Le Mans Airport
| Aéroport du Mans | |
|---|---|
|
|
| Characteristics | |
| ICAO code | LFRM |
| IATA code | LME |
| Coordinates | |
| Height above MSL | 59 m (194 ft ) |
| Transport links | |
| Distance from the city center | 5 km south of Le Mans |
| Street |
D 323 13 km to 
|
| Basic data | |
| opening | 1935 |
| operator | Chambre de commerce et d'industrie du Mans et de la Sarthe |
| surface | 140 ha |
| Runways | |
| 02/20 | 1420 m × 30 m asphalt |
| 02/20 | 970 m × 80 m grass |
The Aéroport du Mans or Aéroport Le Mans-Arnage and sometimes Aérodrome des Raineries is a small French airport. He is in the Region Pays de la Loire in the department of Sarthe about five kilometers south of Le Mans , some of them in the field of neighboring community Arnage . It is mainly used for general aviation .
The airport is busiest every year on the occasion of the Le Mans 24-hour race .
history
Today's airport dates from the 1930s, although the history of aviation in Le Mans is closely linked to the early pioneers of powered flight .
It was on the grounds of the Hippodrome des Hunaudières where Wilbur Wright carried out his first powered flight in Europe on August 8, 1908, almost five years after the alleged first flight of a Wright Flyer in Kitty Hawk . That same month, the Wrights moved their flights to the camp de Auvours military camp a few kilometers east of Le Mans.
In the interwar years, the French military also used this area for aviation purposes and the "Aero Club Le Mans" was founded here in 1930. Civil air traffic increased continuously, not least as part of the 24-hour race, the first of which was held in 1923, and so from November 1935 the decision to build the airfield at its current location was made. The Aérodrome des Raineries , as it was originally called, was built between 1936 and 1938 and served the "Air Bleu" company as a stopover on their Paris - Nantes line.
During the German occupation in World War II , he initially served in the Air Force . In the summer of 1940, Le Mans was initially the base for Bf 110 destroyers. The main user between May and September 1940 was the II. Group of Destroyer Squadron 76 (II./ZG 76), but since June only as an advanced operational base. In the second half of June, large parts of Jagdgeschwader 3 with their Bf 109E were temporarily located here .
After a few months of relative calm, Bf 109E relocated again to Le Mans in mid-January 1941. They belonged to the staff of Jagdgeschwader 54 (JG 54), which was stationed here until the end of March 1941. In addition, from the beginning of February to the beginning of March there was the second for one week and then the third for three weeks. Group of JG 54.
Subsequently, there was only a brief reactivation on the day the Allied invasion of Normandy began. The Bf 109G of the II. Group of the Jagdgeschwader 53 (II./JG 53) lay here only for 24 hours. The last user was then I. Group of Jagdgeschwader 1 (I./JG 1), which was equipped with Fw 190A , for a few days . The German troops evacuated the airfield in early August 1944.
After the start of the Allied invasion , the Luftwaffe set up a field airfield near Beillé , about 30 km east-northeast of the Le Mans airfield ; the only German user was the I. Group of Jagdgeschwader 11 (I./JG 11), which was equipped with Fw 190A and who used this field airfield between mid-June and late July 1944.
After the liberation, the United States Army Air Forces (USAAF) initially continued to use the Raineries airfield as Airfield A.35 , during which time it was once again the target of a German air strike. First the P-47 of the 36th Fighter Group of the Ninth Air Force used it in August / September 1944 and then the 440th Troop Carrier Group operated from Le Mans-Raineries until November 1944.
Beillé was also used by the Americans as Airfield A.49 . In addition, from mid-August 1944, the US armed forces set up a few more temporary airfields in the Le Mans area. These were located in Louplande (A.36), La Chapelle-Saint-Remy (A.37), Neuville-sur-Sarthe (A.38), Saint Jean d'Assé (A.43) and Saint Aignan / Courcival ( A.44).
After the war, the Aérodrome des Raineries was used for civilian purposes again. However, there was hardly any air traffic in the first decades, only from 1967 there was a flight connection to Paderborn in East Westphalia , a sponsored city of Le Mans.
In 1971 the airfield was given a paved runway and was renamed Le Mans Airport. The company "GMT Airlines" based in Le Bourget carried out two daily connections with Beechcraft Queen Air planes in the 1970s . In the 1980s, other companies ensured the connection to the capital. However, the arrival of the TGV in Nantes in 1989 meant the end of regular services to Paris and the connection to Paderborn was also discontinued in the 1990s.
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ US Army Air Forces European Airfields, Air Force Historical Research Agency, December 1, 1988 ( Memento of the original from September 29, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ↑ Août 1944: l'aérodrome américain A-49 C à Beillé (Sarthe), Histoire du canton de La Suze sur Sarthe, August 8, 2014
- ^ A-35 Airfield, American War Memorials Overseas, Inc., accessed September 14, 2016
