selection of other German fighter pilots trained at the Großenhain airfield from the First World War:

• Ernst von Althaus
• Hartmuth Baldamus
• Rudolf Berthold
• Walter Blume
• Julius Buckler
• Franz Büchner
• Hermann Koehler
• Carl Menckhoff
• Rudolf Windisch
• Kurt Wüsthoff

From 6 November 1918, began November Revolution in the garrison town Großenhain. Together with the Großenhainer Hussars and many workers from the aircraft yard, the aviators formed a joint workers 'and soldiers' council .

German Air Base (1919–1945)

After the armistice, which began on November 11, 1918, and the Treaty of Versailles , enforced by the Triple Entente on June 28, 1919 , air forces within the German Reich were banned. The new, reduced-size Artillery Aviation Squadron Grossenhain was one of the few German military aviation units that attempts were made to maintain it, but unsuccessfully. On May 20, 1920, the square was officially closed. Most of the buildings were subsequently dismantled.

From 1925 it was reluctantly used again, initially as an emergency landing site. The Akaflieg Dresden used the area at the beginning of the 1930s. 1934 began the first camouflaged carried out reconstruction to air base of the Air Force .

From March 1, 1935, Department B of the Aviation School of the German Air Sports Association Celle-Wietzenbruch took over the air base and immediately began training military pilots. On March 1, 1936, the renaming of the unit took place in reconnaissance group 23 and November 1, 1938, she received the final name Reconnaissance Wing 11. After laying of the most squadron squadrons shortly after the war began, was on 26 August 1939, the reconnaissance flight school 1 (F) Army set. On February 15, 1943, this was incorporated into the long-range reconnaissance wing 101 as the first group and remained the main user of the air base until February 1945. In the further course of the war, from July 1944 onwards, various battle, destroyer and fighter squadrons were stationed in Großenhain, which also flew missions against the Red Army from here . The following table shows a list of selected active flying units (excluding school and supplementary associations) that were stationed here between 1935 and 1945.

From	To	unit	equipment
March 1935	March 1945	Enlightenment group 323 (Reconnaissance Group 323)
April 1936	September 1937	Enlightenment group 123
October 1937	October 1938	Enlightenment group 23
November 1938	August 1939	Enlightenment group 11
November 1944	February 1945	II./ZG 76 (II. Group of Destroyer Squadron 76)	Messerschmitt Me 410A-1 / U2 , Messerschmitt Me 410B-2
November 1944	March 1945	14./KG 3 (14th squadron of Kampfgeschwaders 3)	Junkers Ju 88A-4
February 1945	March 1945	Staff, II./SG 2 (staff and II. Group of the battle squadron 2)	Focke-Wulff Fw 190
February 1945	April 1945	III./JG 54 ( III.Group of Jagdgeschwader 54)	Messerschmitt Bf 109G
April 1945	April 1945	I., III./JG 27	Messerschmitt Bf 109K

On May 2, 1945, Soviet troops occupied the site and in the last days of the war used it as an air base for several fighter units. The three-time Hero of the Soviet Union Alexander Pokryschkin , commander of the 9th Guards Fighter Aviation Division, was briefly stationed with his unit in Grossenhain.

Soviet military airfield (1945–1993)

After the end of the war, the Soviet air forces expanded Grossenhain into an air base, including by extending the runway. From 1951 to 1993 the staff of the 105th Aviation Division of the Soviet Armed Forces was stationed in Grossenhain, and until 1989 the 497th Aviation Regiment was part of the division. Other units of the 16th Air Army also used the space. A special weapons store was set up on the military airfield to store nuclear weapons. Grossenhain was one of the distribution points of the Soviet troops in the GDR from autumn 1971, which is why it was regularly approached by Aeroflot aircraft. On May 27, 1973, a Soviet member of the 497th Fighter Bombing Regiment located in Grossenhain fled with a Su-7 to the Federal Republic of Germany, where he parachuted off; the plane crashed near Klein Schöppenstedt near Braunschweig . On March 22, 1993, Russian fighter planes took off for the last time, and in August the last take-offs of transport planes for Russia took place.

As far as is known, the following Soviet units were stationed in Grossenhain during this period. The list does not take into account short-term stationing as a result of maneuvers, construction work on other sites or the like.

MiG-27D of the 296th APIB in Großenhain (1993)

From	To	unit	Remarks
May 1945	May 1945	9th Gw IAD (Guard Fighter Flier Division) 322nd IAD ( Fighter Flier Division )	with stick
May 1945	May 1945	482nd IAP (Fighter Regiment)	equipped with La-5
May 1945	May 1945	2nd Gw IAP (Guard Fighter Pilot Regiment) 937th IAP	equipped with La-7
May 1945	May 1945	16. Gw IAP 100. Gw IAP 104. Gw IAP	equipped with P-39
1946	1949	2nd Gw SchAD (Guard Battle Flier Division) 78th Gw SchAP (Guard Battle Flier Regiment)	with rod, equipped with IL-10
1947	1948	3. Gw IAD	with stick
1948	1951	6. Gw IAD	with stick
1951	1993	105th IAD, later renamed 105th ADIB (Fighter-Bomber Fliegerdivision)	with staff, equipped with Jak-12 , An-2 , An-14 , later MiG-9
1951	1955	559. IAP	equipped with MiG-15
1951	1989	497th IAP, later renamed the 497th APIB (Fighter-Bomber Air Regiment) and 497th BAP (Bomb Air Regiment)	equipped with MiG-15 and MiG-17 , Su-7 and Su-17 , Su-24
1989	1993	296. APIB	equipped with MiG-27

Civil airfield (since 1993)

After the end of the GDR in 1990 and the subsequent withdrawal of the Soviet armed forces from Germany, the conversion of the airfield to further civilian use began. The first civil flight activities began in May 1993. On September 23, 1993, the Federal Property Office took over the site, which subsequently became the property of the Free State of Saxony. It is leased to the present day for airport operations. First the Flugplatz Großenhain GmbH , then the successor company Kilianair GmbH and later Sachsenflug GmbH maintained an aviation company and a flight school in addition to the airfield. Later they limited the business to the pure airfield operation and the sale of vouchers for sightseeing flights in Saxony, which they realized with suitable partners. Due to damage from a tornado in Großenhain , the current Sachsenflug GmbH filed for bankruptcy on June 30, 2010. After additional heat damage to the runways, the airfield was temporarily closed. For the future, Flugplatz Großenhain UG aims to take over the airport operations and to increase the overall attractiveness of the airport in Großenhain. The operating license for the Großenhain airfield was transferred from the State Aviation Authority to the Großenhain UG airfield on November 22, 2010 , after an acceptance test on December 10, 2010, flight operations were initially resumed on the grass runway, and since April 2011 on both runways. To the south of the grass runway there is a spacious glider flying area.

Infrastructure

There is a gas station for aircraft with AvGas and MoGas aviation fuels.

In addition, there is a special attraction in the area of ​​the airfield, the Flying Museum - Historic Aircraft Josef Koch , which operates a number of rare airworthy vintage aircraft.

A large part of the aircraft hangars built from 1913 is now used by Großenhain industrial and commercial companies, including the oldest preserved German aircraft yard. The aviation industry is represented by a Hamburg Airbus supplier.

• 

  In front of the tower the MiG-21PFM No. 780 (formerly LSK / LV of the NVA ) and the Mil Mi-24D (Ex CzAF , stationed in Přerov , Czech Republic ).

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  View of the area from the southeast

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  Former compensation place

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  MiG-17 aircraft memorial of the Soviet Army

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  Granite bunker type 1 , No. 1 of the Soviet Army

Web links

Commons : Flugplatz Großenhain  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

• Airfield exhibition
• Information about the history of the Großenhain airfield

literature

• Franz Spur, Jens Krüger: History of the airport in Großenhain, City Administration Grossenhain, 2nd revised edition 2001
• Hannes Täger, Dietrich Heerde, Hans-Jürgen Franke, Michael Ruscher: Airfield Großenhain - Historical outline Meißner Tageblatt Verlags GmbH, publisher Polo Palmen, 2007, ISBN 978-3-929705-12-6
• Jürgen Zapf: Airfields of the Air Force 1934–1945 - and what was left of them. Volume 2: Saxony. VDM , Zweibrücken 2001, ISBN 3-925480-62-5
• Stefan Büttner: Red places - Russian military airfields Germany 1945–1994 , AeroLit, Berlin, 2007, ISBN 978-3-935525-11-4

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b} Dr. Hannes Täger, Dietrich Heerde, Hans-Jürgen Franke, Michael Ruscher: Airfield Großenhain - Historical outline Meißner Tageblatt Verlags GmbH, publisher Polo Palmen, 2007, ISBN 978-3-929705-12-6
2. ↑ Archive link ( Memento of the original dated December 1, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. History of the airfield on the website of the city of Großenhain  
3. ↑ Henry L. deZeng IV: Air Force Airfields 1935-45 Germany (1937 Borders) , pp 240-242 , accessed on 16 September 2014
4. ^ Lutz Freundt: Soviet Air Force Germany 1945-1994. Volume 2: Airfields (part 2) and units. Edition Freundt, Diepholz 1998, ISBN 3-00-002665-7 .
5. ^ Büttner, p. 161
6. ↑ Sachsenflug files for bankruptcy , online article in the Sächsische Zeitung from July 15, 2010