is a military aerodrome of the

Japan Ground Self-Defense Force The Japan Ground Self-Defense Force ( ja, 陸上自衛隊, Rikujō Jieitai), , also referred to as the Japanese Army, is the land warfare branch of the Japan Self-Defense Forces. Created on July 1, 1954, it is the largest of the three service b ...

, south of Tsuchiura in

Ibaraki Prefecture is a prefecture of Japan located in the Kantō region of Honshu. Ibaraki Prefecture has a population of 2,871,199 (1 June 2019) and has a geographic area of . Ibaraki Prefecture borders Fukushima Prefecture to the north, Tochigi Prefecture ...

Japan Japan ( ja, 日本, or , and formally , ''Nihonkoku'') is an island country in East Asia. It is situated in the northwest Pacific Ocean, and is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan, while extending from the Sea of Okhotsk in the n ...

History

The base was established in 1921 as the

Imperial Japanese Navy The Imperial Japanese Navy (IJN; Kyūjitai: Shinjitai: ' 'Navy of the Greater Japanese Empire', or ''Nippon Kaigun'', 'Japanese Navy') was the navy of the Empire of Japan from 1868 to 1945, when it was dissolved following Japan's surrender ...

Aeronautical Technology and Training Center (海軍航空技術講習所). After the First World War Japan, which had fought with the allies, received the German

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 ...

from

Jüterbog Jüterbog () is a historic town in north-eastern Germany, in the Teltow-Fläming district of Brandenburg. It is on the Nuthe river at the northern slope of the Fläming hill range, about southwest of Berlin. History The Slavic settlement of ' ...

airbase as part of its war reparations, and the hangar was installed at Kasumigaura air base. On 19 August 1929, the airship

LZ 127 Graf Zeppelin LZ 127 ''Graf Zeppelin'' () was a German passenger-carrying, hydrogen-filled rigid airship that flew from 1928 to 1937. It offered the first commercial transatlantic passenger flight service. Named after the German airship pioneer Ferdin ...

stopped at Kasumigaura for several days while on its round-the-world trip. The Zeppelin visit made Tsuchiura famous throughout Japan for its potato-based

curry A curry is a dish with a sauce seasoned with spices, mainly associated with South Asian cuisine. In southern India, leaves from the curry tree may be included. There are many varieties of curry. The choice of spices for each dish in trad ...

LZ 127 Graf Zeppelin arriving in Kasumi-ga-Ura

The IJN ordered an

Astra-Torres airship The Astra-Torres airships were non-rigid airships built by Société Astra in France between about 1908 and 1922 to a design by the Spaniard Leonardo Torres Quevedo. They had a highly-characteristic tri-lobed cross-section rather than the more usu ...

from France in 1922 and stationed it at Kasumigaura from 1923, alongside a Japanese-built Vickers SS-3; both of these airships left service around 1924. Kasumigaura later hosted three Fujikura airships and one Nobile airship between 1927 and 1932, at which point the Navy ceased airship operations and dismantled its fleet. The U.S. military took over the base in 1945 and handed it over to the Japanese defense ministry in 1953. Since then it has been used as a supply depot and as a training base for helicopter pilots and mechanics, with approximately 2,000 personnel stationed on base.

References

Airports in Japan Transport in Ibaraki Prefecture Japan Ground Self-Defense Force bases Buildings and structures in Ibaraki Prefecture Ami, Ibaraki {{Ibaraki-geo-stub