Luftwaffe Airfields 1935-45 Russia (Incl
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Luftwaffe Airfields 1935-45 Russia (incl. Ukraine, Belarus & Bessarabia) By Henry L. deZeng IV Kharkov-Rogan I Photo credit: U.S. National Archives, Photographic and Cartographic Division.; taken 14 Sept. 1941. Kharkov-Rogan I was built in 1930 for use as a military flight school. It had 8 medium and large aircraft hangars and 1 very large repair hangar, approx. 40 permanent barrack buildings, 3 workshops, admin buildings and storage structures, an oval athletic track and other facilities all grouped along the W boundary and SW corner of the landing area. There were about 10 additional structures along the S boundary that may have been for aircraft servicing and stores. Additionally, there were 22 blast bays for twin-engine and single-engine aircraft spaced along the W and S boundaries of the landing area. A separate supply dump with its own rail spur was approx. 1 km S of the airfield. Nearly all of these buildings had been destroyed or badly damaged by 1944, the majority of them blown up by the retreating Germans. Edition: February 2020 Airfields Russia (incl. Ukraine, Belarus & Bessarabia) Introduction Conventions 1. For the purpose of this reference work, “Russia” generally means the territory belonging to the country in September 1939, the month of the German attack on Poland and the generally accepted beginning of World War II, including that part of eastern Poland (i.e., Belarus, Belorussia, Weissruthenien) and western Ukraine annexed by the Soviet Union on 29 September 1939 following the USSR’s invasion of Poland on 17 September 1939. Bessarabia and Northern Bukovina were seized by the USSR between 26 June and 3 July 1940. Cross-references have been provided for airfield names except for a few that may have been missed. Thus, listings of the airfields at Baranowitschi, Biala Podlaska, Brest Litovsk, Dubno, Kolomea, Kowel, Lemberg (Lvov), Pinsk and many, many others will be found in both the monograph on Poland (as a cross-reference listing) in this series since they belonged to Poland on 1 September 1939, and this monograph since they were annexed to Russia on 29 September 1939 (as the main listing with details). 2. Another important justification for listing the Belorussian airfields under Russia is that of language. During the 1920’s and 1930’s, 53% of the people living in the annexed territory that was then referred to as “Eastern Poland” spoke Belorussian as their native language, 37.5% Russian and only 6% Polish. 3. All spellings are as they appear in wartime German documents and maps with the addition of alternate spellings where known. 4. A search within the monograph (Airfields – Russia) by right-clicking and then using the “Find” function or by using an alternative means of searching within a document should bring up alternate names. However, you may have to download the monograph first to your own computer. 5. See the General Introduction to the monograph series for matters concerning other conventions such as format, limitations of data, abbreviations, glossary, sources, etc. 6. If you are one of the 99.9% of researchers who might have cause to use this monograph and have never taken the time to memorize the thousands and thousands of German World War II military abbreviations and acronyms, a word of caution: you would be well-advised to print the Glossary in the General Introduction and keep it handy as you use these monographs. Additionally, a special glossary of Soviet Air Force (VVS) wartime abbreviations has been provided below since some of them appear in this monograph. 7. Attacks on Airfields: for the most part, only those airfield attacks that caused reportable damage are shown. Most other attacks were either not found or too insignificant to report. 8. Large Aerodromes: the Germans did not build from the ground up any large hub-type airfields with extensive hangars and workshops in Russia, but rather repaired and improved existing ones that had been built by the Russians. 9. Large Airfield Complexes: in those cases of cities with a large complex of airfields in and around them, it has not always been possible to distinguish the principal airfield from the satellites and dispersal fields. Accordingly, the largest airfield or the one with the most infrastructure has been automatically chosen. 10. Airfield Dimensions: it is not known whether the measurements given are the over all size of the airfield property or of just the landing area. The original German source material rarely states which. Preface The objective of the preface is to provide some basic background for this subject, which is German-built and German-occupied airfields in Russia, Ukraine, Belarus and Bessarabia from 22 June 1941 to 1944. Soviet Airfield Development and Construction 1939 - 1945 Development Citing postwar Soviet sources (1977), researcher, historian and author Von Hardesty of NASM/Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C., states that the entire Soviet Air Force (hereafter VVS) ground organization began a complete overhaul in 1940-41 not long after the Winter War with Finland concluded on 12 March 1940. Airfield regional commands (RAB) and airfield battalions (BAO) were created along with airfield construction units, aviation engineer units, workshop units and a host of other aviation servicing and support units and facilities. No definitive and reliable figures have been found for the total number of new airfields actually build, or existing airfields actually expanded, improved and modernized by 22 June 1941 because so many of them were still under construction, but the plan called for three for each aviation regiment (a permanent primary, an operational airstrip and a dispersal airstrip) and 250 are said to have been built in spring 1941 alone.1 Since the Von Hardesty book appeared many years ago, the Russian archives have opened up and droves of new documents have been located, including the directives and reports concerning the 1940-41 VVS reorganization and airfield construction. These are covered in immense detail in a 2018 English language book by Russian aviation author Mikhail Timin. The first directive for airfield construction was issued on 28 September 1940, followed by another on 17 December 1940, a third on 27 February 1941 and finally the last on 10 April 1941 which called for 797 new or redeveloped operational airfields (i.e., field airstrips) to be constructed by the end of 1941. The total number of VVS military airfields across the entire USSR by the end of 1941 was to be 275 permanent (mostly with concrete, macadam, or even dirt, sand and gravel runways that were rolled and hardened) and 1,543 operational for a total of 1,818 airfields. Hundreds of satellites, dispersal fields, landing grounds and emergency 1 Hardesty, Red Phoenix, p.57. landing grounds do not appear to be included in these figures. This massive construction project was to be carried out by 35,000 men in 5 engineer construction brigades equipped with 220 tractors, 560 vehicles and 920 rollers. Additionally, 25,000 men were reassigned from road building work to airfield construction, 100 airfield construction battalions of 1,000 men each were formed, and many thousands of locals were put to work.2 So, that was the plan. But the reality was different and by 22 June 1941, the date of the German invasion of Russia, the Soviet VVS is estimated to have had approximately 1,147 military airfields, which do not include undeveloped satellites and dispersal fields. Of those 1,147, only some 200 had concrete runways and the great majority of these were in the rear areas where they were mostly used by VVS long-range aviation (DBA). According to a statistical digest of the VVS, a further 2,219 airfields were constructed by the end of 1941. As noted above, VVS doctrine at the time called for one permanent airfield for each aviation regiment, but there were far too few in the western military districts that had mostly belonged to Poland and the Baltic countries prior to 17 September 1939. The Western Special Military District, for example, had just 62 airfields (16 of these with concrete runways) while the Baltic Special Military District had 23 and the Kiev and Odessa Military Districts together reportedly had 63. Many of these airfields were occupied by two and sometimes three VVS regiments with each regiment having three squadrons (36 aircraft) or 5 squadrons (60 aircraft). There is some dispute over these airfield numbers, at least the total. The eminent German military aviation historian Dr. Horst Boog had this to say in 1998: “Of the 2,000 airfields in the western Soviet Union [note: by June 1941 - author], just 200 were considered to be of use for bomber operations. In fact, over 250 had been extended, and 164 more main bases were constructed between 8 April and 15 July 1941.3 In addition to these lists of ever-changing and increasingly confusing numbers, there are separate lists of airfields constructed by the NKVD, the Soviet internal security bureaucracy. Soviet documents state that by June 1941 the NKVD’s department for airfield construction administered the construction of 254 airfields, including 61 in Belorussia, 82 in Ukraine, 8 in Moldavia, 23 in the Baltic States, 10 in the Murmansk and Karelia region, 19 in the Far East, 10 in Transcaucasus, 19 in the Leningrad district and 29 elsewhere. The work was done by c. 250,000 prison inmates, 50,000 people sentenced to hard labor and 16,000 prisoners of war. In addition, 2 Timin, Mikhail. Air Battles Over the Baltic 1941: The Air War on 22 June 1941 – The Battle for Stalin’s Baltic Region, pp.121-30. 3 Hooten, Steppes, pp.25-26; Radtke, Kampfgeschwader 54, p.70; Boog, Horst, PhD, from Wiki: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Axis and Soviet air operations during Operation_Barbarossa; Soviet Air Forces in Numbers, a statistical digest, extracts provided by “Art” on website thread https://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic.php?f=79&t=239117&p=2177042#p2177042.