Lechfeld Air Base
Lechfeld Air Base AMSL | 1,822 ft / 555 m | ||||||||||
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Coordinates | 48°11′10″N 010°51′42″E / 48.18611°N 10.86167°E | ||||||||||
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Lechfeld Air Base (ICAO: ETSL) is a German Air Force (Luftwaffe) base located 1 km east of Lagerlechfeld in Bavaria, about 20 km south of Augsburg on the Bundestrasse 17.
It was the home of Training Division A of the School of Management Assistance, and of 32 Fighter Bomber Wing (Jagdbombergeschwader 32), part of the Luftwaffe's 1st Air Division. The two squadrons based there flew the Panavia Tornado until 2013. There was a plan to use Lechfeld as Germany's second base for the Airbus A400M Atlas transport aircraft.
History
In 1912, the
American use
American Army units moved into the Lagerlechfeld area in early May 1945 during the
In December 1945, the facility was turned over to the United States Army Air Forces, which renamed it Army Air Force Station Lechfeld and was used by various units as an occupation garrison until being closed on 1 Jun 1947, being put into "standby" status and turned over to the Army garrison at Augsburg for control.
Modern era
The unreconstructed facility was eventually turned over to the reconstituted German Armed Forces in 1955, and the first German military personnel of the newly created
On 14 September 1961, two F-84F Thunderstreak of 32 Fighter Bomber Wing crossed into East German airspace due to a navigational error, eventually landing at Berlin Tegel Airport, evading a large number of Soviet fighter planes. The event came at a historically difficult time during the Cold War, one month after the construction of the Berlin Wall. Oberstleutnant Siegfried Barth, commander of the unit at the time, was transferred for the incident but later, after a number of investigations and complaints, had to be reinstated.[3]
In 1965 32 Fighter Bomber Wing received the
Lechfeld Air Base was used for several
In October 2011 the German Federal Ministry of Defence announced a reorganisation/reduction of the German Armed Forces. As a consequence, 32 Fighter Bomber Wing will be disbanded and 14 Student Company of the German Armed Forces Command Support School, also stationed at the air base, will be reduced to one of the elements of the German Armed Forces Command Support School. The base will house a branch of the German Air Force Engineering Training Centre and other minor units of the air force. The reorganisation will reduce the number of personnel stationed on the air base from currently 1620 to 570.[4] The disbandment of 32 Fighter Bomber Wing took place on 31 March 2013.[5]
In 2019, it was announced that Lechfeld would become the second base for the Airbus A400M Atlas transport aircraft. In addition to the main base Wunstorf, 13 aircraft of this type are to fly here from 2025.[6]
On the airfield it is a part of the major maneuver from June 12 to June 23, 2023, held under the leadership of the German Air Force Air Defender 23 it is the greatest exercise of air forces since NATO was announced.[7]
References
- ^ Robert Forsyth, Jagdgeschwader 7 'Nowotny' (Osprey Publishing), p. 10
- ^ IX Engineering Command Advanced Landing Grounds
- ^ STRAUSS-BEFEHL: Bier-Order 61 (in German) Der Spiegel, published: 9 May 1962, accessed: 30 November 2010
- ^ Quoted from Federal Ministry of Defence (26 October 2011), Stationing of the Bundeswehr in Germany (in German), retrieved 14 November 2012, PDF-file "Stationing of the Bundeswehr in Germany", p. 61
- ^ Brems, Gloria (11 February 2013), "Jagdgeschwader übernimmt Flugbetrieb auf dem Lechfeld", Augsburger Allgemeine (in German), retrieved 1 March 2016
- ^ Ministerin: Zweiter Standort für Transportflugzeug A400M (02 January 2019), Bundesministerium der Verteidigung (in German), retrieved 13 September 2020
- ^ "Germany prepares to host NATO's biggest ever air exercise over Europe". euronews.com. 2023-06-07. Retrieved 2023-06-10.
External links
- Homepage of the German Air Force (in German)
- Airport information for ETSL at Great Circle Mapper.