Leeuwarden military airfield

Fleet base Leeuwarden
Characteristics
ICAO code	EHLW
Coordinates	53 ° 13 '43 "  N , 5 ° 45' 38"  E Coordinates: 53 ° 13 '43 "  N , 5 ° 45' 38"  E
Height above MSL	1 m (3  ft )
Transport links
Distance from the city center	4 km northwest of Leeuwarden
Street	1 km north of the A 31
Basic data
opening	1938
operator	Dutch Air Force
Runways
06/24	2957 m × 50 m asphalt
09/27	2000 m × 50 m asphalt

The Vliegbasis Leeuwarden is a military airfield of the Dutch Air Force . The base is in the province of Friesland in the northwest of the urban area of ​​the city of Leeuwarden . It serves the Dutch armed forces ( KLu ) in particular as one of two combat aircraft bases.

history

The airfield was opened in 1938 as a civil airport between Schiphol and Eelde, but was initially hardly used.

After the occupation of the Netherlands by the German Wehrmacht in May 1940, took advantage of Air Force the place as air base and stationed here fighter planes and bombers . Between the end of June and the beginning of August 1940, the Bf 109E of Group I of Jagdgeschwader 51 (I./JG 51) and Group II of Jagdgeschwader 27 (II./JG 27) lay here one after the other . In January 1941 the III. Group of Kampfgeschwaders 4 (III./KG 4) with He 111H reorganized and intervened in the Battle of Britain until the end of July . In addition, the I. Group of Jagdgeschwader 52 (I./JG 52) was located here between May and July 1941 and the II. Group of the same squadron (II./JG 52) in October / November 1941, which at that time was already Bf 109F flew.

From November 1941 Leeuwarden became an important night hunting base and was initially home to the Ju 88C of the II. Group of Night Fighter Squadron 2 (II./NJG 2), which remained stationed here for a year. Between October 1942 and March 1944 it was followed by the Bf 110 of the IV. Group of the Nachtjagdgeschwader 1 (IV./NJG 1), followed between May and September 1944 by a part of the III. Gruppe (III./NJG 1), which had the Ju 88G in addition to the Bf 110. The base was attacked in connection with Operation Market Garden on September 16 and 17, 1944 by the RAF Bomber Command and severely damaged.

After the liberation of the Netherlands, the base was repaired and initially used again for civilian purposes, the KLM flew from here to Schiphol.

As early as 1949, however, the airfield was again used for military purposes, this time by the Koninklijke Luchtmacht of the Netherlands. Since this year Leeuwarden has been a main base for jet fighters . Initially Meteor F8s were stationed here, which were replaced by Hunter F6A in 1956 . This in turn made way for the F-104G Starfighter in 1964 and in 1979 the introduction of the F-16A / B, which is still flown today, began .

In addition, the base housed a small number of rescue helicopters from 1976, initially of the Alouette III type and since 1994 exclusively of the Agusta AB-412SP type . They were operated by the 303rd Squadron , known in everyday life as SAR Flight . This unit was dissolved in early 2015.

In the course of the further downsizing of the F-16 fleet and the small number of F-35A ordered , it was briefly considered in 2013 to reduce the base from the status of a main operating base to the lower status of a deployed operating base . However, this plan was discarded after a short time, although the fighter aircraft fleet reduction should still take place as planned at this point in time.

Leeuwarden becomes the first KLu-F-35 base, later followed by Volkel. As a consequence, one of the two squadrons, the 323rd, was reorganized as an F-16 squadron out of service at the end of October 2014 and at the beginning of November in Eglin as the first F-35 unit of the KLu. On May 23, 2016, the first two Lockheed Martin F-35 aircraft landed at the airfield and crossed the Atlantic for test purposes. At the end of October 2019, the first model permanently stationed in the Netherlands from production in Italy arrived here.

use

The base is currently (2018) used by the following flying squadron :

• 322nd Squadron , equipped with Lockheed Martin F-16A / B MLU multi-purpose combat aircraft (from 1979, at that time at the Transitie en Conversie Afdeling retraining unit, which was dissolved in 1984 ), conversion to F-35A in implementation from 2019.

In the future, the 306th season of MQ-9 Reaper drones will be added, the purchase was approved by the US in 2015, should be delivered by the end of 2020, with a volume of an estimated 339 million US dollars and next to four Also threaten to include four ground stations and six replacement engines.

There are also other non-flying formations at the base.

Web links

Commons : Leeuwarden Air Base  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

• Vliegbasis Leeuwarden In: defensie.nl (Dutch)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ PICTURES: Two Dutch F-35s arrive at Leeuwarden Air Base. In: Flightglobal.com. May 23, 2016. Retrieved May 24, 2016 . 
2. ↑ Gareth Jennings: Dutch receive first operationally-assigned F-35A. In: Janes.com. Jane's Defense Weekly, November 1, 2019, accessed November 1, 2019 . 
3. ↑ STAFF WRITER: General Atomics awarded $ 123 million Netherlands MQ-9. In: The Defense Post. November 1, 2019, accessed November 1, 2019 .