Kassel-Waldau airfield
| Kassel-Waldau airfield | |
|---|---|
|
|
| Characteristics | |
| Coordinates | |
| Height above MSL | 150 m (492 ft ) |
| Transport links | |
| Distance from the city center | 4 km south of Kassel ( Königsplatz ) |
| Street | via A7 and B83 |
| Basic data | |
| opening | August 24, 1924 |
| closure | July 10, 1970 |
| operator | originally the city of Kassel |
| Start-and runway | |
| 02/20 | 800 m × 30 m concrete |
The Kassel-Waldau airfield was an airfield in the Kassel district of Waldau that existed from 1924 to 1970 - four kilometers south of the city center ( Hesse , Germany ).
Flight operations with the opening of the airfield Kassel-Calden set (1970); For this went to 2013 as a regional airport of the airport Kassel-Calden indicate the proper name since 2015 Kassel Airport transfers. The Kassel-Waldau industrial park is located on the site of the former Waldau airfield .
history
The area of the former military training and parade ground in Waldau, which at that time was in the area of the municipality of Lohfelden , was used as an airfield at the beginning of the 1920s. The first airfield buildings were erected in 1924 and on August 24, 1924, the Kassel-Waldau airfield was officially opened. He was maintained at the city's expense.
The Kassel plant of Dietrich-Gobiet Flugzeugbau AG (DGF) produced the successful Dietrich DP IIa sports aircraft in 1923/24 , so that Antonius Raab was brought to Kassel as chief pilot. Raab, for his part, founded the Raab-Katzenstein-Flugzeugwerke GmbH (RaKa) with Kurt Katzenstein in Kassel in 1925 due to disagreements with Richard Dietrich , which used the airfield as a factory airfield and as the basis for a factory flying school.
Cassel was already listed in the route network of Junkers Luftverkehr AG in 1925 . Lufthansa , founded in 1926, also included Waldau in its scheduled air traffic. There were even international connections with Prague and Amsterdam during this period. Lufthansa’s scheduled air traffic was subsidized directly. In the spring of 1926, Gerhard Fieseler from Eschweiler first came to RaKa in Waldau as a flight instructor. He used the airfield from 1927 as a base for his aerobatic career and later for his aircraft works.
In the spring of 1927, RaKa developed the glider tow at the Kassel-Waldau airfield, which was then presented to the public for the first time on April 18, 1927 in Kassel-Waldau by Fieseler and Katzenstein on the occasion of the “Großflugtag”.
In the economic crisis of 1930, the city ran out of funds for the airport and regular services were suspended. The place went to the Niederhessischer Verein für Luftfahrt and was kept open for general aviation . Among other things, a visit to the LZ 127 Graf Zeppelin airship on September 3, 1930 was an attraction that attracted over 100,000 onlookers.
From 1930 the airfield was used for air day events and as a works airfield by Fieseler Flugzeugbau . The so-called Fieseler Plant III was located directly at the airfield, another plant was located around two kilometers east of the field. Among other things, the first flights of the Fieseler Storch and its successor model Fieseler Fi 256 were carried out on the field. During the Second World War, the runway was designed as an 800 m long concrete runway.
On April 4, 1945, the airfield damaged by bombing was captured by the US armed forces and from April 5, it was run as the Kassel-Waldau Y-96 Airfield . After repair work by US engineer units, it was the base of operations for the P-47 Thunderbolts of the 48th Fighter Group from April 17th to 29th . After that the place became Technical Air Depot (TAD) of the 10th Air Depot Group . Until April 29, 1955, the place remained closed to civil air traffic.
After that, the general interest in expanding the airfield was low, especially since Kassel was well connected by rail and highways. It was also feared that an expansion could damage the image of the city as a city of culture. In the early 1960s it became clear that expanding the airfield at the Waldau site was not compatible with the planned urban development. At the urging of the Kassel industry and the Lord Mayor Lauritz Lauritzen , after years of neglecting air traffic, the new Kassel-Calden Airport went into operation on July 11, 1970.
The Kassel-Waldau airfield was closed and rededicated as an industrial area, the runway was dismantled from 1985. The Falderbaumstrasse , Gobietstrasse , Antonius-Raab-Strasse in the industrial area remind of the earlier use of the site as an airfield.
Kassel-Waldau Airfield, Germany (US Photographic Reconnaissance Group 1944)
Administration building and hangar (both black) and runway (red) of the former Kassel-Waldau airfield in today's Waldau industrial park
Junkers Luftverkehr AG route network from April 20, 1925
See also
literature
- Easter Monday at the Kassel airfield . In: Kassel Latest News . April 20, 1927, p. 2. Supplement .
- Gerhard Fieseler: My path in the sky. The builder of the Fieseler Storch and the V 1 tells his life . Bertelsmann Verlag, Munich 1979, ISBN 3-570-01192-5 (autobiography).
- Richard Vahrenkamp : Working Papers in the History of Mobility No. 10/2006 - The central location of Kassel, transport policy and motorway construction in North Hesse from 1920 to 2000 . Department of Economics, Kassel 2006 ( uni-kassel.de [accessed June 25, 2012]).
- Y-96 Kassel / Waldau
- Kassel Waldau AFA ( Memento from February 5, 2013 in the Internet Archive )
- Johnson, David C. (1988), US Army Air Forces Continental Airfields (ETO), D-Day to VE Day; Research Division, USAF Historical Research Center, Maxwell AFB, Alabama.
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ Historical development of Waldau , information and photo of the Kassel-Waldau airfield , on kassel.de
- ↑ a b c Working Papers in the History of Mobility 10/2006 , p. 9 ff
- ↑ Meine Bahn am Himmel , p. 108 ff
- ↑ Kassel Latest News , April 20, 1927, 2nd supplement
- ↑ 48th Fighter Group
- ↑ Kassel built an airfield for 22 million ... ( Der Spiegel ), 34/1973, from August 20, 1973, on spiegel.de