Seddin

54°30'32"N 017°06'52"E

flying field: n/a - ....meters/...feet - grass

Marine Luftschiffhafen Seddin/Stolp was a naval airship port 360 kilometers northwest of Warsaw.
It was built in 1915 by the German military in what was then German Pomerania (Pommern).
The Luftschiffhafen was constructed for 10 million Marks.
It consisted of a large and a small airship hangar, an aircraft hangar, a hydrogen plant and all airfield associated buildings.
The first airship (L5) flew in on 8 June 1915.
As a result of the Versailles Treaty the airfield should have been torn down.
In the end only two airships and a hangar were to be transferred to the Entente powers.
Reasoning was that the airship would play a vital role in the civilian airline market in the postwar era, and Stolp was strategically located on the routes to the east (Danzig, Königsberg and further).





The aircraft hangars in Seddin. After World War I one was taken down and rebuilt in Italy (theaerodrome.com).


The hangar was awarded to Italy as a war reparation, preenting it from destruction by the head of the Aeorspace Monitoring Commission, Umberto Nobile.
In 1928 the Italian airship "Italia" landed in Stolp on its unfortunate expedition to the North Pole.
Piloted by General Umberto Nobile (yes, the same one) it stayed at the airfield for repairs and left 17 days later.
The airship hangar was used into World War II for the production of barrage balloons.
After the war it was converted into a grain warehouse.
In the late 1980s it was privatised and used for storage of chemicals and cosmetics.
On 6 September 1989 welding work caused a fire that could not be supressed.
Two firefighters were lost, along with the last remaining German airship hangar.




The location of the former airship station. The location of the two hangars is still clearly visible (Google Earth).