Raid on Vaiņode airfield in 1941
The story of the German air raid on Vaiņode airfield in June 1941
It was June 1941, I was herding cows. Many planes appeared in the air above the airfield, with yellow wings. I drove the cows away. Something was falling out of the planes. I thought, like throwing candy at an aviation festival. I left the cows, ran to catch the candy. But the cargo parachutes did not look. After running 50m, I stopped. Explosions rumbled, the ground was flying through the air - there was only one such German air raid. They dropped aerial bombs on the airfield, then turned around and left over the Kalši swamp. The road from the airfield was too narrow for stone carriers, they were running away in different directions. Horses with half-carts - broken. The Russians were running here and there, retreating, running away, not blowing up anything. A day later, the "Polutarka" arrived with Russian soldiers and weapons. They drove to the dairy and left the car. They entered the garrison. Shots were heard, a clothing warehouse caught fire. The next day, a pillar of fire rose into the air above the ammunition warehouses near the cemetery. There were three such pillars of fire. The windows of our house were shattered and the shock wave threw them against the wall.
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Vaiņode air base
Vaiņode airfield still has 16 Soviet-era aircraft hangars and an 1800 m section of the once 2500 m long runway. The airfield can only be visited with a previous booking. Vaiņode airfield was established during the Latvian independence as one of the cradles of Latvian aviation and was later one of the largest military airfields in the Baltic States. In 1916, two hangars for German Army airships were built. Airships were used to gather intelligence and bomb the positions of the Russian Army. Later the city of Riga bought the airship hangars and used their roof structures to build the pavilions of the Riga Central Market. In May 1940, the 31st Fast Bomber Aviation Regiment of the Red Army moved to Vaiņode, and the construction of a standardized concrete slab runway began. At the end of the summer of 1944 the partially completed airfield was used by various German aviation units, however, at the end of World War II, the same airfield was used by the Red Army aviation units fighting the German Army group called ‘Kurzeme’. After World War II the Soviet Air Forces were stationed in Vaiņode until 1992.
