fliegerhorst havelte

In october 1942 the Luftwaffe started building an airfield to the north of the town Havelte.

 

April  1944 there were around 5600 people working on the airport. They came from all over  the Netherlands. Among them there were a lot of jewish men. They dug more than 80km of trenches. Around 30 Flak positions and machine gun nests. Twenty hangars, 51 dwellings and 15 car stalls were built. The military personal on the base varied from 150 to 700 man.

 

The airport was not finished when the war ended. It was put in use .The airport was used for intermediate and emergency landings.

 

Just like most airports this one was bombed. It was bombarded with over 5300 bombs, more than 4 times the amount of of bombs dropped on Rotterdam. The heaviest bombardment was  on 24 of march 1945. The Americans dropped 271 high-explosive bombs on the airport.

 

The Canadians freed Havelte in april 1945. After the war the former airport became a nature reserve.

The airport can still be seen in the landscape, especially the landing strip and the taxiways. There still are hangars and a lot of bomb craters. In the town there are German military buildings.  The landing strip is still there, because after the war nobody dared to dig there. Every 80 meters there was a German bomb buried.