Brand-Briesen Airfield is a redeveloped
military
A military, also known collectively as armed forces, is a heavily armed, highly organized force primarily intended for warfare. It is typically authorized and maintained by a sovereign state, with its members identifiable by their distin ...
air base
An air base (sometimes referred to as a military air base, military airfield, military airport, air station, naval air station, air force station, or air force base) is an aerodrome used as a military base by a military force for the operation ...
located at Briesen/Brand, part of
Halbe in
Dahme-Spreewald
Dahme-Spreewald ( dsb, Wokrejs Damna-Błota) is a district in Brandenburg, Germany. It is bounded by (from the east and clockwise) the districts of Oder-Spree, Spree-Neiße, Oberspreewald-Lausitz, Elbe-Elster and Teltow-Fläming, and by the ci ...
,
Brandenburg
Brandenburg (; nds, Brannenborg; dsb, Bramborska ) is a state in the northeast of Germany bordering the states of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, Lower Saxony, Saxony-Anhalt, and Saxony, as well as the country of Poland. With an area of 29,480 squar ...
,
Germany, about south-southeast of
Berlin. Since 2004, the former
CargoLifter
Cargolifter AG was a German company founded in 1996 to offer logistical services through point-to point transport of heavy and outsized loads. This service was based on the development of a heavy lift airship, the CL160, a vessel designed to c ...
airship hangar
Airship hangars (also known as airship sheds) are large specialized buildings that are used for sheltering airships during construction, maintenance and storage. Rigid airships always needed to be based in airship hangars because weathering was a s ...
has been converted by a Malaysian company
Tanjong
Tanjong Public Limited Company is a Malaysian powere generation, entertainment, and real estate conglomerate. It was founded as Tanjong Tin Dredging Ltd on 2 January 1926 in England. The company subsequently changed its name to Tanjong PLC in 1 ...
into a leisure resort called
Tropical Islands Resort
Tropical Islands Resort is a tropical water park located in the former Brand-Briesen Airfield in Halbe, a municipality in the district of Dahme-Spreewald in Brandenburg, Germany, 50 kilometres (31 mi) from the southern boundary of Berlin. ...
.
History
The airfield was built by the
Luftwaffe
The ''Luftwaffe'' () was the aerial-warfare branch of the German '' Wehrmacht'' before and during World War II. Germany's military air arms during World War I, the ''Luftstreitkräfte'' of the Imperial Army and the '' Marine-Fliegera ...
during the expansion of the military by
Nazi Germany
Nazi Germany (lit. "National Socialist State"), ' (lit. "Nazi State") for short; also ' (lit. "National Socialist Germany") (officially known as the German Reich from 1933 until 1943, and the Greater German Reich from 1943 to 1945) was ...
, between 1938 and 1939. When opened it had a single runway.
[
The airfield was occupied by the ]Red Army
The Workers' and Peasants' Red Army ( Russian: Рабо́че-крестья́нская Кра́сная армия),) often shortened to the Red Army, was the army and air force of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic and, afte ...
in May 1945. From this point forward, several units of the Soviet Air Force
The Soviet Air Forces ( rus, Военно-воздушные силы, r=Voyenno-vozdushnyye sily, VVS; literally "Military Air Forces") were one of the air forces of the Soviet Union. The other was the Soviet Air Defence Forces. The Air Forces ...
were stationed here. After extending the runway to in the early 1950s, a emergency runway and dispersal area were also added.[
This allowed the base to house a fighter regiment, which was equipped with air superiority fighter aircraft, requiring the construction, in 1970, of 10 ]Hardened aircraft shelter
A hardened aircraft shelter (HAS) or protective aircraft shelter (PAS) is a reinforced hangar to house and protect military aircraft from enemy attack. Cost considerations and building practicalities limit their use to fighter size aircraft.
...
s (HAS), and in 1972 a second parallel main runway. In the late 1970s additional HAS's were added bringing their numbers to 24, with a nuclear alert bunker built in the early 1980s.
With the reunification of Germany from 1989/1990, the Soviet Army
uk, Радянська армія
, image = File:Communist star with golden border and red rims.svg
, alt =
, caption = Emblem of the Soviet Army
, start_date ...
agreed to return all military bases by the end of 1994. With the assistance of an airlift undertaken by Antonov An-22
The Antonov An-22 "Antei" (, ''An-22 Antej''; English ''Antaeus'') (NATO reporting name "Cock") is a heavy military transport aircraft designed by the Antonov Design Bureau in the Soviet Union. Powered by four turboprop engines each driving a pa ...
aircraft, the airfield was handed back to the Federal Government of Germany
The Federal Cabinet or Federal Government (german: link=no, Bundeskabinett or ') is the chief executive body of the Federal Republic of Germany. It consists of the Federal Chancellor and cabinet ministers. The fundamentals of the cabinet's org ...
in 1992.
CargoLifter
In 1996, the CargoLifter
Cargolifter AG was a German company founded in 1996 to offer logistical services through point-to point transport of heavy and outsized loads. This service was based on the development of a heavy lift airship, the CL160, a vessel designed to c ...
company was founded in Wiesbaden
Wiesbaden () is a city in central western Germany and the capital of the state of Hesse. , it had 290,955 inhabitants, plus approximately 21,000 United States citizens (mostly associated with the United States Army). The Wiesbaden urban area ...
, who intended to build airship
An airship or dirigible balloon is a type of aerostat or lighter-than-air aircraft that can navigate through the air under its own power. Aerostats gain their lift from a lifting gas that is less dense than the surrounding air.
In early ...
s. While the former north main runway was being demolished, CargoLifter began building the then-largest freebearing hall in the world in the centre of the site, where they intended to set up production of airships. The hall (360 m long, 220 m wide and 106 m high), was a freestanding steel-dome "barrel-bowl" construction, large enough to fit the Eiffel Tower
The Eiffel Tower ( ; french: links=yes, tour Eiffel ) is a wrought-iron lattice tower on the Champ de Mars in Paris, France. It is named after the engineer Gustave Eiffel, whose company designed and built the tower.
Locally nicknamed "' ...
on its side. The hangar was also equipped with a 180 m cutting table to manufacture the airship's envelope
An envelope is a common packaging item, usually made of thin, flat material. It is designed to contain a flat object, such as a letter or card.
Traditional envelopes are made from sheets of paper cut to one of three shapes: a rhombus, a sho ...
. Construction of the hall was complete in November 2000, at a cost of €78M.[
]
Tropical Islands Resort
CargoLifter managed to construct operational prototypes, but went bankrupt in mid-2002.
In June 2003, receivers sold the hall and 500 hectares of grounds to Malaysia
Malaysia ( ; ) is a country in Southeast Asia. The federal constitutional monarchy consists of thirteen states and three federal territories, separated by the South China Sea into two regions: Peninsular Malaysia and Borneo's East Malays ...
n company Tanjong
Tanjong Public Limited Company is a Malaysian powere generation, entertainment, and real estate conglomerate. It was founded as Tanjong Tin Dredging Ltd on 2 January 1926 in England. The company subsequently changed its name to Tanjong PLC in 1 ...
, who converted the hall into a leisure park called Tropical Islands Resort.[
]
References
*
External links
My Tropical Islands
{{authority control
World War II airfields in Germany
Military facilities of the Soviet Union in Germany
Airports in Brandenburg
Defunct airports in Germany
Buildings and structures in Dahme-Spreewald