Remains: Rangsdorf



A friend in Germany sent me the following photos of a quick visit he made to Rangsdorf in Juli 2001. He reported the following:

"There is no sign of any current flying activity - in fact no runway at all, just a few overgrown hard standings (helicopter pads) in front of the control tower. However, there is information on the web that suggests it is being used by a local club. As far as I could determine the area now belongs to the local authority and is private property protected by the German security company Securitas. There are moves to revive it as an aircraft factory for Bücker aircraft which were built there at one time.

The gatehouse and parade ground (where the slogans were photographed) are accessible to the public. The roadway in the gatehouse photo is part of a public road/track and runs alongside the abandoned living quarters (which are now fenced off within a perimeter fence that rings the whole base). For the most part, the fence is quite modern, but gives way to the original (now very rusty) barbed wire fence on the side of the base near the railway tracks. Some of the buildings looked as though they had been, or were in the process of been, salvaged for useful materials.

The plaque was fixed to a building which was much nicer and better decorated than some of the other buildings - perhaps the Officer's Mess? I don't know what the plaque says, nor what the blue bars and seagull symbol mean. The large building behind the control tower contains the sports hall with the basketball court in surprisingly good condition. One of the hangars (closest to the railway line) had many old parts of cars in it - mainly interior panels and plastic parts - somebody told me that since the import of cars into Poland attracted high taxes, it was quite common for people to use sites like this (especially near railway transport) to strip cars down into pieces and then export them to Poland for reassembly (car parts have no import tax). It was at this point that I got caught by a security guard and asked to leave the site!"



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