Vitry - En - Artois Airport Vitry - En - Artois Airport is a regional airport in France , located northeast of Vitry - en - Artois ; north - northeast of Paris . It supports general aviation with no commercial airline service scheduled . It was an established airport built prior to World War II . Seized by the Germans in June 1940 during the Battle of France , it was used as a Luftwaffe military airfield during the occupation . Captured by the Allies in late 1944 , it was used as an Allied military airfield until the end of the war . History . German use during World War II . A small grass airport prior to World War II , it was seized by the Germans in late May 1940 . After its capture , Vitry - En - Artois was used by the Luftwaffe as combat airfield during the Battle of France . As part of the Blitzkrieg , the Germans assigned the following units to the airfield during the battle , carrying out air attacks on the defending French and British Expeditionary Force : After the Second Armistice at Compiègne on 22 June , the Luftwaffe moved Kampfgeschwader 53 ( KG 53 ) to the airfield on 12 July . KG 53 was a Heinkel He 111 medium bomber unit that participated in the ensuing Battle of Britain , remaining assigned to Vitry until 18 June 1941 . Later in 1941 , the Germans improved the facility into a permanent Luftwaffe air base by expanding the support area with numerous maintenance shops , hangars , and laying down two 1500m concrete all - weather runways , aligned 03 / 21 and 09 / 27 ( A possible third runway , aligned 13 / 31 is visible in aerial photography , only part of the 13 ( northwest ) end still remains ) . Numerous taxiways and dispersal aircraft parking areas were also constructed . As Vitry is located in the Pas - de - Calais , it was 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 . In 1943 , Vitry - En - Artois became a day interceptor airfield which housed fighters to attack the USAAF Eighth Air Force heavy bomber fleets attacking targets in Occupied Europe and Germany . Known units assigned ( all from Luftlotte 3 , Fliegerkorps IV ) : Largely due to its use as a base for interceptors , and also as part of Operation Quicksilver , which was designed to deceive the Germans about where the invasion of France would take place , Vitry - En - Artois was attacked several times by Eighth Air Force B - 17 Flying Fortress heavy bomber groups in 1943 and 1944 . Allied use . Vitry - En - Artois was cleared of German forces in late August 1944 by elements of the Canadian 1st Army . Before withdrawing , what was not destroyed at the airfield by Allied bombing , hangars , buildings , electrical generators , water treatment and other facilities were blown up by German combat engineers . The IX Engineer Command 850th Engineer Aviation Battalion moved in about 7 September and attempted to perform a rehabilitation of the base so it could be used by Allied aircraft . However the destruction of the airport was so complete that little could be salvaged , and the engineers laid down a 5000 ' Pierced Steel Planking ( PSP ) temporary runway over one of the destroyed German concrete runways aligned roughly east - west ( 09 / 27 ) . Once declared operational on 15 September , the airfield was designated as Advanced Landing Ground " B - 50 Vitry Airfield " . Once the PSP runway was laid down , tents were used for billeting and also for support facilities ; a dump for supplies , ammunition , and gasoline drums was built along with a drinkable water well being drilled and a minimal electrical grid for communications and station lighting to replaced the destroyed infrastructure of the Luftwaffe base . Once operational , The USAAF Ninth Air Force used the base for several units from 15 September 1944 until closing the base on 18 December 1945 . Known units assigned were : Vitry was also used by RAF well known units and used again as a marshalling and assembly area for transport units for elements of the First Allied Airborne Army during Operation Varsity in March 1945 . With the war ended , it was also used as a storage area for surplus allied ( mostly American ) aircraft after the war by Air Technical Service Command . Vitry - En - Artois was returned to French control on 18 December 1945 . Postwar . In French control after the war , the airport sat abandoned for years . There was much unexploded ordnance at the site which needed to be removed , as well as the wreckage of German and Allied aircraft . All of the buildings at the base were destroyed by the Allied air attacks or demolition , and although some had been repaired by the American combat engineers , most were in ruins . The French Air Force wanted nothing to do with a Nazi airfield on French soil , and as a result , the Air Ministry leased the land , concrete runways , structures and all , out to farmers for agricultural use , sending in unexploded ordnance teams to remove the dangerous munitions . Eventually the facility was cleared of all the rubble and ruins of the German air base . Concrete taxiways , parking ramps and dispersal pads were removed and turned into hardcore aggregate , eventually clearing the land which was leased to farmers for agricultural fields . The current airport was built south of the wartime airfield along the D950 . It has no connection to the wartime field . Relics of both wartime runways still exist , and single - lane agricultural roads are the remains of some of the former taxiways . The runways are still littered with bomb craters , now grown in by soil and grass and other vegetation .