Hoogeveen Airport: The Taildragger Experience by André Jans

Over the years, Hoogeveen airport has become the centre of vintage flying activity in the Netherlands. While the Royal Netherlands Air Force operates its Heritage Flight from Gilze Rijen airbase, and the museums at Soesterberg and Lelystad hardly fly their collections, civilian groups fly from Hoogeveen’s grass runway whenever the weather is willing, demonstrating their enthusiasm for steering their “old ladies” into the skies.

From where came this passion to keep the old taildragger birds in the air? Although a small dot on the globe, the Netherlands has a rich aviation history. It basically started at the end of World War One, when German citizen Anthony Fokker moved to the Netherlands and started his Fokker factory at Schiphol airport. Schiphol was still a little field back then, nothing like today’s high-tech center for mass air transport.

Anthony Fokker worked hard, becoming a pioneer in aviation even through the economic downturn of the late 1920s and 1930s, constructing airliners and military aircraft for KLM and the Royal Netherlands Air Force. Postwar, the company continued in business until the mid-1990s.

World War Two was another chapter of history that contributed to historic aviation consciousness at Hoogevenn and throughout the Netherlands. In May 1940, German forces opened hostilities against the Netherlands with the notorious Blitzkrieg. Although the German invasion was completed in just five days, aircraft losses on the German side were enormous: some 325 aircraft crashed or were shot down, including 250 JU-52 transport planes.

Many Dutch airmen escaped to the United Kingdom and continued to fight. Due to its location between the UK and Germany, their home country became the front line for air combat as WWII heated up. To resist the Allied offensive, the Luftwaffe turned the Netherlands almost into one big airfield. New airstrips were constructed on every available spot, many of them created by forcing the local citizens to hard labour. (One of my grandfathers was forced to travel 20 miles by bicycle each day to help create a new airfield near Havelte in 1943. The “volunteers” were even forced to bring their own shovels. Not showing up automatically meant being arrested by Gestapo and transferred to a concentration camp. Once the new airstrip was finished, the local resistance reported it to London, and some days afterwards a bombing raid destroyed the site.)

Allied aircrew shot down over the Netherlands tried to avoid German capture by relying on the Dutch resistance to hide them in farmer’s houses or haystacks. Even after more than 60 years, stories of helping Allied airmen live on in many families. Operation Market Garden in September 1944, also had a large impact on Dutch citizens. Even though the airborne operation failed, British, US, Canadian and Polish veterans of the attack are still welcomed warmly during the annual commemoration in September.

Operation Manna in spring 1945 brought an honourable end to air combat over the Netherlands. Allied bombers dropped bread instead of bombs over the western part of the country, which had suffered badly from the “Hunger Winter” after the German occupiers had stolen all available food.

Up until the end of World War Two, civil aviation largely involved taildragger aircraft constructed of wood, linen, and, in the later days, aluminum. Flying tail draggers has a certain charm, and is certainly tougher than managing a regular, “plastic” Cessna.

So why have most Dutch taildraggers ended up at Hoogeveen airport? The basic answers are geography and money. Located in the northeast, Hoogeveen is outside the overpopulated western part of the Netherlands and the limited, crowded airspace around the international airport at Schipol. Taildragger pilots also prefer to fly from unpaved airstrips, which limits even further the number of suitable airports. Reasonable landing fees and available hangar space have helped as well to attract people to Hoogeveen. Flying any airplane is expensive, as all who are involved will admit. This is especially true for vintage aircraft, whose maintenance sucks up a large part of the budget – generally, ten or more hours of maintenance are needed for each hour of flying.

Hoogeveen’s flying operations mainly take place in summertime, when its based aircraft travel to airshows and WWII re-enactment events. The latter include official events like Liberation Day in Wageningen on 5 May each year.

The taildragger community at Hoogeveen airport includes one commercial company, ATN Aircraft Division. Former owner Jac van Egmond is known for restoring the Supermarine Spitfire Mk.IX which is part of today’s Royal Netherlands Air Force Historical Flight at Gilze Rijen.

Several enthusiast groups and private owners are also based at Hoogeveen, operating the aircraft listed below.

Dutch Classic Aviators
Bücker Jungmann
Klemm 35D
Piper L4H
Fairchild PT26 project

Dutch Nostalgic Wings
Auster 6A project
Pietenpol air camper project

Classic Independent Aviators
Stinson L-5
SE.5 project

Privately Owned:
Ryan PT-22
Piper PA-18C

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