Gorizia airfield
| Gorizia Aeroporto di Gorizia Airport |
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|---|---|---|---|
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| Characteristics | |||
| ICAO code | LIPG | ||
| IATA code | QGO | ||
| Coordinates | |||
| Height above MSL | 63 m (207 ft ) | ||
| Transport links | |||
| Distance from the city center | 4 km southwest of Gorizia | ||
| Street | SS 55 | ||
| train | Gorizia train station | ||
| Local transport | bus | ||
| Basic data | |||
| opening | 1912 | ||
| operator | Aero Club Giuliano, Aero Club Alpe Adria | ||
| surface | 153 hectares | ||
| Start-and runway | |||
| 09/27 | 1100 m × 60 m grass | ||
The Gorizia airport ( it .: Aeroporto di Gorizia “Amedeo Duca d'Aosta” ) is located in the northern Italian region of Friuli-Venezia Giulia , around four kilometers south-southwest of the city of Gorizia , on the border with Slovenia .
Infrastructure and use
The airfield , located between the A34 motorway in the west and the SS55 state road in the east, has a grass runway (09/27) 1,100 m long and 60 m wide. Another grass runway (04/22, 890 × 60 m) is currently closed. In the past there was a third runway for gliders . The intersecting runways are located on an airfield area of around 150 hectares, with smaller handling facilities at the northeast corner. The airfield is available for general aviation .
history
Until World War II
Gorizia belonged to Austria-Hungary until the First World War . The airfield was set up as a military airfield on a cavalry parade ground in 1911 and opened on January 15, 1912. Until 1915 it served exclusively for pilot training, in addition to the flight school at Wiener Neustadt airfield . As early as 1910, the aviation pioneer Edvard Rusjan and his brother Josip carried out their first flights on the training area near Gorizia. Today, a street running parallel to the airfield in the north is named after the Rusjan brothers and a monument on the airfield commemorates them since 2009.
Because Italy entered the war, the airfield near the border was given up in 1915 and the flight school relocated to Szombathely . At times the front ran through the airfield area, which was therefore unusable. In the first years after the war, the Italian military ran the site as an inactive airfield. The Italian Air Force , founded in 1923, began to rebuild and expand the airfield, which until 1938 was called the Merna or Gorizia-Merna military airfield because it lies between Gorizia and Miren-Kostanjevica (then Merna), which is now part of Slovenia . It was named until 1942 after the Italian military pilot Egidio Grego , who fell from Istria in 1917 .
In 1925 a squadron of a reconnaissance squadron (21º Stormo) moved to Gorizia, which was then stationed entirely there, followed in 1931 by a fighter squadron ( 4º Stormo ) . The airfield was then de facto divided: the northern part was used by the reconnaissance squadron, the southern part by the fighter squadron. Other airborne units were temporarily stationed on both parts. In addition, Görz-Merna became the headquarters of the 3rd Air Brigade (3 Brigata aerea with 1º and 4º Stormo) and the 1st Air Division ( 1 Divisione aerea “Aquila”) . From June 1932 to December 1937, Duke Amadeus von Savoyen-Aosta in Gorizia commanded the 21st and 4th squadrons, the 3rd brigade and the 1st air division one after the other. In 1936 he founded a heliotherapy center for children on the airfield . Since 1942 the airfield has been named after the Duke who died in Nairobi as a prisoner of war.
From 1935, bombers from Görz-Merna tested new air torpedoes , which the Whitehead company in Fiume (now Rijeka in Croatia) produced. This led to the establishment of the torpedo bomber school (Reparto / 1º Nucleo addestramento aerosiluranti) at the Gorizia airfield on July 25, 1940. In the further course of this, torpedo bomber squadrons were set up in Gorizia , which operated throughout the Mediterranean. During the Second World War , due to its location, the airfield was primarily used for the training or retraining of pilots and mechanics, the reorganization or conversion of airborne units and associations, the testing of new aircraft and as a logistical hub to support associations in Yugoslavia . Because of the number of units and associations stationed in Gorizia, Görz-Merna airfield has been one of the most important military airfields in Italy since the 1930s. The Gorizia Aeroclub was founded there in 1934.
In 1924 the airfield had a west-east extension of 1150 meters, in north-south direction it was 520 meters, twenty years later it was 1370 × 1075 meters. Various buildings and other facilities were located on the north, east and south edges of the airfield. From north to south, the clockwise directions included: a fuel depot, a double hangar (63.60 × 30.60 m) and the headquarters of the reconnaissance squadron, several depot and barracks buildings and a Gleiwitz hangar of the Austrian type (66.5 × 28 m) in the north, a Lancini hangar (50 × 50 m), the command building , a swimming pool , the infirmary, military police and administrative facilities in the east and three Lancini hangars and other facilities of the 4th Squadron in the south. Towards the end of the war, decentralized parking areas were set up outside, which were connected to the airfield by roads and other paths, as well as satellite airfields at Aidussina , San Pietro del Carso , Ronchi and Vipacco .
After the announcement of the armistice in Cassibile on September 8, 1943, the airfield was first occupied and looted by Yugoslav partisans , but then captured by German units on September 12. Until April 1944, it was used to collect drafted Italian aircraft and to transport them to Germany. Apart from that, Gorizia airfield was ceded to the Aeronautica Nazionale Repubblicana (ANR), the air force of the Fascist Italian Social Republic , established from November 23, 1943 , although it was located in the German operational zone of the Adriatic Coast . As early as September 18, 1943, Italian pilots arrived in Gorizia who wanted to continue the war on the German side. On November 5, 1943, an ANR torpedo bomber group formed by Carlo Faggioni in Florence was concentrated in Gorizia , the three squadrons of which were equipped with a total of around 30 Savoia-Marchetti SM.79s . This independent flying group was named after the torpedo bomber pilot Carlo Emanuele Buscaglia , who was believed to have fallen, but who was still alive and had decided in favor of the Allies.
In early 1944, ANR torpedo bombers (over Perugia ) flew missions against Allied ships off the bridgeheads at Anzio and Nettuno . On the morning of March 18, 1944, American bombers attacked Gorizia airfield in two waves and largely destroyed it. In addition to the airfield and the aircraft parked there, the three Lancini hangars on the south side and the command post in the east were particularly affected. At least 150 civilians were killed in the bombing. What was left of the Buscaglia group moved to Lombardy . After another bomber attack in August 1944, the airfield was completely abandoned, the facilities largely dismantled and some of them brought to Germany for the extraction of raw materials. The architecturally significant Gleiwitz hangar has been preserved.
In April 1945 the abandoned airfield was bombed again and on the following May 1st it was occupied by units of the Yugoslav People's Liberation Army . A few days later it was taken over by parts of the British 8th Army , then units of the 91st, 34th and 88th US Infantry Divisions. The latter laid sand sheets on the airfield in October 1945 and made it usable again for their Stinson L-5 . Due to the 1947 signed and ratified peace treaty of Paris , Italy lost almost all of the Julian Veneto to Yugoslavia; the landing threshold 27 has since been approximately 150 meters away from the boundary. In 1947 the Allied occupation forces withdrew from Italy and thus also from the Gorizia airfield.
After the Second World War
In the absence of alternatives, Gorizia airfield served as a commercial airport for the Friuli-Venezia Giulia region from 1947 . The re-established Trieste airline Società Italiana Servizi Aerei (SISA) settled on the airfield and restored it. New handling facilities with a small control tower were built in the northeast of the airfield . As early as 1949, SISA with its seven Douglas C-47s acquired by the US Air Force was taken over by Avio Linee Italiane . The regular service (mostly to Rome-Ciampino , via Venice-Lido ) was discontinued in Gorizia in 1961 when the new Trieste airport at Ronchi dei Legionari started operations.
The Italian Air Force only had an airfield command and a weather station on the airfield located directly on the border until the end of 1966, then a small flight school until 1975, which, with its Piaggio P.148 , was supposed to inspire youngsters for aviation. Over 5100 young people completed a short flying training course in this facility. On November 4, 1961, a statue of the Duke was inaugurated by President Antonio Segni , Defense Minister Giulio Andreotti and Amadeus' widow Anne d'Orléans on the spot where Amadeus of Savoyen-Aosta had his desk in the no longer existing headquarters building. On the other side of State Road 55 a plaque was put up with the names of the fallen pilots of the 1st and 4th Fighter Squadrons. In the summer of 1979, an amphibious aircraft of the type Grumman HU-16 arrived in Gorizia , which had been scrapped by a squadron in Rome-Ciampino ( 15º Stormo ) and given to the Gorizia Aeroclub for exhibition. In 1981 the Ministry of Defense left the airfield to the civil aviation administration. From 1991 to 1992 the military and civil defense returned to the airfield temporarily because of the wars in Yugoslavia . Since then, the 4th Squadron stationed in Grosseto in particular has maintained close relationships with its former home airfield.
In September 1949 the Aeroclub Gorizia was re-established, which in 1983 merged with the Trieste Aeroclub to form the Aero Club Giuliano di Gorizia e Trieste and then called itself Aero Club Alpe Adria . Over time, the club hosted a number of aviation events at Gorizia Airport, which it operated for a long time. From 1992 the Innsbruck Glider Pilot Association regularly used the Gorizia airfield for summer gliding activities abroad. After the turn of the millennium, long quarrels began due to financial problems between the Aero Club and the aviation authority ENAC , later also with the operating company Aeroporto Duca d'Aosta SpA , founded in 2003, attempts to renovate the increasingly dilapidated airport failed or were only partially successful. From 2009 the airfield had to be closed several times, among other things because the airfield fire brigade was not operational and the safety in other areas did not meet the requirements. In 2012, the foundation stone for a building for the Slovenian aircraft construction company Pipistrel was laid in the south-east of the airfield in the hope of developing Gorizia airfield into a company airfield for other companies in the industry as well. At the same time, other renovation work began, also with the support of Pipistrel, including the Gleiwitz hangar and the Grumman HU-16. In 2016, the aviation authority ENAC temporarily withdrew the operating license from the airport operator. After signing a twenty-year concession, Goricia Airport reopened on April 22, 2017.
Web links
- Official website (Italian)
- History of the airfield on asso4stormo.it (Italian)
- History of the airfield on avia-it.com (Italian)
- History of the airfield on forgottenairfields.com (English)
- Henry L. deZeng IV: Luftwaffe Airfields 1935-45 Italy, Sicily and Sardinia , pp. 106-108 (English)
- Website dedicated to the Rusjan brothers (German translation)
- Messaggero Veneto from April 21, 2017 on the reopening (Italian)
literature
- Carlo d'Agostino: C'era una volta un campo di volo - Storia dell'aeroporto di Gorizia. Vittorelli Edizioni, Görz 2002.
- Pietro Soré: L'Aviazione del Nord-Est - Storia dei campi di volo del Friuli Venezia Giulia, 1910–2007. Giorgio Apostolo Editore, Milan 2007.