Gelsenkirchen-Buer

51°33'27"N 007°04'01"E

Airfield Gelsenkirchen-Buer (german: Flugplatz Gelsenkirchen-Buer, Fliegerhorst Gelsenkirchen-Buer, or Flugplatz Berger Feld) was an airfield near Gelsenkrichen in North Rhine Westphalia, Germany.
The airfield was built by the National Socialist (Nazi) government around 1934/1935 just south of the A2 Autobahn near the Gelsenkirchen-Buer exit. Initially a training wing was stationed at the airfield, but later on during the war operational units too. Between December 1939 and November 1940 up to 36 Messerschmitt Bf 110 C/D of II./ZG1 were stationed at the airfield, for instance. It never served a particular role however, as the airfields main function was a diversion/emergency airfield.
In the 1944/1945 timeframe interceptors of the Reichsverteidigung (Homeland defense) that were fighting Anglo-American bombers used the "Berger Feld" airfield. During the final stages of the war the airfield was the scene of a mass murder. 


Map of Gelsenkirchen-Bür, ca. 1934


Map of Gelsenkirchen-Bür, ca. 1945

After the war large portions of the airfield were converted for agricultural use. Its barracks were used by the British military, however. In the 1950s the former airfield was discussed as a NATO airfield, but these plans did not materialise. Slowly the terrain was taken over by nature, until football club Schalke04 began building the Park Stadium on the terrain in 1969.
In later years the football club (for US readers: Football is called 'soccer' in the US) expanded onto the rest of the former airfield. The expansion culminated in the current modern football arena, known as the Veltins Arena, training fields, a hotel and a sports medicine complex. Of the former airfield there is little left, only some of the former barracks which are used by the "German Federal Agency For Technical Relief" (THW). A memorial to the tragic mass murder of 1945 was set up at the Veltins Arena in 2009.


Entrance to the barracks of Gelsenkirchen-Buer, ca. 2008.


Aerial photo of Gelsenkirchen-Buer, ca. 2006 (Google Earth)