Fliegerhorst Brandis-Waldpolenz
THE ABANDONED AIRFIELD IN GERMANY
During the Cold War ‘Fliegerhorst Brandis-Waldpolenz’ was a Soviet military airport. It was built in 1935 as ‘Blindflugschule’, a flight school of the Wehrmacht. Today the airfield is a huge solar field, the solar panels are covering the airstrip.
The airfield was built as Blindflugschule 1 in 1934 with an 1800 meter long and 80 meter wide runway. Brandis-Waldpolenz was also an airplane test site for the Junkers company from Dessau. Also the Sack AS-6 experimental aircraft was tested here. The parts for the legendary Horten H9 wing were found here although the war ended before it could fly. A second runway and an assembly hall for the Messerschmitt Me 163 rocket fighter could not be completed.
From Second World War to the Cold War
At the end of the Second World War, the base was bombed at least once by the American Air Force. As a result it was occupied in 1945 by the Americans after a short but fierce battle. Long before the battle, most Luftwaffe personel had been evacuated, and almost all aircraft present were blown up or torched. Some 200 men were left to defend the airbase. After the capture, the airbase was occupied by the ’60th Armored Infantry Battalion’ of the ‘9th US Armored Division’ and subsequently the ‘273rd Infantry Regiment’ of the ’69th Infantry Division’. Not much later the Red Army took control. In the following two years, the damaged airfield buildings were rebuilt or demolished. In 1954, the first MiG-15 fighter was stationed here. From 1960 on, the infrastructure was continuously expanded. The site was handed over to the German authorities in 1992.
From 1992 on, the field was used for general aviation until 2005. Among others, the helicopter service company LipsAir had its base here. In 2009 the airport was transformed into a solar panel field, one of the biggest in Europe. I visited ‘Fliegerhorst Brandis-Waldpolenz’ both in 2009 and 2020.
