Dresden-Kaditz airfield
The Dresden-Kaditz airfield was an airfield in the Dresden district of Kaditz . On October 26, 1913, it was one of the world's first city-run airfields in the presence of King Friedrich August III. inaugurated by Saxony as the “Dresden Land and Water Airfield” and used by both airships and airplanes . Two days earlier, the urban airship hangar was put into operation as an essential part . As early as the planning in February 1913, the airfield was divided into an urban southern area and a military northern area. Of the military-fiscal sluice hall system for airships planned here, only a fixed salvage hall was built in 1914/15. As a flight pioneer , Hermann Reichelt used the space for his aircraft production, test flights and flight demonstrations, one of which he had a fatal accident here in 1914.
During the First World War , the entire square was used for military purposes, and subsequently also for air mail . Due to the provisions of the Versailles Treaty on demilitarization , both airship hangars had to be demolished by 1921. Due to its unfavorable location in the Elbe Valley, the airfield was abandoned. A final flight day took place on April 26, 1926, and scheduled air traffic was discontinued on July 5, 1926. Its tasks were taken over by the new, historically second, Dresden airport on the Dresdner Heller . Flight operations were finally ceased in September 1927, and some of the airfield facilities were still used at the new location. The area of the airport is today u. a. from the expansion of the Dresden-Kaditz sewage treatment plant , occupied by allotments and a truck stop.
prehistory
In 1901, the "Saxon Airship Association" was founded to promote free balloon travel. Especially after 1907, if the weather allowed it, free balloons went up on weekends, for which two balloon ascent sites were built from 1909: One was near Weißig near Nünchritz, the other in the middle of the new racecourse in Dresden-Seidnitz .
In addition to balloon flights, the aviation pioneer Hermann Reichelt in particular experimented in 1909/10 with self-made hang-gliders and powered aircraft and used the Dresden Heller for this. On November 24, 1909, he succeeded in gliding 72 meters in length at a height of 16 meters, the longest hover flight that was measured in Europe at the time. In autumn 1910, Hans Grade and Oswald Kahnt started from Heller and reached a height of 300 meters above the northern Neustadt. In 1911, both used the horse racing course and the Dresden bird meadow for their flights.
Essentially, however, Dresden was avoided because there was no suitable runway for take-offs and landings of the planes that were at risk of breaking at the time. Even airships - the first airship, the Parseval PL 6 came to Dresden on July 12, 1910, the first zeppelin , the DELAG LZ 11 "Viktoria Luise" , landed in Dresden on August 18, 1912 - only lasted hours during these visits as long as there was no paved landing area and a maintenance hangar.
Planning
Although there were only four locations to choose from (including at the Heller and in Seidnitz), the city nevertheless commissioned expert opinions and comparisons from 1911. Financing turned out to be a particular problem, so that on October 29, 1912 the Dresden City Council decided to create an airfield with an airship hangar that was owned and operated by the city. This eliminated all locations outside the city limits at that time and the site between Kaditz and Übigau was selected, although the Dresden-Kaditz sewage treatment plant built by Hans Erlwein from 1907–1910 was already on the site - with a high factory chimney. Decisive for this location was the urban land ownership of this area, which could be rounded off by acquisitions, as well as the use of the Elbe as a water landing area and the Elbe meadows as emergency landing sites.
In April 1913, the contract to build the urban airship hangar on the banks of the Elbe was signed. The contractor was Luftschiffbau Zeppelin GmbH , airship port construction department, from which the Berlin-based Zeppelin Hallenbau Gesellschaft mbH was spun off in May 1913 . The civil engineer Ernst Meier's engineering office in Berlin was the designer and subcontractor for the construction of the hall. The 191 meter long, 58 meter wide and 37 meter high hall was built in a record time of six months and six days and could accommodate two zeppelins at the same time. At both ends there were two semicircular swing gates that ran on semicircles of rails. Inside were catwalks and shafts for supplying the airships with hydrogen gas. 900 tons of iron were used for the huge arches, outside the hall with wood and was Ruberoid paperboard covered, the windows were made of yellow wire glass whose color should discourage harmful for the balloons sunlight. There was also a lounge for passengers and the office.
The actual airfield was 1,000 by 750 meters in size and stretched along the Elbe, south of the sewage treatment plant. However, a considerably larger area was fenced in (a total of 5600 meters of wooden fence), the main entrance was on Scharfenberger Strasse and was also used for vehicle access. Other entrances were reserved for pedestrians. The eastern border was on today's Washingtonstrasse , the western border was on the other side of today's motorway route . In addition, ticket booths and grandstands were built along the fence, which were intended to give visitors a better overview of what was happening at the planned air shows.
Around the same time, a company of the Royal Prussian Airship Battalion No. 3 was stationed there under the direction of the Saxon Captain Gaissert. The barracks in Übigau emerged from this later.
The hall was handed over on October 24, 1913, one day later LZ 17 “Saxony” arrived again, this time for a longer stay.
Two days later, on October 26th, the inauguration of the Kaditz airfield, officially known as the Dresden City Land and Water Airfield , was carried out by Lord Mayor Otto Beutler in the presence of King Friedrich August III., Numerous guests of honor and thousands of Dresden residents. The guests of honor were also offered a trip (at the same time their 200th trip) with LZ 17 in the direction of Saxon Switzerland , which 15 people made use of. After returning, the visitors were able to view the airship and the hall, single and double-deckers and Etrich pigeons demonstrated flying skills. At the same time, an Elbe ferry to the opposite district of Cotta was put into operation, which existed until after the First World War.
Ferdinand von Zeppelin had also been invited, but was unable to attend and the next day he sent a congratulatory telegram:
"+++ for the warmest thanks given to me on behalf of the council of the city council and citizenship of dresden after the happy consecration of the airship port. with the expression of my joyful confidence that the sacrifices made and the trust in my cause will be well worth it for dresden. graf zeppelin +++ "
Until 1920
After the inauguration, there were regular demonstrations with both airships and airplanes until the beginning of the First World War.
From October 27th to 31st, 1913, LZ 17 undertook several tours and on October 31st, the French aerobatic pilot Adolphe Pégoud showed his flying skills with his Blériot XI together with Willi Kanitz (with a Union-Arrow biplane).
From October 1913 to December 1913 a total of 207 space flights took place, 161 of them with passengers. 13 cross-country pilots were counted, and Hermann Reichelt was regularly in the air to train his 12 students.
Since the events that took place on the weekends were very dependent on the weather, there was an original system of up-to-date information: monochrome flags and signal discs were attached to both trams and advance booking offices, and monochrome flags in black, white and black on the tower of Dresden City Hall Red of the empire hoisted. In these cases they meant:
- black: event canceled,
- white: event implementation doubtful and
- red: event is being carried out
Until the outbreak of the First World War in 1914, airships were guests in Dresden-Kaditz several times:
- 21st to 24th January 1914 the military airship M IV ( Groß-Basenach system , guided tour: Captain von Jena)
- March 12 to May 29, 1914 again the Parseval airship PL 6 (with an interruption of about two weeks - stay in Leipzig -, guide: Captain a. D. Dinglinger) with a total of 70 ascents and 1139 people transported
- March 18 to the end of April 1914 the military airship Z VII (LZ 22, guided tour: Captain Gaissert, only practice and training trips)
- March 30, 1914 the military airship Z VI (without landing, but with a joint sightseeing flight from Z VI and Z VII over Dresden)
- April 22, 1914 Military airship Z II with return flight to Gotha on the same day
- July 5, 1914 LZ 17 "Saxony" (400th tour of this airship)
- July 11 to 29, 1914 LZ 13 "Hansa" with several passenger sightseeing flights (the last civilian use of LZ 13 on July 29)
On May 2, 1914, during an ascent of PL 6 under the supervision of Hauptmann a. D. Dinglinger passed her final exam as an airship pilot after a total of 30 voyages and a scientific exam, and was probably the first woman in the world to receive the official certificate of qualification as an airship pilot.
Due to the mild winter of 1913/14, there were flight events with and without passengers almost every weekend, for which Hermann Reichelt and the airport director Albert Meyer committed themselves . The highlights were also the test flights by Hermann Reichelt, who also trained young pilots in his AERO Fliegerschule GmbH. The art pilot Pierre Chanteloup with his Caudron double-decker and the parachutist Thomik were also guests in Kaditz. Rudolf Schöpp demonstrated his parachute construction in March 1914 and on March 31, 1914, Alfred Friedrich was a guest with his Etrich pigeon and demonstrated falls and turns. One of the tragic incidents of these events was the death of Hermann Reichelt, who fell together with his sister-in-law on Good Friday 1914 (April 10) in Kaditz and was killed in the process.
On May 11, 1914 first-place and initially a one-time airmail traffic between Dresden and Leipzig held in Dresden from two DFW - doves 32,605 airmail cards specially made for this event to Leipzig and the same afternoon 11314 airmail cards with one of the two pigeons Dresden were transported. They were specially printed for this event and sold in both cities, but each received the same motif special postmark. From 4th to 10th May be thrown in normal mailboxes, or up to two hours before take-off in those that were at the respective airfields.
In the first months of 1914 115,200 people visited the Kaditz airfield. 593 passengers took part in 68 ascent of the LZ "Sachsen" and "Hansa". 473 aircraft took off on 110 flight days. 182 taxiing and flight exercises were held by student pilots and a pilot's examination was taken. There were six accidents and two fatalities (including the death of Hermann Reichelt). The last civil flight event was on July 25th and 26th, 1914, when the planes Fokker and Kuntner performed with their Fokker monoplane .
With the beginning of the First World War on August 1, 1914, the entire urban airfield was occupied by the military administration. All civil flights had to be stopped. The post office became a garrison administration. Construction of a military airship hangar had already started in April 1914, and in May the War Ministry ordered the construction of a gas-generating plant for the production of hydrogen gas. In 1915 the 184 meter long and 35 meter wide military airship hangar was put into operation adjacent to the urban area. There were also workshops and accommodation rooms for the soldiers stationed here. All attempts by the city of Dresden to at least temporarily use the Kaditz airfield again for events failed because of the opposition of the military, as did the planned introduction of an airmail connection between Dresden and Leipzig.
Only on September 28, 1918 was the airfield returned to the city authorities, while the city airship hangar remained under military administration for the time being.
On the occasion of the Weimar National Assembly , a courier service between Dresden and Weimar was set up on March 23, 1919 . On August 3, 1919, the first major flight event after the war took place, in which large multi-engine aircraft, mail planes and single-seaters took part.
1920 to 1926
The year 1920 brought Dresden, like other cities, the definitive end of airship travel. By resolution of the former opponents of the war, both airship hangars, the aircraft sheds and most of the auxiliary buildings had to be removed to within one meter of the terrain. Only an aircraft shed was allowed to remain and could be used again from 1921. Sports fields and gardens have now been built on a large part of the former airfield site. Other buildings, including the gas station, were taken over by the Kaditz company Koch & Sterzel . The municipal Zeppelin Hall acquired a Wilthen company and had it moved to its premises, where it still serves as a storage room for the Hardenberg-Wilthen subsidiary Santa Barbara .
The airport was reconstructed after the demolitions in 1921 and 1922. Parts of the site have already been used as sports and playgrounds. The redesign and downsizing had become necessary, all of the space that was not absolutely necessary had to be given up. Larger planned renovation measures, such as the renovation of the planking of the airfield, the relocation of the aircraft shed near the runway and the addition of lounges for passengers and staff, however, were not carried out because the city could not raise the required two million Reichsmarks and funding was out a realm fund was granted, but did not materialize.
Nevertheless, from February 1, 1921, Dresden could be included in the airmail network. A Deutsche Luft-Reederei aircraft operated daily between Berlin and Dresden, and from May 30th a Deutsche Aero Lloyd aircraft operated on the Hamburg - Magdeburg - Leipzig - Dresden route. Airmail traffic between Berlin and Dresden was intensified during the railway strike from November 3rd to 10th, 1922. There were temporary pure passenger connections to Leipzig, Magdeburg, Hanover, Berlin, Hamburg and Bremen.
Nonetheless, the problems could not be solved: the airfield was in a pitiful condition, the playgrounds and sports fields, some of which were built on its areas, opposed the growing requirements for flight safety, and the fence had been damaged several times by floods. The approach of a car road or a tram also failed because of the costs. So they looked for a new location and found it in 1922 at the Dresdner Heller.
In 1923 the airfield was taken out of service, but had to be reopened on April 7, 1924 after repairs, as the development of the Heller turned out to be very time-consuming.
In August 1924 the connection to the airmail network took place again and Junkers Flugverkehr served the routes Berlin - Dresden and Munich - Fürth - Dresden on weekdays. On the occasion of the start of the Dresden - Munich air traffic, the name Lufthansa was created for a new planned company at the opening ceremony in Dresden City Hall.
In 1925, Junkers air traffic operated four airlines to and from Dresden despite the difficult conditions in Kaditz. There were connections to Leipzig, Berlin, Copenhagen, Malmö, Wroclaw, Erfurt, Kassel, Dorsten, Görlitz and Essen.
Closure and re-use
On April 12, 1926, after many delays, the new Dresden-Heller Airport went into operation. On April 26, 1926, a "final flight day" was held in Kaditz and scheduled services were finally stopped on July 5. There were still a few smaller flight events until the field was finally closed in September 1927. The remaining airfield facilities were dismantled and, if they could not be used at Heller, scrapped.
However, in the following years pilots occasionally landed on the remaining airfield without permission. The reason was the gusts that occurred at over 28 ° C at Heller Airport, which made any stopovers there extremely complicated. However, this became increasingly rare and also more and more dangerous. An exact date of a last start in Kaditz is currently not known.
It was not until 1935 that the Dresden airport in Klotzsche , Dresden's third airport, was an adequate replacement for civil aviation as well as the airfield at the Dresden Heller.
Today only the name Kleingartenverein Flugplatz Übigau e. V. , which is located west of Washingtonstrasse on parts of the former airfield, to this use. It is curious that this allotment garden association actually uses a parcel of the Dresden district of Übigau and also a part of the former Dresden-Kaditz airfield, but that there never was an Übigau airfield .
See also
literature
- Association “New Neighborhood Kaditz e. V. “(Ed.): Typically Kaditz - history and stories . Saxonia, Dresden 2002. ISBN 3-9808406-4-6 . From this:
- Wolfgang Fiedler: Airfield and airship port Dresden-Kaditz . Pp. 185-197
- Unknown author: From the diary I kept at the time - On the opening of the Kaditz airfield . Pp. 198-199.
- H. Lößnitz / Siegfried Reinhardt: The fascination of the airships . Pp. 200-201.
- Siegfried Reinhardt: Dresden-Kaditz - history, stories, memories . Association “New Neighborhood Kaditz e. V. “(Ed.), Saxonia, Dresden 2005. ISBN 3-937951-22-9 . From this:
- Siegfried Reinhardt: First deaths on the Kaditz airfield . Pp. 188-189.
- Siegfried Reinhardt: The mail handling at the Kaditz airfield . Pp. 190-192.
- Siegfried Reinhardt: When flying was still a risk . On the 100th anniversary of the opening of the Dresden-Kaditz airfield. Ed .: Association New Neighborhood Kaditz e. V. Engelsdorfer Verlag, Leipzig 2012, ISBN 978-3-86268-969-9 .
- Roland Fuhrmann: Dresden's Gate to Heaven - The first aerodynamically shaped airship hall and its influence on the history of construction. Thelem Universitätsverlag , Dresden 2019, ISBN 978-3-95908-482-6 .
Web links
- Information on Dresden-Kaditz airfield in the catalog of the German National Library
- Kaditz Airfield on dresdner-stadtteile.de
- Kaditz Airfield on a private website (with map)
- Measuring table sheet Saxony from 1926 - deutschefotothek - sheet 66: Section Dresden
- Cadastre overview map / Dresden City Surveying Office from 1938 - deutschefotothek - sheet 19
Individual evidence
- ↑ The airship port in Düsseldorf, which opened in 1910, was also administered by the city.
- ↑ Fiedler, p. 185. The information on www.dresdner-stadtteile.de is therefore incorrect, the LZ 17 "Saxony" - was the second zeppelin to land in Dresden.
- ↑ Roland Fuhrmann: Ernst Meier - creator of the streamlined airship hangar , in: Stahlbau, Vol. 83, July 2014, No. 7, pp. 498–502.
- ↑ No further information contained in the sources used.
- ^ Fiedler, p. 192.
- ↑ Fiedler, p. 193.
- ↑ The source is contradictory: Fiedler, p. 189, gives 70 climbs for Parseval PL 6 1914 alone, but on p. 194 mentions “only” 68 climbs for all three airships combined. The following passenger numbers are also contradictory. The Parseval was therefore left out here, although the days of travel of the two LZs are too few to explain 68 climbs by them alone.
- ↑ Taken from www.dresdner-stadtteile.de. Whether this is still the case today - 2018 - has not yet been checked.
- ↑ Fiedler, p. 196.
- ↑ "As you can see in the April 1926 issue of the early aviation magazine 'Ikarus', the name of the planned new airline, reminiscent of the medieval Hanseatic League, was 'born' in Dresden - it is said to have been used for the first time in the summer of 1924 in Dresden City Hall the opening of the Dresden - Munich flight connection was celebrated. ”Quoted from The name Luft Hansa was born in Dresden , notification from the Lufthansa Group on August 10, 2015 (PDF). Retrieved January 30, 2017.
- ↑ Fiedler, pp. 195/196.
- ^ Website of the allotment garden association . Retrieved January 29, 2017.
Coordinates: 51 ° 4 ′ 22.8 " N , 13 ° 41 ′ 4.2" E