Leipheim airfield

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Leipheim airfield
Leipheim Air Base.jpg
Characteristics
ICAO code EDSD (1990)
Coordinates

48 ° 26 '25 "  N , 10 ° 14' 10"  E Coordinates: 48 ° 26 '25 "  N , 10 ° 14' 10"  E
Height above MSL 468 m (1535  ft )
Transport links
Distance from the city center 1.5 km south of Leipheim
Street approx. 3 km to the A-8
train own rail connection (closed)
Basic data
opening 1937
closure 2014
operator shut down
surface 254 ha
Start-and runway
07/25 2000 m × 45 m concrete (closed)



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The airfield Leipheim is a former military airfield near the city of Leipheim in the district of Günzburg in the Bavarian administrative region of Swabia . Originally conceived as a military airfield of the Air Force , he later became first by the US Air Force then and by the Air Force of the Armed Forces operated on.

Since 2010, the former airport site has been converted into a commercial and industrial area by an intermunicipal association , which is now known as Areal Pro .

history

Wehrmacht air base

Construction of the Leipheim Air Base began on April 1, 1936. It was largely built on Leipheimer (132 ha) and Bubesheimer (88 ha) fields. Another 30 hectares were in the area of ​​the city of Günzburg . Almost a year later, the first aircraft were moved to the field. In 1939 and 1940, the II. Group of Kampfgeschwader 51 and parts of Kampfgeschwader 55 were stationed there. At the same time, a Messerschmitt AG aircraft yard was built on the site . The first flight of the Me 262 , the first mass-produced jet aircraft, took place here on July 18, 1942. The Me 321 , the largest manned cargo glider ever designed, and the motorized version, the Me 323 large transporter, were also built there. With its maiden flight on February 25, 1941, the Me 321 wrote another piece of the history of the air base. In the last years of the war there were repeated bombing attacks, so that the nearby motorway was used as a runway. At the end of April 1945, the space designated by the Allies as Airfield R-59 was occupied by the advancing American troops.

post war period

After the end of the Second World War , a camp for " displaced persons " was set up in Leipheim in 1945 . The camp, which housed up to 3,150 people, was closed in June 1950.

Leipheim Air Base and Bundeswehr air base

In 1954 the runway was lengthened, which led to a further expansion of the property; later the characteristic shelters and the tower were built. From 1957 the airfield was used again for aviation, initially for a short time as Leipheim Air Base by the US Air Force and from 1959 as an air base by the air force of the new Bundeswehr. Between the mid-1960s and mid-1970s, the Air Force's Light Combat Wing 44 was stationed. This was decommissioned in 1975 and elements of the squadron strengthened the German Air Force Command Beja . In the event of a defense, the jets now stationed in Portugal would have been relocated to Leipheim.

Leipheim was instead the location of the technical lock 31, whose task u. a. the takeover of the newly ordered Alpha Jet , the first copy of which arrived in 1979.

From 1980 until 1992, the space next to it served as the Forward Operating Location (FOL) of A-10 of the 81st Tactical Fighter Wing of the USAFE , which was stationed in RAF Bentwaters (England). In the last decade of the Cold War, Leipheim was the permanent base of a nominal eight A-10 ground attack aircraft of the United States Air Force , which were replaced approximately every two weeks. They formed Detachment 2 (Det. 2) of the 81st Tactical Fighter Wings (81st TFW) based on the English double base RAF Bentwaters / RAF Woodbridge . Det. 2 was activated on April 1, 1979 and decommissioned on September 25, 1992. The rotations, each a third of a squadron, provided the 92nd Tactical Fighter Squadron (92nd TFS) until the end of 1988 and the 91st TFS from the beginning of 1989, both from Bentwaters. In the run-up to the stationing, 13 hardened aircraft shelters were built in Leipheim .

The German Air Force maintained an anti-aircraft missile regiment on the site. In addition, until April 1987 the Air Force Training Regiment 4 (1st Battalion LwAusbRgt 4) was stationed in Leipheim, which was later partially relocated to the Ulm-Weststadt and Germersheim locations, or was then completely disbanded by September 1987. Military flight operations ended in 1994 and anti-aircraft missiles were withdrawn a decade later. Military use ended in 2008.

present

A special purpose association and the city have taken over the property from the federal government under the title "Intermunicipal Industrial Park Landkreis Günzburg" and are setting up numerous industrial companies on the site, which is now known as Areal Pro . Leipheim itself, the district of Günzburg , the city of Günzburg and the municipality of Bubesheim are involved in the association. Immediately after the end of the military use was in the old buildings Lufwaffenwerft 33 the airbase Museum Leipheim furnished. In 2011 the Stadtwerke Ulm / Neu-Ulm presented a plan to build a gas and steam combined cycle power plant with an output of 2 × 600 megawatts by 2016 for around € 900 million . A referendum in Bubesheim against the construction of the power plant was rejected on September 11, 2011 in a referendum. In April 2014, the municipal utilities announced that they would primarily only pursue the construction of a simple gas power plant with around 600 megawatts. According to a decision by the Leipheim City Council, the southern bypass of Leipheim city center was built on the site between 2012 and 2014 and opened to traffic on September 27, with the route largely following the former runway. In the same year, the use of the Leipheim Motor and Glider Aviation Club , which used the western part of the former taxiway as a runway and other buildings as a clubhouse or aircraft hangar, also ended. At the beginning of 2015, the establishment of an 18-hectare spare parts warehouse of the car manufacturer BMW , which should have supplied its workshops in southern Germany, failed . Today (December 2017) there are branches of companies such as AL-KO and Wanzl , as well as newly built logistics centers for the freight forwarders Luible and Greiwing Logistics , Mercedes-Benz and Fendt also use the former runway as a test area for various vehicle and tractor models. Since 2016 the production and headquarters of Britax Römer and since 2018 the administration of the municipal waste management are located on the site. A central warehouse for the company Transgourmet Germany and the new fire station for the Leipheim fire department are in the planning stage .

Web links

literature

  • Peter G. Hörner, Roland Remp: Gigantic times? The history of Leipheim Air Base - Part 1: 1935 - 1960 . Publishing house for military science, Dr. W. Bergt, Tengling / Taching.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Quoted from: Peter Kaufmann: A village in the mirror of history - Bubesheim . REAL Satz + Druck, Bubesheim 2002
  2. ↑ Peter G. Hörner, R. Remp: Gigantic times? The history of the Leipheim Air Base. Part 1 1935 to 1960. Ed .: Dr. W. Bergt. Dr. W. Bergt Publishing House for Defense Sciences, Tengling.
  3. ↑ DP camp: United States Memorial Site (English)
  4. ↑ Power plant data on the official website
  5. ^ Günzburger Zeitung : New large power plant on the air base
  6. ^ Result of the referendum in the Günzburger Zeitung
  7. ↑ Günzburger Zeitung: Change of plan: gas power plant instead of CCGT from April 11, 2014
  8. ^ Günzburger Zeitung: Start of construction on the Leipheim southern bypass on April 5, 2012
  9. ^ Südwest Presse: End of construction of the Leipheim bypass on July 29, 2014
  10. ^ Günzburger Zeitung: BMW does not come to the air base area from March 12, 2015
  11. ↑ the company Greiwing site to the new logistics center at the airbase
  12. ↑ Günzburger Zeitung: Transgourmet relocates to Areal Pro on January 18, 2018