Brand and Briesen
The Soviet forces in East Germany used somewhere around 50 airfields, and most of them have quietly gone back to pine trees and sand. Flugplatz Brand, an abandoned Soviet airfield about 60 kilometres south of Berlin, is the odd one out, mostly because someone later parked the largest free-standing hall in the world on its western edge, filled it with palm trees and called it Tropical Islands.
Before any of that, there were just two small villages in the forest south of Berlin: Brand and Briesen, today both part of the municipality of Halbe in the Dahme-Spreewald district. The railway line from Berlin to Cottbus ran past Brand, which got a station (today rather optimistically renamed Brand Tropical Islands), and in the 1930s the Reichsautobahn from Berlin to Breslau (today the A13) was laid out a few kilometres to the west.
That was essentially it. Forest on all sides, a lake (the Köthener See) a few kilometres to the northeast, and not much else. Quiet, flat and empty, which, as it turns out, is exactly what an air force looks for.
Flugplatz Brand – 1939 to 1945
Work on the airfield began in 1939 (many sources say 1938, but Allied intelligence and later research both point to 1939), as part of the rapid build-out of airfields that came with the expansion of the Luftwaffe. It was laid out as a grass field of roughly 1,000 by 1,000 metres, with a handful of buildings in the southwest corner, a spur of minor roads to Briesen and Brand, and the Brand railway station about 1.6 kilometres away.
It is almost always called Fliegerhorst Briesen today, and we will use the name too, because everyone else does. Strictly speaking, though, it never was one. Just a quick explainer: a Fliegerhorst (air base) was a permanent installation with hangars, workshops, barracks and a resident garrison, while an Einsatzhafen (operational airfield) was a much more basic field, built to be occupied by flying units in wartime and otherwise kept ticking over with a minimal crew. Briesen was the latter, an Einsatzhafen: the Luftwaffe’s ground organisation map of 1 January 1945 lists it with a field of 1,000 by 1,000 metres and a landing area of 1,000 by 300 metres, and it never had a hard runway at all.
It apparently may have been used during the invasion of Poland in 1939, although nobody seems able to say by whom. What is better documented is that it served as an Arbeitsplatz (satellite training field) for the Flugzeugführerschule A/B 3 (Pilot School A/B 3) in Guben and for the school of Fluganwärterregiment 82 (Flight Candidate Regiment 82) in Cottbus, which moved to Pretzsch on the Elbe on 1 October 1941 and became Flugzeugführerschule A/B 82. Pilot training here supposedly continued until around September 1944.
An Allied airfield intelligence report, current as of 12 May 1944, summed the place up rather unflatteringly: a grass field of about 825 by 1,005 metres, a longest possible take-off run of around 1,190 metres east to west, “a few workshops” and “limited accommodation” outside the southwest corner, no dispersal areas, and recently used for glider training. Not exactly a priority target. Whether any flying units were based here during the final battles of 1945 is, so far, unknown. The Red Army occupied the field in April 1945.
Flugplatz Brand – 1945 to 1968
For a few years after the war, the Soviets apparently had little use for a grass field in the woods. That changed with the Korean War, when the Soviet Air Force started looking for forward bases for its new jet bombers, and Brand became one of the first airfields in East Germany to be rebuilt from scratch to a Soviet design.
Work began in January 1951, and thanks to a steady trickle of CIA informants we know rather a lot about how it went. The contractors were Bauunion Ost and a firm from Herzberg, with somewhere between 1,500 and 2,000 labourers working in three shifts under floodlights, supported by a Soviet tractor brigade of 80 men. A standard-gauge siding was laid from Brand station, and up to 200 wagons of gravel, cement and crushed stone arrived every day. The deadline kept being moved forward, morale among the workers was reportedly low, Brandenburg’s Minister President Rudi Jahn turned up on 15 June 1951 to hold a motivational rally in front of the site office, and the construction manager allegedly fled to the West. Quite the start.
The result, completed in 1952, was a textbook Soviet airfield for front-line bombers: a 2,500 by 80 metre concrete runway, a pre-start line, taxiways and a ring taxiway in the north leading to dispersed parking positions and blast pens. Later in the 1950s a separate squadron dispersal area was added in the southeast for smaller aircraft, linked to the main field by a narrow auxiliary runway (16/32, 2,000 by 12 metres). Similar layouts existed at Groß Dölln and Neu-Welzow.
The first residents arrived on 26 December 1951, a bomber regiment with Ilyushin Il-28 jets transferred from Flugplatz Oranienburg. A second Il-28 regiment arrived from Finsterwalde in January 1953, and both left again in June. From August 1953 until May 1954 Brand hosted a MiG-15 fighter regiment (field post number 62334) before it moved on to Altenburg, and in May 1954 yet another Il-28 regiment took over. On 3 October 1954, West German intelligence watched 27 Il-28s take off at ten-second intervals, escorted by 25 MiG-15s. Busy times.
In 1955 and 1956, Tu-4 long-range bombers were temporarily stationed here as well. A little interesting historical fact: the Tu-4 was a reverse-engineered copy of the American B-29, and B-29s were at the same time sitting on airfields in Western Europe, so both sides were essentially pointing the same aircraft at each other. The long-term tenant from the 1950s onward was the 668th Bomber Aviation Regiment (668-й бомбардировочный авиационный полк) of the 132nd Bomber Aviation Division (132-я бомбардировочная авиационная дивизия), flying Il-28s; a US satellite image from 2 May 1965 shows 50 of them on the field. From 1965 the regiment converted to the Yak-28, and in 1968 it was withdrawn along with its division to Tukums in the Latvian SSR.
Flugplatz Brand – 1968 to 1982
The bombers had barely left before the field was filled again. Within a few months, a regiment of the 105th Fighter-Bomber Aviation Division (105-я авиационная дивизия истребителей-бомбардировщиков), headquartered in Großenhain, moved in, supposedly coming from Jüterbog. Russian unit histories name it as the 116th Guards Radom Red Banner Fighter-Bomber Aviation Regiment (116-й гвардейский Радомский Краснознамённый авиационный полк истребителей-бомбардировщиков), dating its arrival to July 1968. The “Radom” honorific, for anyone wondering, presumably goes back to the capture of the Polish city of Radom in January 1945.
The regiment flew the MiG-17F in the fighter-bomber role at first, then the Su-7 and later the Su-17. The wilder days of the 1950s were over, but not entirely: on 12 March 1969 an aircraft from Brand crashed, and to this day nobody seems to have recorded which type. In 1977 and 1978, all of the aircraft received camouflage paint, a fashion that had been spreading through the 16th Air Army since 1973.
The airfield itself changed shape as well. From 1969 the dispersal areas were rebuilt, starting with ten large arched hardened aircraft shelters (HAS) in the northern part of the field (designated GDF Type 1 in German sources), followed a little later by a second batch of the improved Type 2A. By the early 1980s Brand had more than 30 of these shelters. The older dispersal area in the southeast was left out of the upgrade entirely, which, as we will see, did not mean it went unused.
GSSD Sonderwaffenlager Brand
That neglected corner in the southeast had in fact been anything but idle. In the early 1960s (most sources say 1962, others give 1961 to 1964), the Soviets built the GSSD Sonderwaffenlager Brand here (special weapons depot of the Group of Soviet Forces in Germany, Группа советских войск в Германии, ГСВГ), a storage bunker for nuclear free-fall bombs about three kilometres south of the main runway, between Brand and the village of Schönwald. It sat at the far end of the auxiliary runway, linked to the airfield by a concrete track, and the aircraft stands around it allowed bombers to be armed at short notice. A command post was added in the same area.
Brand was one of seven airfields in East Germany where the Soviet air force kept nuclear weapons, alongside Altenburg, Finsterwalde, Groß Dölln, Großenhain, Lärz and Werneuchen. Unlike standalone depots such as Sonderwaffenlager Stolzenhain, which supplied the missile troops, or Sonderwaffenlager Neuthymen, these were the air force’s own stockpiles, kept as close as possible to the aircraft that would carry them.
The bunker belongs to the so-called Basalt type, the first generation of Soviet nuclear storage bunkers in Germany, of which only three were built in East Germany: here, at Finsterwalde and at Lärz. It is a monolithic reinforced concrete structure of almost 70 by 9 metres, with roof and earth cover together about one and a half metres thick, and designed so that a truck could drive straight through it. At the front sits a two-storey technical block housing the ventilation, the power supply, the cooling plant and an emergency generator. Behind the first set of blast gates, each about 45 centimetres thick and weighing roughly 25 tonnes, comes a six-metre-high transfer room with a loading crane, and behind a second gate the storage chamber itself, 40 by 9 metres, with room for around 40 bombs. Rounding off the site were a small guard bunker at the entrance, a vehicle hall, an accommodation building with welfare facilities and a boiler house for the crew who looked after it all.
The bombs were meant first for the Il-28 and later Yak-28 bombers of the 668th, then for the nuclear-capable Su-7Bs and Su-24s of the 116th, and finally, most likely, for the MiG-27s of the 911th. One German airfield history also mentions bunkers of the newer “Granit” type being added in this area in the 1970s; whether that means a second structure or an upgrade of the first is not clear from the sources we found. A nuclear alert shelter, where armed aircraft could wait at readiness, followed in the early 1980s.
One former soldier later summed up the arrangement on a veterans’ forum with refreshing bluntness: they stored and maintained nuclear devices that could be attached to the planes “if necessary”, and the decision to do so lay with the Communist Party in Moscow. The bunker itself is still there and today belongs to the district of Dahme-Spreewald.
It never came to that. By 24 June 1991, all Soviet nuclear munitions had been removed from German soil, a full year before the last aircraft left Brand.
Flugplatz Brand – 1982 to 1989
At the start of the 1980s, the Soviet leadership decided it needed to answer what it called “an increased attack capability of NATO”, and the answer was the Sukhoi Su-24, a variable-geometry bomber that could reach targets across most of Western Europe. Brand was the first airfield of the 16th Air Army to get them. German-language airfield histories record the “stationing of the 116th” in January 1982, while Russian sources describe the same regiment simply re-equipping and becoming the 116th Guards Bomber Aviation Regiment (116-й гвардейский бомбардировочный авиационный полк). Most likely the same event, seen from opposite sides of the fence. The first aircraft themselves seem to have flown in that June, and the last of the old Su-7s were phased out.
Thirty years of jet traffic had taken their toll on the concrete, and in 1983 the field got a thorough overhaul to the Soviet airfield construction standard of the time: a new parallel runway (09L/27R, 2,500 by 45 metres) was built and became the main runway, while the old one (09R/27L) received a second layer of concrete on top of the first, bringing it to a thickness of 50 centimetres and noticeably reducing its width. While the work was going on, the Su-24s spent several months at Flugplatz Finsterwalde, and for a while in 1983 a squadron of Su-15 interceptors was flying out of Brand as well.
The rest of the decade was apparently routine, in the way that a nuclear-capable bomber base on the front line of the Cold War can be routine. By the late 1980s, flying days were Monday, Wednesday and Friday, a rhythm that held until the very end in 1992. During larger exercises in the 1980s, Tu-22M strategic bombers coming from the Soviet Union landed at Brand for the first time. And on the radio, the airfield answered to the call sign Zveroboy (Зверобой), which translates as St John’s wort, a small yellow flower. Somebody in Moscow had a sense of humour, or a garden.
The French Mission Arrest
The arrival of the Su-24 did not go unnoticed, and the Soviets knew it would not. Just a quick explainer: under agreements dating back to 1946 and 1947, the Western Allies kept accredited military liaison missions in Potsdam, the American USMLM, the British BRIXMIS and the French MMFL (Mission Militaire Française de Liaison), whose officers were allowed to drive around East Germany in marked cars. In practice, it was licensed spying, and everybody involved knew it.
Anticipating the interest, the GRU section in Potsdam responsible for the missions asked the Stasi to step up surveillance around Brand for the whole of June 1982, and a Soviet intervention group was added for good measure. The French slipped through anyway. On 16 June, MMFL vehicle number 33 arrived near the approach path at around 12:10, and over the afternoon about ten Su-24s landed at irregular intervals while the French crew kept changing position about three kilometres from the restricted zone.
At 13:55, using the engine noise as cover, East German and Soviet teams managed to close in and box the car in. Notes and equipment were seized and photographed, including a scanner the French had been using to listen in on the Stasi’s own radio traffic. The crew was handed over to the Soviet Komendatura (military commandant’s office) in Cottbus at 16:00, where they were presumably asked to sign an “Akt” admitting their offences, and refused.
They drove off at 17:50 with their equipment back, minus three rolls of film and a tape recording of the pilots’ radio chatter. The Americans got their first good photographs of the new bomber at Brand a week later, on 23 June. So much for the extra surveillance.
Little Prypjat: The Garrison
In the middle of the restricted area, south of the runways, sat the garrison: the small town where the regiment actually lived. Air force units had a higher share of officers than most, and officers came with families, so alongside the barracks there were blocks of flats, a school teaching the Soviet curriculum, shops, a canteen and a small hospital. The flats were standard WBS 70 prefabricated blocks, built by the East German VEB Spezialbau, since the GDR picked up the bill for the stationing. How many people actually lived here is hard to pin down: figures range from around 4,000 residents to some 4,600 soldiers, depending on who’s counting.
Officially, the whole thing went by its field post number, 66683, which earned it the nickname “the Sixes” among the soldiers. Veterans’ memories collected online are rather fond. One remembered the soldiers’ shops as a fairytale compared to anything back home, and the single-storey hospital as “so cozy”. The officers’ shop was off limits to conscripts, so beer meant sneaking through the woods along the Krausnicker Weg to the next station down the line at Schönwald, where a woman at a Gaststätte (inn) sold them bottles and, apparently, always threw one in for free.
Today the garrison has a different name. A few years back, someone started calling the place Little Prypjat, after the Ukrainian town of Pripyat that was evacuated after the Chernobyl disaster in 1986, and the name stuck: you will find it as Little Prypjat, Little Pripyat or Klein-Prypjat, depending on who is writing. The comparison is visual rather than literal. There was no accident here and there is no radiation, just birch trees growing out of living rooms, empty Plattenbau facades, and a giant hall on the horizon doing a passable impression of a reactor building. I have to say that I dislike the name. Not only does it feel somewhat disrespectful to its namesake, but it also doesn’t really fit in terms of scale. The abandoned garrison isn’t even that big compared to the other abandoned Soviet bases spread out across Brandenburg.
A few Soviet relics are still around. There is a concrete statue of a soldier, and a Lenin portrait assembled from shards of yellow and brown tiles, which probably decorated the square in front of the canteen. The same Lenin image, as it turns out, was used on the cover of an East German book, “Lenin. Erzählt von vielen” (Lenin, as told by many). He is still smiling, which is more than can be said for the buildings around him.
Video Walkthrough of Flugplatz Brand
We’ve done a full video walkthrough of what’s left of Flugplatz Brand, for those that are partial to living vicariously through others’ experiences. It covers the airfield, the special weapons depot and the Little Prypjat garrison, including a few corners that didn’t make it into this post. PS: If you haven’t subscribed to the channel – feel free to do so.
Flugplatz Brand – 1989 to 1992
By the late 1980s, Gorbachev’s new course and the ongoing disarmament negotiations in Europe made the Su-24s an awkward presence: they were, after all, very obviously offensive weapons. In the summer of 1989 most of the Su-24s were withdrawn from the GDR, and the 116th was sent to Ross in the Belorussian SSR. In September 1989 (Russian sources say as early as June) its place was taken by the 911th Fighter-Bomber Aviation Regiment (911-й авиационный полк истребителей-бомбардировщиков) of the 105th Division, coming from Lida with MiG-27K fighter-bombers and MiG-23UB trainers.
The official reasoning was that the MiG-27 had “a smaller range and payload than the Su-24” and therefore “posed a lesser threat to the NATO states”. The former soldier from the veterans’ forum saw it rather differently: the MiGs were classed as defensive, but Europe is small, and with their cargo they could still make it to Normandy without much trouble. A choice between two rotten apples, as he put it.
Life carried on for a while. The standard training routes in use in 1989 took the regiment’s aircraft out over Brandenburg and Saxony to the bombing ranges at Belgern and Wittstock, the latter next to Flugplatz Alt Daber. But after reunification in October 1990, the Western Group of Forces (as the GSSD was now called) had a withdrawal treaty to fulfil, and by 1991 an officer was reportedly spending whole days at the headquarters burning documents and burying them in a pit.
The 911th, the latecomer among the MiG-27 regiments in Germany, was the first of them to go. On 22 June 1992, all of its aircraft were flown out to Finsterwalde, possibly as an unplanned diversion caused by problems in Polish airspace or at the destination. Two weeks later, on 6 July 1992, all 27 MiG-27Ks and 8 MiG-23UBs took off from Finsterwalde for Lida, and Brand was handed over to the German authorities that summer. The regiment did not last much longer: it was disbanded shortly afterwards, and most of its aircraft were scrapped in Belarus, with only a handful surviving as monuments and museum pieces.
Flugplatz Brand – 1992 to 2018
What the German authorities inherited was 403 hectares of concrete, forest, empty buildings and the usual Soviet leftovers. The state of Brandenburg spent the following years clearing out kerosene tanks, ammunition and contaminated soil, while various plans came and went, including occasional attempts to reopen the field for general aviation. None of them got very far.
Then came the airships. CargoLifter AG, founded in 1996, wanted to build the CL160, an airship that could carry 160 tonnes of heavy cargo point to point, and in 1998 it bought the former airfield as its base. Work on the shipyard began in January 1999, construction of the hangar in March 1999, and on 25 November 2000 the company opened the largest free-standing hall in the world: 360 metres long, 210 metres wide and 107 metres high, built for around 78 million euros, a good part of it public money. Parts of the northern runway were dismantled to make room.
The hall worked perfectly. The airship never got built. CargoLifter went bankrupt in 2002, leaving Brandenburg with a gigantic, very well-engineered empty shed.
In 2003 the Malaysian company Tanjong bought the hall for a fraction of what it had cost and turned it into an indoor tropical holiday resort, complete with a sandy beach, a rainforest and a lagoon, which opened as Tropical Islands in December 2004. A campsite followed in 2008, and in December 2018 the Spanish leisure group Parques Reunidos bought the whole thing for 226 million euros, the largest single park purchase in its history. Quite the career for a grass field that, in 1944, had “a few workshops” to its name.
Flugplatz Brand – Today (2026)
Today Flugplatz Brand lives a double life. The western end belongs to the resort: the hall, the hotels, the campsite and a good stretch of the old runways, now mostly car parks for day trippers from Berlin. Not much of that side still looks like an airfield, unless you know what to look for, or you’re looking at it on Google Earth or Google Maps.
The rest has been left to the forest. The arched shelters still sit scattered among the pines, the special weapons depot is still in the south, and the garrison is still standing, if increasingly reluctantly: roofs are going, floors are soft, and the birches in the flats are getting taller every year. Par for the course, all buildings have been gutted, and those that haven’t collapsed yet aren’t that interesting to see.
What draws most people in is the Lenin mosaic, which all things considered, is still in remarkably good condition. The nuclear storage bunkers were left open and accessible for quite a few years after the Soviets had left – and became a popular “party” spot for illegal raves. They were sealed shut in 2008, which hasn’t stopped people from trying to gain access over the years through supposed ventilation pipes etc. On our last visit, we actually ran into a pair of diggers, (unsuccessfully) looking for an entrance.
As to what the future holds, that is anyone’s guess. The resort sits on a site of some 630 hectares, and its owners have been fairly open about wanting to develop the “available land”. The intent is reminiscent of what happened with the Löwen Adler Kaserne that is quickly being swallowed up by Karls Erdbeerhof in Elstal. Whether that eventually includes a Soviet garrison full of birch trees, or whether it is simply left to fall down on its own, nobody seems to have decided yet.
Flugplatz Brand
Tropical-Islands-Allee, 15910 Krausnick-Groß Wasserburg
52.0369, 13.7483
