Gerdauen airfield

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The airfield Gerdauen was an insert port of the first order of the Air Force of the Armed Forces near the East Prussian district town Gerdauen .

history

The airfield was laid out in 1938/39 and used from August 1939. It was located on Reichsstrasse 141 to Allenburg about 2.5 km north of the city. It extended in an easterly direction to the forest of Schloss Gerdauen.

The airfield was the operational port of the Jesau air base and therefore not permanently occupied by the air force. At the end of the 1930s, a building was erected for the commandant's office that served as an apartment for some officers. Large barracks were available for use and for storing spare parts. The exact dimensions of the runway are not known. It is said to have been a grass area with a length of 1370 meters. From 1941 the air base served the training of pilots. The FFS A / B 125 pilot school , later renamed FFS A 125, was based here until 1944 . Operationally, the airfield was used for the attack on Poland in 1939 and then again for the attack on the Soviet Union in June 1941. In the summer of 1941 it was used as an alternate airfield during construction work on Wolfsschanze airfield, 35 km away . In the event of an air raid, Schippenbeil airfield would have been an alternative port.

The following table shows a list of selected active flying units (excluding school and supplementary associations) that were stationed here between 1939 and 1945.

from to unit equipment
August 1939 September 1939 I./KG 2 (I. Group of Kampfgeschwader 2) Dornier Thu 17M
June 1941 July 1941 Staff, I./KG 76 Junkers Ju 88A
August 1944 November 1944 Parts of the I./NJG 100 (parts of the I. Group of the Nachtjagdgeschwader 100) Junkers Ju 88C-6, Focke-Wulf Fw 189A , Dornier Do 217N
October 1944 January 1945 Staff, I./SG 3 (Staff and I. Group of the battle squadron 3) Focke-Wulf Fw 190F-8
October 1944 December 1944 II./SG 1 Focke-Wulf Fw 190F-8
November 1944 November 1944 I., II./SG 4 Focke-Wulf Fw 190F-8
January 1945 January 1945 II./JG 1 (I. Group of Jagdgeschwader 1) Focke-Wulf Fw 190A, Focke-Wulf Fw 190D

In January 1945 the airfield was given up because of its proximity to the front.

The Russian army occupied Gerdauen on January 27, 1945. The satellite camp of the Stutthof concentration camp set up on the airfield had already been closed on January 24, 1945, and the last prisoners were brought back to Stutthof .

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Henry L. deZeng IV: Air Force airfields Germany 1935-45 (1937 Borders). (PDF; 3.3 MB) June 2014, pp. 215–216 , accessed on January 4, 2017 (English).
  2. ^ Uwe Neumärker, Robert Conrad, Cord Woywodt: "Wolfsschanze": Hitler's power center in the Second World War . 4th edition. Ch.links, Berlin 2012, ISBN 978-3-86153-433-4 , p. 43 ( limited preview in Google Book search).
  3. ^ Gerdauen military airfield . In: Heimatbrief Kreis Gerdauen . No. 58 , December 2016, p. 85 : "Taken there from Der Kreis Gerdauen by Oskar-Wilhelm Bachor, Holzner-Verlag, Würzburg, 1968"
  4. ↑ Gerdauen airfield . In: Heimatbrief Kreis Gerdauen . No. 65 , June 2020, p. 56-64 .

Coordinates: 54 ° 23 ′ 50 ″  N , 21 ° 17 ′ 40 ″  E