The "Gilze-Rijen" scenery attempt to be approximated to the reality showing the airport like it (may) have looked like in WWII days, under Luftwaffe occupation. Shows the wartime airfield layer took from the real maps and actual "air" photos from the WWII time period.
Gilze-Rijen Air Base is a military airbase in the Netherlands located between the cities of Breda and Tilburg, in the Noord-Brabant province.
The airbase, early called Molenheide, was made in 1909 near Molenschot. Between Gilze and Rijen. On the August 18th 1910 it was official ready to be used. In 1913 the airbase Molenheide was to be take over by the LVA (Luchtvaartafdeling). Serveral pilots got their first brevet in the early years on this airbase.
In time there was a need for an civilian airbase as wel. So just before the second world war started the ground west of the airbase Molenheide was suitable to make a second airbase, called Nerhoven.
When the Germans invade in 1940 this airbase was still under construction.
On the 10th of May 1940 the Germans invade the Netherlands, one of their main goals was to take out the Dutch airforce.
On Molenheide and Nerhoven the 4th recconsquad of the LVA was located, with some Fokker 51 and C-V airplanes positioned in the bushes around the landingfields. For the protection of the airfields the 2nd and 5th compagnies of the armedforces were at hand.
At 04.00 am in the morning the first German aircraft was spotted above the airbase of Molenheide and Nerhoven! Serveral minutes later 16 German bombers were to take the airfield under hands. And 15 minutes later 15 more had to come. The attack ended around 06.45 am destroyng 2 C-V's and 1 Fokker 51. And cousing a lot of damage to the landingfields.
One hour later the commander of the 4th recconsquad was to get a order to move his planes and troops to the airfield of Hamstede.
After the Germans take hold of the airfield on 13th of May they immediately began to repear the airbase for their use. Of the 2 airfields Molenheide and Nerhoven they were going the make one airbase with 3 ladingstrips of 1000 meters in length, and later in 1941 they added 600 meters on one of the landingstrips.
Also a big planehanger was made, the well known "Junkerhalle", were several airplanes could be repeared at the same time. It was about 90 x 90 meters.
About 95 wooden hangers were build south of Hulten and south and west of the landingstrips, and in January 1944 75 more were to come near the "Prinsenhoef". Several earth walls and shelters were made for ammunition, benzine, and army personel. Even a railroad was made towards the airfield.
In the woods near Rijen was a big ammunition complex, but even a small one regarding the MASt (Munitions Ausgabe Stelle) that was located near Kaatsheuvel. Here the Germans had their own swimmingpool, soccerfield and shelters. Also huge barracks for airforce personel were located in Prinsenbosch (near Chaam) where they build shelters, with showers, kitchens and even a bowling-alley.
And offcourse many Flak positions were located near the airbase, in particular 8,8 and 3,7 cm calibers, but after own research/findings also the French M36 7,5 cm, that were captured in the battle for France and used further by the German troops.
In the beginning of September 1940 the airfield.... well now Fliegerhorst was ready for use! The first Heinkels were to land at the Fliegerhorst and soon it will form a force of approximately 40 bomberplanes. After time and the Battle for Brittain was lost the based turned over for Nightfighterplanes.
While in German hands during the Second World War, the field came under frequent attack from allied forces until the liberation of the south of the Netherlands, after which the British Royal Air Force took control of the airfield.
In 1946, the Royal Netherlands Air Force (RNLAF) resumed operations from the airfield, using it as a training base for pilots and crews. In 1995, the base was converted on helicopters airbase.
This scenery places Runway, AFD menu entry, NDB beacon frequency, buildings, fields, trees, ground vehicles, static planes, searchlights and more to the airfield of Gilze-Rijen.
Whatever you do, have fun with this. This kind of scenery would not be possible with the utilities-tools and support of Pascal Meziat, Tom Hiscox, Brian McWilliams, Trevor de Stigter, Rafael Garcia Sanchez, Martin "Wizard" Wright, Mike Rennie, Ralf Triebel and Manfred Moldenhauer. Thank you very much!
Special thanks to "Nick", webmaster of "Fliegerhorst Gilze-Rijen. Archaeology & Research" site. I took the main information from his excellent website.
My scenery shows the airfield as Luftwaffe airbase. If you want to use it as allied base simply delete the file Gilze-Rijen-PLANES.bgl, and the german planes, vehicles and flags will disappear.
_____________________________________________________________________
Installation:
Go to the CFS main scenery folder and make a folder named Gilze-Rijen.
Unzip the files directly to a Gilze-Rijen folder, all subfolders will be created automatically!
After unzipping the structure of that folders has to look exactly like this:
Go to CFS and start in freeflight. Add the scenery to the scenery-library
(World / Scenery Library) - Add Scenery.
The BGL path to enter is exactly:
=:\=\scenery\Gilze-Rijen\SCENERY\*.BGL
You may copy and paste the line above!
Name the scenery "Gilze-Rijen" and don't forget to _activate_ it by checking the box!
You can access the initial points by clicking GOTO Airport, the airfield is added to the CFS airfields list.
Do not drop the ground vehicles texture files to your main CFS texture folder, otherwise they will eventually overwrite some of your other CFS textures!
The scenery was designed with Pascal Meziat, Tom Hiscox and Brian McWilliams utility program Airport 2.6; Martin Wright's MkAFD and Scasm 2.88 by Manfred Moldenhauer.
Thanks to Mike Rennie, Rafael García Sanchez, Jorn Kudla, Robert Waszkiewicz, Martin Wright, Dan Geis, and Ralf Triebel, creators of the main api macros and textures used on this scenery. (and me, of course, as creator of some macros as old control tower).
