Malmsheim

48°46'59"N 008°55'01"E

Runway: 08/26 - 960x80meters/...x..feet - concrete (CLOSED)
Runway: 08/26 - 1000x..meters/...x..feet - grass
Runway: 08/26 - 1000x..meters/...x..feet - grass

Airfield Malmsheim (German: flugplatz Malmsheim, also known as Fliegerhorst Malmsheim) was an airfield 20 kilometers east of Stuttgart, Germany
It was built as a military airfield between November 1936 and 1937. The entire complex was camouflaged as a large farm, but did already have a very large and very wide concrete runway. A railway line connected the national railway grid to the Fliegerhorst. The railway facilitated the resupply of fuel, munitions and other suplies needed to run an airfield.
In 1940 the airfield was used by Bf110 and Ju88 during the invasion of France. In 1941 airfield operations were suspended, as its units were sent to the eastern front during the invasion of the Soviet Union. The Fliegerhorst was converted into a POW camp, and its inmates worked on the surrounding fields.
The base was not attacked by Allied bombers until 13 April 1944. A large number of Allied bombers attacked the airfield in broad daylight.
II./JG53 was stationed at the base in 1944 and 1945.
From the moment the Allied held a sizable foothold in France they began attacking anything that moved in southern Germany. On 26 December 1944 the airfield was attacked three times. Five German aircraft were shot down in the following air battles. On 1 Junuary 1945 they took part in Operation Bodenplatte, the final offensive of the Luftwaffe against the Western Allies.


Unfortunately no images of the airfield before 1950 were found

The US Army liberated the airfield in 1945 and only briefly used its facilities. From January 1946 the airfield was used to house 'Heimatvertriebene', refugees from German territories ceeded to Poland, Czechoslovakia and the Soviet Union after the war. The first transport brought 1500 people by rail, out of a expected total of 11,000. Most of them came from the Czechoslovakian Sudetenland. In 1949 the camp got a new role, this time as a camp for returning German POWs and displaced persons. 
The terrain was returned to a military role in 1951, when the US forces returned. When the Bundeswehr (Federal German Defence Forces) was formed in 1955 the took control of it. They did not achieve the planned stationing of the Heeresflieger (army aviation). The planned use as a large civilian airport also did not come. It remained millitary property though, and served as a reserve airfield.


A building at the airfield camouflaged to look like a farm building, photographed in 2010 (Wikipedia)

Glider fliers have had a lease on parts of the terrain from the mid-1950s. The concrete runway was used to test hang gliders, mounted on a car, in 1980-1981. A human powered aircraft, Vélair88, was test flown at the airfield in 1989.
Since 1998 a SAR unit of the Bundeswehr (SAR-Kommando 46) is stationed at the north side of the airfield. A ZeppelinNT aircraft used the airfield in 2002 for advertising flights over Stuttgart in 2002. Other facilities on the north side served the Bundeswehr until 2009.
The airfield itself was used by the (German) Kommando Spezialkräfte and (U.S.) Special Operations Command Europe for parachute training. The concrete runway is left by the Bundeswehr to Daimler and other car manufacturers as a vehicle test ground. Additionally here are two parallel grass runways used by different glider clubs.
Although parts of the railway line still exist, most if it was demolished or built over during the 1990s. Its trajectory is still visible though, both from aerial photography and on the ground. Most of the Bundeswehr installations on the north side of the airfield was demolished in the winter of 2011.


A Ford Taunus with a contraption mounted on top to test some of the first hang gliders on the runway of Malmsheim, ca 1980 (Prof. Michael Schönherr, at m-schoenherr.de).


Vélair 88 during a flight in Malmsheim in 1989 (skytec-engineering.de).




Malmsheim in 2000 (Google Earth)


From September 19th to October 2nd, 2002 the Zeppelin NT was stationed at the airfield in Malmsheim. From there the airship was conducting passenger and advertising flights to the Cannstatter Wasenin Stuttgart where the Volksfest (comparable to the Oktoberfest) was going on at that time (modern-airships.info).


Members of the Special Operations Command Europe jump from the ramp of an MC-130 at Malmsheim, Dec. 9 2009 (U.S. Army Photo by Staff Sgt. Isaac A. Graham)



Malmsheim in 2008 (Google Earth)