CONCEALED AERODROMES

Taranaki Daily News, 22 May 1934, Page 7

CONCEALED AERODROMES

JOURNALIST’S ALLEGATIONS PLANES READY TO ASSEMBLE GERMANY’S PREPARATION DETAIL OF SECRET ACTIVITY By Telegraph—Press Assn. —Copyright. London, May 20. The Daily Express publishes an air mail article dispatched by Mr. Pembroke Stephens from Germany just prior to his arrest, in which he described the largest aerodrome in Germany and probably in Europe, situated at Celle, a few miles from the 'civil aerodrome at Hanover. “There is, therefore, no commercial justification for the new airport, which is designed purely for military purposes,” Mr. Stephens states. “It is surrounded by woods and is invisible from the road or rail. Not even Storm Troopers are admitted. ‘ Three huge hangars have been completed and workmen are busy constructing baracks for the pilots and mechanics. Excavations have been made for subterranean bomb-proof shelters for both planes and personnel. There are huge petrol containers, painted and camouflaged grey-green, and mounted on mechanised waggons.

“Germany has now no visible air fleet, but it really exists throughout Germany, engines in one factory, wings in another, and bodies elsewhere, all awaiting either the Powers’ authority or a breakdown of the Disarmament Conference for immediate assembly. Quantities of American and British engines are being imported.” Newspapers report the existence of underground aeroplane hangars in a forest at Griefswalde, Pomerania, with accommodation for 60 bombing machines, says the Daily Mail’s Strasbourg correspondent