Ghedi military airfield

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Ghedi
"Luigi Olivari" military airfield
Ghedi military airfield (Italy)
Red pog.svg
Characteristics
ICAO code LIPL
Coordinates

45 ° 25 '56 "  N , 10 ° 16' 4"  E Coordinates: 45 ° 25 '56 "  N , 10 ° 16' 4"  E
Height above MSL 101 m (331  ft )
Transport links
Distance from the city center 15 km southeast of Brescia
Street A4 (Brescia-Est, Castenedolo), Via Tenente Olivari
Basic data
opening 1909
operator Aeronautica Militare
surface 660 ha
Start-and runway
13/31 2991 m × 45 m asphalt

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The Ghedi military airfield is located in the northern Italian region of Lombardy , around 15 kilometers southeast of Brescia and two kilometers north of Ghedi . The name "Brescia-Ghedi" is sometimes used to distinguish it from the now civil airport Brescia-Montichiari , which is three kilometers further east .

Infrastructure and use

The military airfield Ghedi formed a very large, physically contiguous with the adjacent military base airfield Montichiari long time. Even after the division of the two airfields, Ghedi remains one of the largest and most important facilities of the Italian Air Force . To the north and east of the nearly three-kilometer-long runway there are military facilities with parking areas and protected aircraft shelters . Ghedi is connected to the Northern Italy Pipeline System .

The 6th Squadron (6º Stormo) of the Italian Air Force is stationed at the airfield . In addition to various support units, it has three flying squadrons (102º, 154º, 155º Gruppo) which are equipped with Panavia Tornado fighter aircraft . As part of nuclear participation, the tornadoes can use American B61 atomic bombs , which are stored in underground bunkers on the northern edge of the airfield. The airfield is named after the military pilot Luigi Olivari , who died in 1917.

history

The history of the Ghedi and Montichiari airfields begins with an international air show that was held here in September 1909. During the First World War , hunting groups and reconnaissance planes were stationed in Ghedi, and during the Second World War there was a flight school for budding bomber pilots. After the Armistice of Cassibile , Ghedi became one of the most important airfields of the Aeronautica Nazionale Repubblicana , the air force of the fascist Repubblica Sociale Italiana, at the end of 1943 . The Todt organization greatly expanded Ghedi-Montichiari in 1944. Italian and German squadrons fought against allied bomber formations from here until April 1945. Immediately after the end of the war, the Allies set up a prisoner-of-war camp on the destroyed airfield .

The two airfields of Ghedi and Montichiari were rebuilt in the early 1950s according to NATO standards at the time. On this occasion, large parts of the area between the two airports were sold to farmers , but a taxiway connected the two systems for many years. Montichiari subsequently became a kind of outpost of Ghedi as a reserve airfield. An anti-aircraft missile unit ( 65º Gruppo ) was stationed there from 1959 to 1999 on Nike Hercules and a missile school of the 1ª Brigata Aerea , which had been set up in Brescia in 1923 as a fighter squadron .

Coat of arms 6th Squadron

The 6th Squadron ( 6º Stormo ), re-established in Treviso in 1951 , moved to Ghedi in the same year and gradually received the three flying squadrons 154, 155 and 156. According to the air force structure at that time, the unit was raised to brigade level ( 6ª Aerobrigata ) and from 1956 equipped with F-84F aircraft. With these machines one formed in Ghedi also the aerobatic team Diavoli Rossi ("Red Devils"), which appeared among other things in the USA . With the introduction of the F-104 Starfighter , the unit was downsized again from 1964: The 155th squadron moved to Piacenza (and 1973 to Istrana ), then came back to Ghedi in 1985, equipped for tornadoes , and went back to Piacenza in 1990. The 156th season came to Gioia del Colle in southern Italy in 1966 and returned to Ghedi from there in 2008 with tornadoes . Only the 154th season, which was the first to switch to tornadoes in Italy from 1982 , has remained in Ghedi to this day.

In September 1993 the 6th Squadron received the 102nd Squadron from the 5th Squadron ( 5º Stormo ) from Rimini-Miramare . This fighter-bomber squadron had flown the F-104S Starfighter there for a long time and was also involved in nuclear participation. After the conversion to tornados in Ghedi, she also took over the training of the future Italian tornado pilots from 1998, as the tri-national training facility Tri-National Tornado Training Establishment in Cottesmore, UK, was dissolved.

Tornadoes of the 6th Squadron were used in 1991 in Iraq , 1995 and 1999 in the former Yugoslavia , from 2008 in Afghanistan , 2011 in Libya and then again over Iraq and Syria , in reconnaissance configurations also on behalf of the International Court of Justice in the search for mass graves in the former Yugoslavia and on behalf of the Italian civil defense in the event of natural disasters and other accidents.

In September 2016, the 155th season returned with their Tornado ECR from Piacenza to Ghedi. As part of a reorganization of the 6th Squadron, the 156th Squadron was disbanded. This means that the squadron still has three tornado squadrons.

Incidents

Due to the short distance between the Ghedi military airfield and the Montichiari airport, which has been in commercial use since 1999, especially because of the staggered but parallel runways, there have been several erroneous landings on the wrong runways in the past. For example, combat aircraft of allied air forces accidentally landed in Montichiari during exercises, and sports and business pilots in Ghedi. Although the two runways are parallel, they do not have the same runway designators with the usual suffix R and L ( Right / Left ), but rather the approximate IDs 13/31 (Ghedi) and 14/32 (Montichiari) for better differentiation. . In the case of erroneous landings of civil aircraft in Ghedi, both the military and the civil aviation safety authority ANSV initiate investigations. Ghedi is clearly marked as a restricted area on aeronautical maps.

Web links