Jagel-Owschlag

54°26'16"N 009°35'32"E

runway: 16/34 - 2000x..m - concrete

Jagel-Owschlag Highway strip (german: Autobahn-Behelfslandeplatz A7 Jagel-Owschlag or Autobahn Notlandeplatz I/1 Brekendorf) was a piece of highway (german: Autobahn) in the Autobahn A7, 340 kilometers northwest of Berlin.
Because NATO planners feared a Soviet surprise attack might render NATO airfields unusable, a number of preplanned emergency airstrips were constructed in Germany's extensive Autobahn network. At a glance they would appear to be normal stretches of Autobahn, but they were rapidly convertible into runways, capable of handling any NATO aircraft. Safety guiderails could be dismantled quikly and car rest stops were easily converted into aircraft platforms, one on the south side and one to the north. Also they were provided with prepositioned communications lines, fuel supply and electricity.
One of those emergency strips (the seventh) was located a few kilometers south of Flensburg. It was of a concrete construction like any German highway or runway, but it lacked one major thing found at airports: an antiskid surface. At 2000 meter in length, its runway was relatively short. The whole airfield was supported by nearby Jagel air base, today better known as Schleswig air base.
In July 1972 the emergency base was used for a German exercise which included Fiat G-91, Transall, H-34, UH-1D and Do-27.


Luftwaffe G91 'Ginas' operating at NLP I/1, 1972 (source)

With the Cold War over the German Government decided in the late 1990s that the NLPs were no longer necessary and ordered them to be converted to normal highways.NLP I/1 is still easily recognisable though: both aircraft parkings remained more or less in their original state until at least the summer of 2015.


Jagel-Owschlag in 2006 (Google Earth)


Jagel Owschlag photographed from the north with the village of Brekendorf top left in July 2017 (Magnus Emanuelsson)