Waldau Army Airfield Waldau Army Airfield is a former military airfield , located 4 . 0 km south of Kassel in Hesse , Germany . History . The airfield was built in 1918 , and had its first building in 1924 , the same year it was officially opened . From 1926 it was regularly serviced by airliners , primarily Lufthansa . The first successful airplane tow of a glider was done at Waldau airfield on 12 March 1927 by World War I flying ace and aerobatic champion Gerhard Fieseler in the tow plane and Gottlob Espenlaub in the glider . Gerhard Fieseler set up his aircraft production plants at Kassel from 1930 as Fieseler Flugzeugbau . One of them ( Werk III , or Plant III ) was at Waldau airfield , another one ony one mile from the airfield . That same year the airline connection ended , when Waldau had to close as a city airfield because Kassel could no longer afford to pay Lufthansa for its services or the maintenance of the airfield . Ownership of the airfield was then transferred to the Lower Hessian Association for Aviation . Still , the airfield remained open , and it attracted a 100 , 000 crowd during the visit of a Zeppelin airship in September 1930 . Aircraft Fieseler produced at Waldau amongst others : . At times the plants used 10 , 000 working men and women , many of them slave labor from the Netherlands and France . As a reult the Fieseler plants regularly were attacked by American Eighth Air Force and British RAF Bomber Command aircraft , and although some damage was done to the plants , most destruction occurred in the city itself . The damaged airfield was seized by American Army units on 4 April 1945 . The damaged airfield was repaired by IX Engineering Command , Ninth Air Force and re - designated as " Advanced Landing Ground Y - 96 " . American Army Air Force units used the airfield as a casualty evacuation and combat resupply airfield by the IX Air Service Command , as well as a combat airfield by the 48th Fighter Group with P - 47 Thunderbolts operating for two weeks until the German capitulation on 8 May . After the end of combat , the facility was re - designed as " AAF Station Kassel / Waldau " and later Waldau Tactical Air Depot ( TAD ) under Air Service Command , operated by 10th Air Depot Group . In November 1945 , Air Force units moved out and control of the facility was turned over to the United States Army . The airfield remained closed to civilian traffic until 29 April 1955 , when it was returned to the city of Kassel for civilian use as an airport , the US Army retaining control of the base station and renaming the facility " Waldau Kaserne " . The Army used the station for vehicle maintenance by 547th Ordnance Co which supported transportation units . In 1970 , the Army inactivated the facility . By the early 1960s , however , urban encroachment in the area made it clear the civil airport could not remain open much longer . It was located in the eastern side of the city with no room for expansion and residential areas were becoming hard to avoid . When the city of Kassel opened a new airport to the north of the city in July 1970 , Waldau was closed and converted to an industrial area . The airfield remained in existence until the 1980s , when it was torn up and the area redeveloped .