Bückeburg Air Base

Geschichte

Bückeburg Air Base is located northeast of the city of Bückeburg, Lower Saxony, Germany.The airfield was built in 1946 as a RAF Station, RAF Bückeburg, serving the headquarters of the Royal Air Force Germany in Bad Eilsen. It complemented the nearby headquarters of the British Army of the Rhine in Bad Oeynhausen. During the Berlin Airlift it was one of the numerous air fields from where supply flights to Berlin were carried out. After the building of the British Forces' Joint Headquarters at Rheindahlen in 1954, the RAF closed the airfield at the end of the 1950s.With the foundation of the Bundeswehr in 1955, a decision was made that every branch of the Bundeswehr should have their own helicopter units, operating within the framework of the tasks designated to each branch of the armed forces. Thus, the German Army Aviation Corps was founded. The first training school, of this newly established branch of the German Army, the School of Army Aviation, was established in 1959 in Mendig but moved to its current location in Bückeburg in January 1960 and has been there ever since. Its first commanding office was Colonel Kuno Ebeling.