Historic airfield ressource

[Volker Böhme]

Hi all,

here's a link to a list of international airfields of 1931: http://www.pennula.de/airport/index.htm

Mostly European airfields, none in North America, but also some in Africa, Asia, Australia and South America. Quite a few maps - or rather simple sketches, but better than a mere list anyway.

More on the site's index, partiularly a list of all German and Polish commercial airfields (in German and Polish, respectively) and some maps: http://www.pennula.de/luftfahrtgeschichte/index.htm

Best regards,
Volker

[AndyG43]

Looks like a fascinating resource, bookmarked for future study, thank you.

[leuen]

Thanks Volker - very interesting, indeed. And very useful with FSGW3.

Bernard

[Cees Donker]

Great find! Thanks for the HU!

Cees

[JimmyRFR]

This is an amazing resource; I've been looking for something like this to re-create airfields for FSX. Thanks so much for sharing the link!

[Volker Böhme]

Hi all,

just for the fun of it, I went though FsAviators list of Z.506 seaplane bases and added them to the thread, if they were available in the directory.

By the way, does anyone know a similar resource for French or British airfields (or anywhere else)?

Best regards,
Volker

[zmike]

Hi Volker,


Excellent find. Thanks for adding the new data to the Airone thread.

<<By the way, does anyone know a similar resource for French or British airfields (or anywhere else)?>>

Copyright issues apply. In most cases the legislation in question is that of the country of first publication, and in this time frame many more 'countries of first publication' were under British jurisdiction. For equivalent 'British documents', whose origin was not governmental, copyright normally persists until 70 years after the death of the author or cartographer. Consequently most entire aviation publications from 1931, (or even post 1918), are still 'copyright'.

Consequently only 'extracts' from such original works turn up on the internet and are either out of copyright, or where they came from is hidden and thus undetected by the copyright holder. This means that for anyone seeking comprehensive documentation of British licensed aerodromes, allowing only internal air travel, or airports (having customs but no immigration service) allowing only British subjects to undertake international air travel, else rarer international airports (with both) allowing anyone of any nationality to come and go, the only source is the original hard copy document, and most British reference libraries have long since sold their copies off to private collectors.

Other than the year by year manuals aimed at pilots, which were always produced in very limited volume, and then often discarded when the new one came out, equivalent information (for the whole world) for the inter war years was published in the British annual 'Janes All The World's Aircraft', sometimes illustrated with the same diagrams as the rarer manuals for pilot use, sourced by Janes, from the same cartographer, or from the publisher of the professional manual.

The German equivalent aviation annual is the smaller format 'Taschenbuch der Luftflotten' and it is a key flight dynamics author resource for this time frame. It listed more 'licensed military, naval and civil aerodromes' than Janes, but did not give dimensions or diagrams. I believe only Britain and Germany published aviation annuals with world wide coverage between the wars.

FS developers needing specific information should ask in several relevant forums, since someone may have the data and may be willing to share it, if the content to be shared is limited, and will not be republished in its original form.

I suppose most entire non governmental publications from WW1 or later, first published outside British jurisdiction, also still contain copyright material under 'similar' national laws, which means that we must often search the internet for 'limited extracts' of specific local content that are lawfully hosted or escape detection of original source, by not naming that source.

More usefully there were of course many weekly aviation magazines from that time frame, some of which are still in publication. and which over the years obtained the rights to the content from other magazines that no longer exist. Some make most of their copyright material available for free viewing via the web. For the relevant time frame the best such resource is;

http://www.flightglobal.com/pdfarchive/

Try typing Le Bourget into the search box and limiting the date to 1931 - 1931 for instance. The problem is the wealth of interesting material that is then made available that has to be studied because these are just magazine pages which do not respond to a search for 'Le Bourget aerodrome diagram', unless those exact *words* exist on the page. You will get 100 pdf magazine articles about Le Bourget in 1931 to wade through because the Flight International pdf search engine allows us to see 'only' the 100 most relevant hits containing the matched words Le Bourget, from all the aviation periodicals that publisher now owns the copyright to for that year !

The 'article' may span more than one page, so make sure you look over the page having clicked the first (mini) page cited as a 'large icon'. Diagrams may be on the second (or third) page. Nobody cared about page layout in those days.

The inter war information you crave from Britain and France, and other places British aviators cared much about, may be available in that single huge aviation history archive 'somewhere', because back then aviation periodicals were much more aimed at aircrew. There is a wealth of wireless navigation material for instance, but the terms the relevant search engine will recognise to limit a search are 'hit and miss'.

Now try 'Torre del Lago' and 1909 - 1940 (the Regia Aeronautica hydroplane base near Pisa) and again we are limited to the first 100 aviation magazine article hits.

Given how much (old) aviation magazines cost these days, It is remarkable that this copyright commercial media library resource is free to view. However everybody must remember it is not free to (re)distribute. Abuse may cause such archives to disappear from the web.

FSAviator.

[ian elliot]

Ive found these guys to be very useful, you have to register to view the info but its a great resource----

http://www.airfieldinformationexchan...nity/forum.php

cheers ian

[Volker Böhme]

Hi,

thanks for the replies. Flightglobal is indeed a valuable resource for historic aviation information, Bill used it a lot during the Constellation project.

Here's a resource for British airfields that I found useful. I could identify some airfields that are built over by now, like Doncaster or Stoke-on-Trent: http://www.abct.org.uk/find-an-airfield/
Thanks to Ralf Roggeveen for pointing it out to me.

I pointed it out already, but 'Forgotten Airfields' may have useful information as well: http://www.forgottenairfields.com/

Copyrights may be an issue, but if no author is given, copyright may be limited to 70 years after publication. Official publications may be public domain anyway. Therefore, you can look at plans and aerial views of every single commercial German airfield as of 1928: http://www.pennula.de/spezialthema-flughandbuch-fuer-das-deutsche-reich.htm

The text is in German and resolution isn't particularly high, but it's a complete set. Here's a map with the airfields involved:


Here's an excerpt of an 1917 list: http://www.pennula.de/spezialthema-f...rthandbuch.htm
and 1926: http://www.pennula.de/spezialthema-g...kehrsatlas.htm

While we're at it, we can go back to 1914 here: http://www.luftfahrt-bibliothek.de/d...n-flugfeld.pdf
The author is given here, and the internet tells us he was born in 1891, but a date of death is not easily available. But it is probably not too much of a speculation if we assume that copyright has most likely expired here.

Here's a 1939 aviation map of Germany. Note how the borders have changed since 1937 and the 'no-fly-zones', particularly facing the French and Swiss border. Note also the night flying beacons still in place, while a Radio Range system was available for Lufthansa as well. http://www.pennula.de/spezialthema-o...fahrtkarte.htm

Click on a segment to enlarge or load all on a single screen here: http://www.pennula.de/olex-flieger-n...e-komplett.htm

And from another site, a list of all civilian airfields as of June 1939: http://www.andreaszapf.de/blog-fdl-m...-Juni-1939.pdf

Change of places: Here's a Polish register of airfields as well: http://www.pennula.de/spezialthema-a...buch-polen.htm

Best regards,
Volker

[Volker Böhme]

Hi,

a bit more that I'd like to share:

France happens to consider its 'Bulletin de la navigation aérienne' part of its national heritage and the whole set from 1920 to 1939 is available online: http://www.developpement-durable.gou...avigation.html
My French is not much to shout about, but it's still easy to find some treasures here. Note that French air traffic included the colonies as well: Northern and Western Africa, Madagascar, Indochina... Also covered are other (mostly European) countries to varying degrees as well, for example countries en route to the colonies. Iraq? Just look up 1936, p. 227. It is at least partially searchable and a separate index is available as well.

The German equivalent, NfL is available for 1920, 1921 and 1927 here: http://www.luftfahrt-bibliothek.de/katalog.htm#8
The 1927 edition has all emergency landing fields listed in vol. 20 and all airports and commercial airfields in vol. 34.

Seems like the question about French sources has been solved.

Best regards,
Volker

[Volker Böhme]

Hi all,

I ran into something stunning the other day, a list of Luftwaffe airfields for several European countries. Seems like the project ist stillunder construction, but as of now, it lists som 2,500 airfields on 1,500 pages: http://www.ww2.dk/lwairfields.html

Two more french links:
An atlas of airfields 1917-1947: http://atlas.aviation-civile.gouv.fr/
Bordeaux airport in the Age of the propeller 1910-1960: http://patrimoine-memoire.aviation-c...ces-1910-1960/

Best regards,
Volker

[leuen]

Bordeaux airport in the Age of the propeller 1910-1960: http://patrimoine-memoire.aviation-c...ces-1910-1960/

This is particularly interesting and was a great help for the upcoming "1961 Bordeaux Mérignac" scenery for CalClassic.

Bernard