Værløse Air Base

Værløse Air Base Danish: Værløse Flyveplads) is a former Royal Danish Air Force air base located just south of Værløse, Furesø Municipality, 20 kilometres northwest of central Copenhagen, Denmark.

A camp for army recruits was established at the site in 1910. The air field was built in 1934. Over the next few years, hangars and facilities for five squadrons were built. The first of these was a command squadron for the air wing. It was followed by a fighter squadron and a reconnaissance squadron of each of two army divisions.

The Fokker C.V reconnaissance aircraft and Fokker D.XXI fighters stationed at the air base were tasked with the defense of Copenhagen but many of them were not combat ready when Denmark was occupied by Nazi Germany since their locally produced machine guns had not yet been installed. At 05:25 am on 9 April 1940, the air base was attacked by Messerschmitt Bf 110 aircraft of the German Luftwaffe. During the attack, which came in five waves and only lasted about 45 minutes, almost all of the Danish aircraft were destroyed. A reconnaissance aircraft which had just taken off was shot down, killing its crew. The Germans were only aiming for aircraft, leaving the air base infrastructure intact for their own later use. The airfield was used by the German Luftwaffe during the rest of the war, stationing several units there. It was also used for captured Allied aircraft, such as a Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress of the United States Army Air Forces in 1944.

Towards the end of the war, as the German Eastern Front began to collapse, flights with refugees from East Prussia and the Baltic states began coming to the airfield. At the time of the capitulation, 131 aircraft had accumulated at the base. Immediately after the war, the airfield served as a refugee camp.

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