airdrome

“When our crews were flying combat missions near our airdrome, we mechanics could recognize the sound of our guns and machine guns as a mother can tell the voice of her child,” said Galina Drobovich, the chief aircraft mechanic for the 586th Regiment, talking about the fast and dangerous Yak fighters.

Inna Pasportnikova, Lilya’s mechanic, said that the pilots slept in local homes in a nearby village, and “we mechanics slept at the airdrome near the aircraft in open trenches. When it became cold in the winter, we took the engine cover and put it over ourselves, and in the morning we would wake up with ice on our hair and faces.”

At Brussels airport, 60% of flights were canceled, while the Charleroi airdrome was shut down.

On the website for his company, Airdrome Airplanes, Baslee wrote that a replica can be made from one of his kits in about 300 to 400 hours, using only basic hand tools.

The airdrome had been bombed eight months before, and knobby slabs of white stone rubble had been bulldozed into flat- topped heaps on both sides of the entrance through the wire fence surrounding the field.