Lasnamäe Airfield

59.4524.863333333333Koordinaten: 59 ° 27 '0 "N, 24 ° 51' 48" E

The airfield Lasnamäe (Estonian Lasnamäe lennuväli ) was the first airport in the Estonian capital of Tallinn ( Reval German ). He was taken in 1922 in operation.

After the official opening of the airport Tallinn Ülemiste in September 1936, he was abandoned as a civilian airport and in use until the 1970s only for military purposes.

History

The first airfield on the present territory of Estonia was taken shortly before the outbreak of the First World War. He was in the Livonian Raadi, which is now a suburb of South-Estonian town of Tartu ( Dorpat ).

With the founding of the Republic of Estonia in 1918 the capital Tallinn as the undisputed political and economic center of the new state was. In March 1921, the first airline in the country was established in Tallinn with the corporation Aeronaut.

Aeronaut was in 1921 a large reinforced concrete hangar at the Tallinn district Lasnamäe ( Laaksberg ) build. The district is situated on a limestone Klint near the Baltic coast. The airfield was about 5 kilometers east of the city center at an altitude of 43 m above sea level.

Tallinn Lasnamäe was in the 1920s the most important civil and military airfield of the young state. The start and runway concrete was 2500 meters long. Regular flights led from here to Helsinki, Tartu and Riga.

The airfield was equipped with the simplest means. There was no radio link still air traffic control. The meteorological service was still in its infancy. This resulted in numerous accidents.

Between 1932 and 1936, a modern commercial airport in the district Ülemiste was created, the current airport Tallinn Lennart Meri. In the late 1930s Tallinn Lasnamäe was modernized as a military airfield by the Estonian Air Force and expanded.

1940, the Red Army occupied Estonia. From 1941 to 1944, the airfield of the occupying German forces was used. The second Soviet occupation of Estonia in 1944, the airfield was again transferred to the ownership of the Soviet Air Force. She used the airfield as a training site for skydivers and helicopters.

Between 1976 and 1991, a huge housing estate was built in Soviet-style Lasnamäe. By creating new living spaces the settlement of Russian-speaking residents should be forced from other parts of the Soviet Union. As part of the urban planning of the airfield was built over with houses and roads. Today, no more remains are found.