Amarda Road Airstrip, also known as Rasgovindpur Airstrip is a former wartime airfield located near Rasgovindpur village in

Mayurbhanj district Mayurbhanj district is one of the 30 districts in Odisha state in eastern India. It is the largest district of Odisha by area. Its headquarters are at Baripada. Other major towns are Rairangpur, Karanjia and Udala. , it is the third-most-p ...

Odisha Odisha (English: , ), formerly Orissa ( the official name until 2011), is an Indian state located in Eastern India. It is the 8th largest state by area, and the 11th largest by population. The state has the third largest population of ...

India India, officially the Republic of India (Hindi: ), is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by area, the second-most populous country, and the most populous democracy in the world. Bounded by the Indian Ocean on the so ...

. It was used by the

Royal Indian Air Force The Royal Indian Air Force (RIAF) was the aerial force of British India and later the Dominion of India. Along with the Indian Army, and Royal Indian Navy, it was one of the Armed Forces of British Indian Empire. The Indian Air Force was offi ...

during

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 ...

History

The Amarda Road airstrip, as it was called in war terminology, spreads across an area of nearly 900 acres. Built in the 1940s at a cost of Rs 3 crore, it was eventually abandoned after the war. It was probably named as Amarda Road Airfield because of the nearby Amarda Road railway station. The airfield was used by

No. 136 Squadron RAF No. 136 Squadron RAF was a short-lived RAF unit that saw no action in World War I, but upon reformation became the highest scoring unit in South East Asia Command during World War II. Shortly after the war the squadron was disbanded. History Form ...

, No. 177 Squadron RAF and

No. 607 Squadron RAF No. 607 (County of Durham) Squadron is an auxiliary squadron of the Royal Air Force. It was formed in 1930 as a bomber unit in the Auxiliary Air Force and changed in 1936 to the fighter role. It fought in that role during the Second World War in ...

. The 'Air Fighting Training Unit', formed in February 1943, was also based here. As an airfield, Amarda Road fell on the supply route for the Nationalist Armies of China in their fight against the Japanese. Aircraft of the RAF and 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 ...

(USAAF) would regularly fly from this space to China via

Chabua Chabua (IPA: or ) is a town and a town area committee in Dibrugarh district in the state of Assam, India. Chabua is situated in between Dibrugarh town and Tinsukia town on NH-37 from both the district towns, respectively. Its name derives from ...

(Dibrugarh),

Jorhat Jorhat ( ) is one of the important cities and a growing urban centre in the state of Assam in India. Etymology Jorhat ("jor" means twin and "hat" means market) means two hats or mandis - "Masorhaat" and "Sowkihat" which existed on the opposite ...

and Vijaynagar across the infamous hump route over Arunachal and East Tibet. Amarda Road and other neighbouring airfields -

Dhalbhumgarh Dhalbhumargh is a village in the Dhalbhumgarh CD block in the Ghatshila subdivision of the East Singhbhum District in the Indian state of Jharkhand. History Dhalbhum was first written about when the British Army attacked the Dhalbhum and ...

, Dudhkundi,

Salua Salua is one of four small villages on Manono Island in Samoa. The village population is 136. The other villages on Manono island are Apai, Faleu and Lepuia'i. All the settlements on Manono Island fall within the political district of Aiga-i-le ...

, Digri, Salbani and

Chakulia Chakulia or Chakuliya is a Notified Area Council (NAC) an4thMunicipal Corporation in the Ghatshila subdivision of the East Singhbhum district in the state of Jharkhand, India.It is 71 km from Jamshedpur city, the district headquarter. Chakuli ...

- formed a web of airfields created by the Allies to stop the impending

Japanese Japanese may refer to: * Something from or related to Japan, an island country in East Asia * Japanese language, spoken mainly in Japan * Japanese people, the ethnic group that identifies with Japan through ancestry or culture ** Japanese diaspor ...

advance in the east. During the war, Amarda Road was, to put it simply, a battle hub. After the war was over, most airfields, including this one, fell into disuse. Today, only the

Kalaikunda Kalaikunda is a census town in the Kharagpur I CD block in the Kharagpur subdivision of the Paschim Medinipur district in the state of West Bengal, India. Geography Location Kalaikunda is located at . Area overview Kharagpur subdivision, s ...

airstrip, which was declared an Air Force Station in 1954, exists.

Present condition

Eight decades after the base was built, the concrete runway is still intact, though the buildings that once cluttered the edges are gone. There are proposals to renovate the airstrip for future operations under

UDAN ''Ude Desh ka Aam Naagrik'' ( Hindi for "Let the common citizens of the country fly"), known by its acronym ''UDAN'' ( Hindi for "flight") is a regional airport development program of the Government of India and part of the Regional Connect ...

scheme from 2022. As of November 2022, the

Government of India The Government of India (ISO: ; often abbreviated as GoI), known as the Union Government or Central Government but often simply as the Centre, is the national government of the Republic of India, a federal democracy located in South Asia, ...

and the Ministry of Defence have cleared for the airstrip to be developed as a commercial airport by acquiring a land area of 160 acres, and developing it at a cost of ₹ 25 crores.

Gallery

File:The wide and straight long main air strip.jpg, Airstrip File:The wide air strip.jpg, Airstrip File:WP 20141111 001.jpg, Concrete runway

References

{{authority control Amarda Amarda Amarda Amarda World War II sites in India 1940s establishments in India Mayurbhanj district