Serragia Airfield | |
|---|---|
| Part of Twelfth Air Force | |
  Serragia Airfield Location of Serragia Airfield, France | |
| Coordinates | 42°29′15″N009°30′00″E / 42.48750°N 9.50000°E Coordinates: 42°29′15″N009°30′00″E / 42.48750°N 9.50000°E |
| Type | Military airfield |
| Site information | |
| Controlled by | United States Army Air Forces |
| Site history | |
| Built | 1942 |
| In use | 1942-1944 |
Serragia Airfield is an abandoned military airfield in France, located approximately 26 km west-southwest of Porto-Vecchio on Corsica. Its last known use was by the United States Army Air Force Twelfth Air Force in 1944.
France, officially the French Republic, is a country whose territory consists of metropolitan France in Western Europe and several overseas regions and territories. The metropolitan area of France extends from the Mediterranean Sea to the English Channel and the North Sea, and from the Rhine to the Atlantic Ocean. It is bordered by Belgium, Luxembourg and Germany to the northeast, Switzerland and Italy to the east, and Andorra and Spain to the south. The overseas territories include French Guiana in South America and several islands in the Atlantic, Pacific and Indian oceans. The country's 18 integral regions span a combined area of 643,801 square kilometres (248,573 sq mi) and a total population of 67.3 million. France, a sovereign state, is a unitary semi-presidential republic with its capital in Paris, the country's largest city and main cultural and commercial centre. Other major urban areas include Lyon, Marseille, Toulouse, Bordeaux, Lille and Nice.
Corsica is an island in the Mediterranean Sea and one of the 18 regions of France. It is located southeast of the French mainland and west of the Italian Peninsula, with the nearest land mass being the Italian island of Sardinia to the immediate south. A single chain of mountains makes up two-thirds of the island.
The Twelfth Air Force is a Numbered Air Force of the United States Air Force Air Combat Command (ACC). It is headquartered at Davis–Monthan Air Force Base, Arizona.
After the forced withdrawal of German forces from Corsica in September 1943, elements of the Twelfth Air Force 57th Bombardment Wing were moved to the island. Serragia Airdrome was taken over by the USAAF in July 1944 and used as a forward-base of operations for B-25 Mitchell bomber attacks against northern Italy and Southern France, in support of Operation Dragoon, the invasion of Southern France.
Operation Dragoon was the code name for the Allied invasion of the French Riviera. Originally planned to coincide with D-Day, it had been postponed due to insufficient landing-craft. In August, it was revived, as the zone had become a low priority for the Germans, and conditions looked favourable for the liberation of Southern France with its key ports of Marseille and Toulon.
Known units assigned to the airfield were:
- 319th Bombardment Group, 21 September 1944 – 1 January 1945, B-25 Mitchell
- 27th Fighter Group, July–August 1944, P-40 Warhawk, P-47 Thunderbolt
- 79th Fighter Group, June, 1944 to August, 1944, P-47 [1]
The Republic P-47 Thunderbolt was a World War II era fighter aircraft produced by the United States from 1941 through 1945. Its primary armament was eight .50-caliber machine guns and in the fighter-bomber ground-attack role it could carry five-inch rockets or a bomb load of 2,500 pounds (1,103 kg). When fully loaded the P-47 weighed up to eight tons (tonnes) making it one of the heaviest fighters of the war. The P-47 was designed around the powerful Pratt & Whitney R-2800 Double Wasp engine which was also used by two U.S. Navy fighters, the Grumman F6F Hellcat and the Vought F4U Corsair. The Thunderbolt was effective as a short-to-medium range escort fighter in high-altitude air-to-air combat and ground attack in both the World War II European and Pacific theaters.
The units remained on Corsica until early 1945 when enemy targets became out of range of the Mitchells. The airfield was closed by the Americans on 25 January and dismantled after the war, and today there are little or no remains of it other than the remnants of its main runway and disturbed areas where the airfield once was.
