Brand-Briesen Airfield

Brand-Briesen Airfield is a redeveloped military air base located at Briesen/Brand, part of Halbe in Dahme-Spreewald, Brandenburg, Germany, about 60km south-southeast of Berlin. Since 2004, the former CargoLifter airship hangar has been converted by a Malaysian company Tanjong into a leisure resort called My Tropical Island.HistoryThe airfield was built by the Luftwaffe during the expansion of the military by Nazi Germany, between 1938 and 1939. When opened it had a single runway.The airfield was over-run by the Red Army in May 1945, who occupied the site. From this point forward, several units of the Soviet Air Force were stationed here. After extending the runway to in the early 1950s, a emergency runway and dispersal area were also added.This allowed the base to house a fighter regiment, which was equipped with air superiority fighter aircraft, requiring the construction, in 1970, of 10 Hardened aircraft shelters (HAS), and in 1972 a second parallel main runway. In the late 1970s additional HAS's were added bringing their numbers to 24, with a nuclear alert bunker built in the early 1980s.