Reims Bezannes

49°12'54"N 004°00'37"E

Runway: 16/34 - ...m - grass
Runway: 04/22 - ...m - grass

Reims Bézannes airfield (French: Aérodrome sanitaire de Reims - Bézannes) was an airfield 125 kilometer east-northeast of Paris.
In the early 1930s, a Reims doctor had acquired 20 hectares of land with the purpose of starting an airfield southwest of Bézannes. Upon receiving the plans, the Aéro-club de Champagne told him they preferred to use Courzy Air Base instead. Having failed to find a tennant, the airfield then opened in October 1935 as a "medical airfield" for the nearby hospital of Reims.
When the international situation began to deteriorate, the presence of  the Aéro-club de Champagne at a millitary airbase became less desirable and as a result in 1936, the city of Reims started a project to build an city airfield of 60 hecateres, which was to include the airfield of the flying doctor. This project failed however, but as the military still wanted exclusive use of their airfield, the Aéro-club had no alternative but to go to ask hospitality of the owner of Bezannes. 
It did not last long, however. In September 1939,  the French army requisitioned the airfield. During their 'withdrawal' in 1940, they dug trenches across the airfield, rendering it unusable. Appearantly, the Germans found the airfield of no interest, because they only used the hangars to park their trucks. The requisitioning was lifted in 1941 and the airfield fell back to its former role of agriculture.

After negotiations with the French Ministry of War, who used the airfield briefly as an exercise ground, the airfield reopened in 1946. It was to serve as an airfield with two grass runways only until October 1952. The site was then sold and converted into a university campus with a horse race track.  


Bezannes airfield in 1957, several years after the airfield was supposedly closed. There are still two aircraft visible though (geoportail.fr).


The location of Reims-Bézannes airfield in 2004 (Google Earth).