Peronne-St Quentin Airport 1.71

Peronne-St Quentin Airport is a regional airport in France, located 11mi west of Saint-Quentin; 121mi north of Paris. It supports general aviation with no commercial airline service scheduled.HistoryPeronne Airport was a pre-World War II civil airport, consisting of a terminal, hangar, some support buildings and a grass airfield, serving the nearby city of Saint-Quentin.German use during World War IIIt was seized by the Germans in June 1940 during the early part of the Battle of France, however the airport was not used by any Luftwaffe units for several years. Beginning in 1944, several Luftwaffe Anti-Aircraft units, Flak-Regiment 87 and Flak-Regiment 19 based their batteries of 8.8 cm (88mm) FlaK guns at the site.In addition, the Germans laid down two 1500m all-weather concrete runways at the airport, aligned 04/22 and 09/27. Presumably this was due to the fortification of the Pas-de-Calais, being believed by the Germans that when the Americans and British tried to land in France to open a Second Front, the airfield would have a key role in the defense of France.Beginning in mid-June 1944, Jagdgeschwader 5 (JG 5) was assigned to the airfield, with Messerschmitt Bf 109G day interceptor fighters. From Peronne, JG 5 began attacking the USAAF Eighth Air Force heavy bomber fleets attacking targets in Occupied Europe and Germany. Previously not attacked by Allied bombers, the airport came under frequent attack by Ninth Air Force B-26 Marauder medium bombers and P-47 Thunderbolts mostly with 500-pound General-Purpose bombs; unguided rockets and.50 caliber machine gun sweeps when Eighth Air Force heavy bombers (B-17s, B-24s) were within interception range of the Luftwaffe aircraft assigned to the base. The attacks were timed to have the maximum effect possible to keep the interceptors pinned down on the ground and be unable to attack the heavy bombers.