Limburg Airport

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Limburg Regional Airport
Limburg (Limburg)
Limburg
Limburg
Characteristics
ICAO code EBST
Coordinates

50 ° 47 '31 "  N , 5 ° 12' 6"  E Coordinates: 50 ° 47 '31 "  N , 5 ° 12' 6"  E
Height above MSL 75 m (246  ft )
Transport links
Distance from the city center 2 km south of Sint Truiden
Street N3
Start-and runway
06/24 1199 m × 50 m asphalt



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The Limburg Regional Airport ( ICAO code : EBST ) is a regional airport south of the city Sint-Truiden in the Belgian province of Limburg . It is located 20 kilometers southwest of Hasselt .

history

Sint-Truiden military airfield

Today's regional airfield was built before the Second World War as a military airfield of Aviation Militaire Belge , which was occupied by the German Wehrmacht in the course of the western campaign in May 1940 .

Later in the war Sint-Truiden was an important air base of the Air Force . After just a few days, “St. Trond ”, as the Luftwaffe is called, the base for parts of various squadrons. These included the Sturzkampfgeschwader 77 (SKG 77) with Ju 87B , the destroyer squadron 26 (ZG 26) with Bf 110 and the Jagdgeschwader 3 (JG 3) and 27 (JG 27) equipped with Bf 109E . After the end of the campaign, “St. Trond "during the Battle of Britain a bomber base, between June 1940 and March 1941 were here Do 17Z of the III. Group of the Kampfgeschwader 3 (III./KG 3).

As early as May of the same year, the air force command felt compelled to station II Group of Night Fighter Squadron 1 (II / NJG 1) in Sint-Truiden to repel nocturnal bombing attacks by the Royal Air Force (RAF) . The Bf 110 were here, apart from a two-month break in the spring of 1944, until September 1944. During this time, Heinz-Wolfgang Schnaufer acquired the reputation of the "Ghost of St. Trond" as a squadron captain in the ranks of the RAF Bomber Command . In the spring there was also a Ju 88 of the II. Group of the Kampfgeschwader 30 (II./KG 30) to participate in the Steinbock operation . From March 1944, the Bf 110 of the IV. Group of NJG 1 was added, which began with the conversion to the He 219 in the summer of 1944 . Following the successful Allied invasion of Normandy still used in late summer 1944 FW190A of Fighter Wing 2 (JG 2) a few weeks the airfield, which now regularly from B-26 of the USAAF was attacked.

The Western Allies retook Airfield A-92 (originally B-62 ), their code name for the airfield, in September 1944. After a brief, makeshift repair, the base was used by two fighter and one bomber groups from the 9th Air Force until July 1945 . After the end of the war it served a few months for supply flights for the population and was handed over to the Belgian Air Force in September 1945 .

Military aviation was resumed in 1946, but the repair of war damage and the construction of the new runway 06/24, almost three kilometers long (now shortened), took a long time to complete.

From 1971 the "Vliegbasis Sint-Truiden" was a training ground; there were initially two Magister and one T-33 squadrons on the training aircraft . The former were completely replaced from 1980 and the latter partially replaced by two seasons of Alpha Jet , in addition to which there was still a season of Magister. The military flight operations were discontinued in 1996, the training task took over the airfield Beauvechain .

Limburg regional airport

After a long slumber, private investors decided to develop the former military airfield into a regional airfield for the province of Limburg, including a new tower and airport hotel as well as other facilities.

Web links