Persan-Beaumont Airport (french: Aérodrome de Persan - Beaumont, ) is a regional airport in the

Val-d'Oise Val-d'Oise (, "Vale of the Oise") is a department in the Île-de-France region, Northern France. It was created in 1968 following the split of the Seine-et-Oise department. In 2019, Val-d'Oise had a population of 1,249,674.

department in

Île-de-France The Île-de-France (, ; literally "Isle of France") is the most populous of the eighteen regions of France. Centred on the capital Paris, it is located in the north-central part of the country and often called the ''Région parisienne'' (; en, Pa ...

in northern

France France (), officially the French Republic ( ), is a country primarily located in Western Europe. It also comprises of overseas regions and territories in the Americas and the Atlantic, Pacific and Indian Oceans. Its metropolitan area ...

. It is located northeast of

Beaumont-sur-Oise Beaumont-sur-Oise (, literally ''Beaumont on Oise'') is a commune in the Val-d'Oise department in Île-de-France in northern France. The classical cellist Jean-Henri Levasseur (1764–1823) was born in Beaumont-sur-Oise. Population Notable p ...

east-northeast The points of the compass are a set of horizontal, radially arrayed compass directions (or azimuths) used in navigation and cartography. A compass rose is primarily composed of four cardinal directions—north, east, south, and west—each se ...

of Persan, and north of

Paris Paris () is the Capital city, capital and List of communes in France with over 20,000 inhabitants, most populous city of France, with an estimated population of 2,165,423 residents in 2019 in an area of more than 105 km² (41 sq mi), ma ...

. The airport supports

general aviation General aviation (GA) is defined by the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) as all civil aviation aircraft operations with the exception of commercial air transport or aerial work, which is defined as specialized aviation services ...

with no commercial airline service scheduled.

History

Beaumont Sur Oise was a pre-

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposing ...

French Air Force airfield with a concrete runway (05/23). The airfield was seized by the Germans in June 1940 during the Battle of France. It was used 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-Fliegerabtei ...

only sparingly, with Luftlandegeschwader 1 (LLG 1), a glider unit being assigned to the airfield between April and May 1943, equipped with

Henschel Hs 126 The Henschel Hs 126 was a German two-seat reconnaissance and observation aircraft of World War II that was derived from the Henschel Hs 122. The pilot was seated in a protected cockpit under the parasol wing and the gunner in an open rear cockp ...

liaison aircraft;

Dornier Do 17 The Dornier Do 17 is a twin-engined light bomber produced by Dornier Flugzeugwerke for the German Luftwaffe during World War II. Designed in the early 1930s as a '' Schnellbomber'' ("fast bomber") intended to be fast enough to outrun opposing a ...

s to pull the units

DFS 230 The DFS 230 was a German transport glider operated by the Luftwaffe in World War II. It was developed in 1933 by the Deutsche Forschungsanstalt für Segelflug (DFS - "German Research Institute for Sailplane Flight") with Hans Jacobs as the he ...

transport gliders. Later, in November and December 1943, Schlachtgeschwader 4 (SLG 4) operated Focke-Wulf Fw 190F/Gs as a ground-attack unit.The Luftwaffe, 1933-45
/ref> Beaumont was attacked on several missions by the

United States Army Air Forces The United States Army Air Forces (USAAF or AAF) was the major land-based aerial warfare service component of the United States Army and ''de facto'' aerial warfare service branch of the United States during and immediately after World War II ...

Eighth Air Force and IX Bomber Command groups during 1943 and 1944. The airfield was liberated by Allied ground forces about 3 September 1944 during the Northern France Campaign. Almost immediately, the

IX Engineering Command 818th Engineer Aviation Battalion cleared the airport of mines and destroyed Luftwaffe aircraft. Fortunately, little battle damage was sustained, and the airport became a USAAF

Ninth Air Force The Ninth Air Force (Air Forces Central) is a Numbered Air Force of the United States Air Force headquartered at Shaw Air Force Base, South Carolina. It is the Air Force Service Component of United States Central Command (USCENTCOM), a joint De ...

combat airfield, designated as "A-60" about 26 September. Under American control, the

assigned the

386th Bombardment Group 386th may refer to: *386th Air Expeditionary Wing, provisional United States Air Force unit assigned to United States Air Forces Central *386th Fighter Squadron or 174th Air Refueling Squadron, unit of the Iowa Air National Guard 185th Air Refuelin ...

to the airport which flew B-26 Marauder medium bombers from the facility between 2 October 1944 and 9 April 1945. The 386th was replaced by the 410th Bombardment Group, an A-26 Invader group, which operated from the airport until June 1945. The Americans returned full control of the airport to French authorities on 17 July 1945.

Current

After the war, the airport appears to have been torn down, and a new facility constructed about 200m to the southeast. The wartime concrete runway remains in a field complete with many patches of bomb craters, connected to what appears to be the prewar French air base. At least one large hangar is still standing, and numerous support buildings. In addition, old taxiways reduced in width are being used as farm access roads.

Facilities

The airport resides at an

elevation The elevation of a geographic location is its height above or below a fixed reference point, most commonly a reference geoid, a mathematical model of the Earth's sea level as an equipotential gravitational surface (see Geodetic datum § Ver ...

of above

mean sea level There are several kinds of mean in mathematics, especially in statistics. Each mean serves to summarize a given group of data, often to better understand the overall value (magnitude and sign) of a given data set. For a data set, the '' ari ...

. It has three runways: 10L/28R is paved and measures , 10R/28L is a parallel

grass Poaceae () or Gramineae () is a large and nearly ubiquitous family of monocotyledonous flowering plants commonly known as grasses. It includes the cereal grasses, bamboos and the grasses of natural grassland and species cultivated in lawns a ...

runway measuring , and 05/23 has a grass surface measuring .

References

External links

* * {{authority control Airports in Île-de-France World War II airfields in France Airfields of the United States Army Air Forces in France

History

Current

Facilities

See also

References

External links