Stavanger-Forus

Stavanger-Forus (CLOSED)

58°53'32"N 005°42'27"E

runway: 04/22 - 1800x..m - concrete
runway: 11/29 - 1200x..m - concrete
runway: 11/29 - 120m/394ft - concrete (helicopteres only)
runway: 14/32 - 1220x..m - concrete


Stavanger-Forus airfield (Norwegian: Stavanger lufthavn, Forus or Forus flyplass, also known as Forus Heliport) was an airfield 300km southwest of Oslo.
The airfield was built by the Luftwaffe from 1940 and opened in 1941.
They constructed the airfield close to Stavanger Sola airport, because they saw strategic advantages with two airports close to each other.
Both airports were connected by a 5 kilometer long taxitrack, called the Løwenstrasse (Lion Street).
Although most of the construction was completed by 1941, Forus was initially not used as an oparational airbase due to the challenging weather.
Instead, it was used mostly for test flights and maintenance.
Forus consisted of three concrete runways, the main oriented north-south and two smaller ones across this.
From 1944, Jagdgeschwader 5 (JG5) was stationed at Forus, flying Messerschmitt Bf109G and Focke-Wulf Fw190A.
In late April or early May 1945 a squadron of Arado Ar234 jet bombers moved to Forus from Germany.
They were still there when Nazi Germany surrendered.





German officers oversee construction of the new airfield ay Forus (kystfort.com).

 

After the liberation on 8 May 1945 the Royal Norwegian Air Force planned on only using Sola airfield until Forus was upgraded, but the latter never happened.
Instead it used the hangars at Forus for maintenance of F84 Thunderjets.
In the late 1960s the offshore oil platforms in the North Sea began needing helicopter support and Forus was chosen as a helicopter base.
Helikoper Service became the largest operator at Forus and in 1968 they rented a large hangar to house its two Sikorsky S-61N helicopers.
Helicopter operations were moved to Sola in 1989 when the new heliport was opened there and Forus was subsequently closed.






This March 1947 approach map of Sola depicted the airfield at Forus as still open.






Aerial photo of Forus in 1955, when the airfield was in use as a F-84 Thunderjet maintenance facility
(kystfort.com).






Map of Forus in 1955, when the airfield was in use as a F-84 Thunderjet maintenance facility
(kystfort.com).

 

Today, Forus is the largest industrial area in the region.
Nearly all traces of its runways and facilities were demolished to make room for buildings and infrastructure.
The Løwenstrasse to Sola was converted to a standard road in the mid-1970s.
Only a small portion still retains its original name.
Some small portions of the airfield were still visible in aerial photography of 2003, but they have since been built over.
A single maintenance hangar still existed in 2011 and was used by the Bilforum company.






Overview of Forus, presumably shot around the time the airfield and its heliport were closed
(kystfort.com).






The last remains of Forus began to be dug under in 2003 (Reimund Skjold, stp-norway.com).






from the air, severeal parts of the former airfield were still visible in 2003 (Google Earth).






By 2011 however, all of the airfield except a single hangar had disappeared (Google Earth).