Basel-Sternenfeld airfield

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Basel-Sternenfeld airfield
Sternenfeld airfield around 1928
Characteristics
Coordinates

47 ° 33 '22 "  N , 7 ° 37' 50"  E Coordinates: 47 ° 33 '22 "  N , 7 ° 37' 50"  E

Basic data
opening 1920
closure 1950



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The airfield Basel star field was in 1920 the first airport of Basel in Switzerland . It was east of the city limits in the municipality of Birsfelden . In 1950 it was shut down due to a lack of expansion options and replaced by Basel-Mulhouse Airport .

prehistory

On June 21, 1919, Oskar Bider took off from St. Jakob near Basel with two passengers on a flight around Switzerland. After 7½ hours, the double-decker landed back at the starting point, making this PR campaign organized by the newspaper « Basler Nachrichten » a success. As a result, innovative personalities founded an association to promote civil aviation in the Basel region. The association, which was called Aviatik both Basel , held flight days and held a lottery. This enabled him to raise the necessary funds to lease the Sternenfeld, a flat area between Birsfelden and the Rhine , and to build a small hangar there. Eugen Dietschi as a balloonist was one of the founders of the airfield.

Airfield

In 1920 a simple airfield for military and civil flight operations was established. The official inauguration took place on September 12th of that year with a large flight meeting. Further flight meetings followed in 1921 and 1923 with the aim of raising money for the rent and the construction of some simple buildings. Modest air traffic began to develop hesitantly. From August 16, 1923, the Sternenfeld airfield was one of the more important in Europe when Handley Page Transport , the airline of the Handley Page Aircraft Company , extended its route from London - Paris to Dübendorf near Zurich (and stopped in Birsfelden). A year later, the Belgian Sabena followed with its scheduled flight Amsterdam - Brussels - Basel - Bern .

In 1924, Basel already had air connections with four major European cities. The urgently needed further expansion of the facilities was far too expensive for private individuals. For this reason, the Aviatik both Basle association changed this year to a mixed-economy airport cooperative in which the cantons of Basel-Stadt and Basel-Landschaft held 60 and 10 percent respectively. With the additional capital, the runway could be expanded to 80 hectares and a larger civil hangar, an administrative building made of wood and a tank farm could be built. In addition, two military hangars in Dübendorf were dismantled and brought here.

In 1925, the first Balair was founded in Basel as a Basel air transport company, which later merged with the Zurich air transport company Ad Astra Aero to form Swissair . In 1926, seven airlines landed on the grass runways and the airfield once again proved to be too small. A new station building and a larger hangar were built by 1927. In addition, the place received the first night landing facility in Switzerland. The canton of Basel-Landschaft provided the additional land required on a lease basis, while the canton of Basel-Stadt contributed financially with additional shares. During the entire interwar period, the company did not manage without state subsidies: Basel-Land contributed 2,000 francs annually, the Basel city contribution rose from 45,000 francs (1924) to 100,000 francs (1932).

The star field had a memorable day on October 12, 1930, when 30,000 people saw the landing of the airship LZ 127 "Graf Zeppelin" . By the Second World War , the star field had developed into the second most important airfield in Switzerland, with a share of up to 23.9% of all Swiss passenger air traffic. Aircraft from more than ten companies flew to the airport regularly. The traffic figures were considerable, as 14,319 passengers used the airfield in 1938. 448 tons of freight and 241 tons of mail were carried. Immediately before the outbreak of war, the star field was connected to 13 destinations.

End of flight operations

Basel-Sternenfeld airfield
Memorial plaque, Basel-Sternenfeld airfield

From the beginning, the Sternenfeld was a temporary airfield, because the site was originally bought by the canton of Basel-Landschaft with the intention of building the Birsfelden power station and a port on the Rhine . The lease was therefore limited to the point in time when the canton would have the necessary investment funds. The engineer responsible for port planning made it clear in 1929 that flight operations would soon no longer be possible. That is why the airfield cooperative only carried out minor expansions and began looking for a suitable replacement location. Airfield director Charles Koepke suggested three possible variants in 1930: in the Hard near Muttenz (with a runway parallel to the banks of the Rhine), between Allschwil and Bourgfelden (partly on French territory) and Leopoldshöhe near Weil am Rhein (entirely on German territory).

When Elektra Birseck indicated in 1934 that power plant construction could possibly begin earlier, time seemed to be pressing. The Federal Council spoke out against negotiations with France , which meant that the Allschwil-Bourgfelden project, which was initially favored, fell behind and the Hard project was preferred again. However, this offered limited development opportunities and met with great resistance from the population. After a protest rally, the Muttenz community assembly rejected the project in 1936. Two petitions by the Basel cantons and the airfield cooperative to the Federal Council to reconsider the Allschwil-Bourgfelden project were unsuccessful in 1936 and 1937. After renewed lobbying, negotiations finally began in 1939 about the Allschwil-Bourgfelden location, but the outbreak of war ruined all progress.

All efforts for a replacement location during the war were unsuccessful. Shortly after the end of the war, a new variant came into play, an international airport located entirely on French territory between Saint-Louis and Blotzheim (later Basel-Mulhouse airport ). Although a provisional airfield with steel plate runways was already available there in May 1946, flight operations on the star field continued for four years on a limited basis. After passenger flight operations had ended on June 30, 1950, the Birsfeld airfield was bid farewell on August 27 with a display fly. In November 1950, construction work on the Birsfelden power plant finally began .

The star field is now an area overbuilt with apartment blocks, industrial buildings and port facilities.

literature

  • Sandro Fehr: The development of the third dimension. Origin and development of the civil aviation infrastructure in Switzerland, 1919–1990 . Chronos Verlag, Zurich 2014, ISBN 978-3-0340-1228-7 .

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Christian Rieder: Oskar Bider: The Baselbieter aviation pioneer. (No longer available online.) Basel Insider, April 12, 2013, archived from the original on October 7, 2015 ; accessed on October 6, 2015 . 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. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.baselinsider.ch
  2. a b Fehr: The development of the third dimension. P. 57.
  3. Fehr: The development of the third dimension. P. 58.
  4. Fehr: The development of the third dimension. Pp. 58-59.
  5. ^ The Graf Zeppelin over Zurich. (No longer available online.) Andreas Aste, February 17, 2004, archived from the original on December 18, 2008 ; Retrieved July 9, 2010 . 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. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / phys-merger.physik.unibas.ch
  6. Fehr: The development of the third dimension. P. 59.
  7. Fehr: The development of the third dimension. Pp. 59-61.
  8. Fehr: The development of the third dimension. Pp. 61-62.
  9. Fehr: The development of the third dimension. P. 160.
  10. Georg Schmidt: Last pirouette over the star field. Basler Zeitung , August 27, 2010, accessed on October 6, 2015 .