Sembach Air Base
| Sembach Air Base | |
|---|---|
|
|
| Characteristics | |
| ICAO code | ETAS |
| IATA code | SEX |
| Coordinates | |
| Height above MSL | 320 m (1050 ft ) |
| Transport links | |
| Distance from the city center | 0.5 km south of Sembach |
| Street | A63 (2 km) |
| Basic data | |
| opening | 1953 |
| closure | 1995 |
| operator | USAFE |
| surface | 400 ha |
| Start-and runway | |
| 07/25 | 2402 m × 45 m asphalt |
The Sembach Air Base (short: Sembach AB ) was a military airfield of the United States Air Force used during the Cold War and temporarily housed the headquarters of the 17th Air Fleet ( 17th Air Force ) . The now closed airfield is located around ten kilometers northeast of Kaiserslautern near Sembach in Rhineland-Palatinate . The buildings of the Heuberg settlement will continue to be used and administered from Ramstein Air Base .
history
History of the Air Base
In the course of the stationing of their military in Germany after the Second World War , among other things, the choice fell on an area between the Palatinate places Mehlingen and Sembach, which was to serve an airfield that was named "Sembach Air Base". The plans were initially kept secret from the public. Its construction, which took up a total of 240 hectares, began in the summer of 1951. The farmers affected, whose claimed land was expropriated, resisted the construction. The construction work also caused damage to the Sembach houses and streets. In addition, the villagers spoke of noise pollution during this time. In 1953 the airport was completed. In the immediate vicinity, the "Housing Area" was built on the Heuberg, which served to accommodate the stationed soldiers and their relatives.
In the beginning, 54 aircraft from South Carolina were ordered to the airfield. Its pilots were mainly soldiers who had been used in the Korean War. In the same year, the air base became one of three locations for US radio-controlled weapons groups within Germany.
Since the runway was partially uneven, this limited the performance compared to its nearby Ramsteiner counterpart. In 1959, an on-site aircraft accident was barely avoided. In the same year, the TM 67 Mace radio guided missile was stationed at the airport . As of 1984, most of the aircraft were no longer permanently stationed at the air base. Most of them were training and transport aircraft.
An exception in the last decade of the Cold War was the stationing of a nominal eight A-10 ground attack aircraft, which were replaced roughly every two weeks. They formed Detachment 1 (Det. 1) of the 81st Tactical Fighter Wings (81st TFW) based on the English double base RAF Bentwaters / RAF Woodbridge . Det. 1 was activated on April 1, 1978 and decommissioned on May 3, 1992. The rotations, each a third of a squadron, provided the 510th Tactical Fighter Squadron (510th TFS) until the end of 1988 and the 78th TFS from the beginning of 1989, both from Bentwaters.
After the Ramstein flight conference on August 28, 1988 at Ramstein Air Base, some 20 km away, the remaining and partially damaged aircraft of the Frecce Tricolori landed in Sembach, after three aircraft from the aerobatic team collided while performing an aerobatic maneuver and the runway in Ramstein was unusable due to debris was. Since renovations took place in Ramstein from 1989 to 1994, Sembach also served as an alternative airport during this time.
Closure and follow-up time
On March 30, 1995, the air base was closed and the airport grounds were returned to the Federal Property Administration. In this context, a symbolic handover of the keys to the then federal government took place. In 1998, construction work began to develop and convert 226 hectares of the former airfield site into an industrial park. The total development costs for this were estimated at around € 23 million. By the end of 2011, around 104 hectares had been prepared for subsequent commercial use. As part of the planning approval, the former runway had to be dismantled and completely unsealed as a compensatory measure for the expansion of the federal motorway 63 .
The residential complexes belonging to the Air Base - the so-called "Housing Area" - of the Heuberg settlement were continued to be used by the US Air Force and renamed the Sembach Annex. On October 1, 2010, the US Air Force transferred the Sembach Annex to the US Army, which renamed it "Sembach barracks" and continues to use it as barracks.
Web links
- Information on the home page of the local authority
- Website about the history of the air base
- Sembach Air Base veterans website
Individual evidence
- ^ Report of the state government on the implementation of the state's conversion program to cope with the consequences of the troop withdrawal in 2010 and 2011. pp. 30–31.
- ↑ US Army takes over Sembach Anex . Stars and Stripes website. Retrieved November 4, 2012.