Highway strip
A highway strip is a section of a highway that is specially built to allow landing of (mostly) military aircraft and to serve as a military airbase. These were built to allow military aircraft to operate even if their airbases, the most vulnerable targets in any war, are destroyed. The first highway strips were constructed at the end of World War II in Nazi Germany, where the well developed Autobahn system allowed aircraft to use the motorways. In the Cold War highway strips were systematically built on both sides of the Iron Curtain, mostly in the two Germanys, but also in Switzerland, Poland and Czechoslovakia.
Design
The strips are usually 2 to 3.5 kilometres (1.2 to 2.2 mi) long straight sections of the highway, where any central reservation is made of crash barriers that can be removed quickly (in order to allow airplanes to use the whole width of the road), and other features of an airbase (taxiways, airport ramps) can be built. The road will need a thicker than normal surface and a sold concrete base. The specialized equipment of a typical airfield are stored somewhere nearby and only carried there when airfield operations start. The highway strips can be converted from motorways to airbases typically within 24 to 48 hours. The road would need to be swept to remove all debris before any aircraft movement could take place. In the case of Finnish road airbases, the space needed for landing aircraft is reduced by means of a wire, similar to the CATOBAR system used on some aircraft carriers.[1]
Examples
Nations known to utilise the strategy of highways constructed to double as auxiliary airbases in the event of war are Singapore, Sweden [2] (vägbas, literally meaning "road base"), Finland (maantietukikohta), Germany (NLP-Str - Notlandeplätze auf Straßen, emergency airfields on roads) Poland (DOL - Drogowy Odcinek Lotniskowy, lit. "road airfield section")[1] and Republic of China (Taiwan) (戰備跑道 , lit. "war spare runway").
After the Turkish invasion of Cyprus at least two highway strips were built in the Greek part of Cyprus. Easily recognisable by a runway center line and markings for the touch down zone. One is located on the Limassol–Nicosia Highway (5,200 m (17,100 ft)*) and one of the Limassol–Larnaca highway (5,000 m (16,000 ft)*).[citation needed]
In Poland, as of 2003, only one highway strip is used annually for an exercise.[2]
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Swiss Air Force training from prepared highway strips.
See also
References
External links
Media related to Highway strips at Wikimedia Commons