Originally Posted by
Asturias56
wasn't that the place they thought was going to be the new Berlin Airport??
Lots of parking space from the looks of it
Yes, it would have made a good new Berlin airport, as it was a massive base, had a railway link and was not located in any major areas of population meaning that the flightpaths would not be anywhere near any major population areas. Also a reasonably good road link, that could have been improved easily. Instead the Germans chose to build on/extend the site of the old East Berlin airport at Schönefeld which might have been seen as the easier option but didn't go too well...
Getting back to the old Soviet bases in East Germany, I couldn't resist, back in the early 1990s, making a few trips out to the bases to take some photos [I really must get around to digitising my old 35mm slides] but to give you an idea of how everything had literally fallen apart in East Germany, this page gives an idea of what we were met with...
https://robdebie.home.xs4all.nl/vvs-ddr/airbases.htm
The base mentioned with the MiG-23 landing very low over the road had a Russian soldier in a control box manning a set of traffic control lights to stop cars when an aircraft was landing. Shortly after our arrival he came out waving his arms to say 'no photos' which he promptly forgot about after we gave him a six-pack of German lager and he happily went back to his box. It was only at the end of the day we noticed the lights weren't changing on landing that someone noticed he was fast asleep in the box surrounded by the empty beer cans
