Validation date: 27 11 2015
Updated on: Never
Views: 2837
See on the interactive map:
49°22'00"N 009°26'12"E
Runway: 05/23 - 1500x...meters - concrete (CLOSED)
The Sprendlingen Highway Strip (german: Notlandebahn NLB IV/2 Sprendlingen, also known as the A-61 Sprendlingen Highway Strip) was a wartime emergency airstrip 480 kilometer southwest of Berlin.
Such strips had already been in use as early as World War II, Ramstein Air Base for instance was built on a strip like this. During the Cold War, German highways were especially redesigned for wartime functions like this.
Notlandeplatz Sprendlingen used a portion of Autobahn A61 between the intersections Bingen and Gau-Bickelheim. It was specifically assigned to USAFE (specifically: nearby Wiesbaden AB), and was designed for 1500m with two 200m overruns, making 1900m runway in total.
Schematic drawing of an Highway strip
Fortunately these airstrips were never used in anger, and as far as my research shows this one was never used for exercices either.
The federal German government abandoned the use of these airstrips after the unification of the two Germanies. This one saw a partial rebuild to a normal stretch of highway between 2010 and 2015.
The Sprendlingen strip around the turn of the century, clearly showing the layout of a typical NLB (Google Earth)
By 2010, not much had changed, even though the German Federal State had abandoned the practice of highway strips by then (Google Earth)
By 2015, the southern aircraft parking had seen a complete transformation (Google Earth)
Sprendlingen Highway Strip 
Sprendlingen Highway Strip