Fürstenfeldbruck Air Base
Fürstenfeldbruck Air Base.svg) Flugplatz Fürstenfeldbruck Advanced Landing Ground R-72 |
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| Summary | |||||||||||
| Airport type | Military | ||||||||||
| Owner | Unified Armed Forces of the Federal Republic of Germany | ||||||||||
| Operator | German Air Force | ||||||||||
| Location | Fürstenfeldbruck, Germany | ||||||||||
| Elevation AMSL | 1,703 ft / 519 m | ||||||||||
| Coordinates | 48°12′24″N 11°15′59″E / 48.20667°N 11.26639°ECoordinates: 48°12′24″N 11°15′59″E / 48.20667°N 11.26639°E | ||||||||||
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Fürstenfeldbruck Air Base (German: "Fliegerhorst Fürstenfeldbruck"; now "Flugplatz Fürstenfeldbruck") is a German Air Force airfield near the town of Fürstenfeldbruck in Bavaria, near Munich, Germany.
Fürstenfeldbruck became famous first as the main training base for the German Luftwaffe during World War II, then as the site of the Munich massacre of nine Israeli athletes and coaches (two were killed earlier) and one German police officer at the 1972 Summer Olympics. It is currently inactive for German Air Force flight operations, but remains the home of the German Air Force Officer Training School. Currently Maisach BMW driver training facility.
Since 1957, Fürstenfeldbruck has been the home of the German Air Force Officer Training School. Various aircraft (G-91, Alpha Jet, T-33, Tornados) operated from the base until 1997 when all flying was halted.
Today, Fürstenfeldbruck hosts the following units:
The Air Base was established in 1935, and was the Luftkriegsschule 4 (LKS 4—4th Air War School) of the Luftwaffe during World War II. Field Marshal Hermann Göring is said to have taken a deep personal interest in establishing an air force training base for the Luftwaffe and modeled Fürstenfeldbruck after the United States Army Air Forces training center at Randolph Field, Texas.
The RAF and USAAF understood that Fürstenfeldbruck was being used extensively as a training base, and believed it to be of little strategic importance. Consequently, it escaped bombing until the later stages of the war, and then it was attacked severely.
Allied reprisal bombing began to desolate many German cities in 1944 and in October the Luftwaffe leaders rushed work to extend the Air Base's runways long enough for fighter aircraft takeoffs. Thousand of slave laborers are said to have "expedited" this project and as the war neared its final critical stages the Luftwaffe was able to mount fighters from the Base. That, however, provoked the Allies to make the only serious bombing raid on the field.
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