Mamaia airfield

[Wings_of_wrath]

Right. :"emoticon showing myself slapping my forehead in an emphatic gesture":
It's too easy to lose track of scale when working with this kind of pixelated sattelite pictures.
I'm much more confortable at ground level....

So now we have to wait until I get there at the end of this week so I can take some pictures...
Now that I think about it, there might not be ANY sign of the old coast at all... I mean, it's been more than 40 years since they reshaped the area, so God only knows where the shoreline was in the 1940s.
This complicates the matter a bit, but I'll try to check my old maps of Constanta, and see if I can fish up any actual information on where the beachfornt was located, instead of guessing away at a poor quality Goole Earth picture like a total idiot. I'll keep you posted.

This post has been edited by Wings_of_wrath on February 06, 2006 05:16 pm

[Wings_of_wrath]

An update on the topic of the Mamaia Airfield and the Hidroaviation hangars on Siutghuol Lake.
As you probably know, I spent my last 10 days in Constanta, and while there, I tried to piece together as much information as I could on the matter. This is what I came out with:

1) Local Archives: I tried going trough the archives of the old IPJC ("Institutul de Proiectari Judetean Constanta"- roughly translated as " Constanta County Architectural Institute", the communist era organism responsible for architectural and urbanistic designs) but unfortunately, I came out dry because although there had been plans concerning the Mamaia Area drawn in the '50s and '60s, they were discarded after the Channel was built and altered the area. Also, apparently you now need written consent from the SRI (Serviciul Roman de Informatii- Romanian Information Service, the offspring of the dreaded "Securitate") or whatever they are called now, for acess to any urbanistic plans in 1/5000 scale or above. I guess that is to prevent terrorists from learning vital strategic information. Or something.
Anyway, besides trying to get into the archives, I interviewed a few older architects and even managed to take a peek on a rough schematic plan of Mamaia and Navodari drawn in 1961. It wasn't of much use, since it didn't show the airfield bounds, and had only black dots for the various buildings there, but it was enough to make myself an idea about the aproximative contour of the coast and it's relation to the sourroundings. Amazingly, there were even some WW2 bunkers drawn on the map, now unfortunateluy long gone.

2) Field trip- a bit precipitous, since I had to cut my trip short due to some unexpected trouble in Bucharest, but I managed to get into the areas of intrest, take pictures and interview the locals.

Following these two separate lines of inquiry, I'm now able to paint a fairly acurate, (if still incomplete) picture of the wherebouts and staus of the old airfield:



The airfield contour itself seems to fit the one I drew earlier based only on the satellite photographs. The "runway" itself is now split into several fields, but despite that, the edges are still marked by shallow dithes, making it relatively easy to discern the earlier contour (that's the reason it stands out in the satellite pictures)

On the southern edge runs a road I belive to be contemporary to the airfield, since it's paved with cobblestones instead of asphalt like modern roads.
The buildings visible just to the south belong to a derelict sugar manufacturing plant, now being demolished.

On the west side, some 500 meters from the airfield runs an old railroad that might be the long disused railway from Constanta to Navodari, built in the 1920s.

The hangars themselves are currently being used by a company called "Legmas SA" and that manufactures steel pipes and such. I spoke to the manager of the company,and, besides confirming that these were, indeed, the hangars I was looking for, graciously offered me a tour of the buildings, with the sole condition that I come back on a Saturday. (Because of the risk of injury on the factory floor, access to visitors is forbidden during the week) Unfortunately, since I am now in Bucharest, that will have to wait.







Also in the Legmas compound, behind the hangars and close to the road there was another building that fits the architectural pattern for an edifice of the 1930s (Art Deco). I am not sure, but these could have been the administrative offices of the base, or some barracks for the airmen.



In the long dispute concerning the coastline, it seems I might have unwittingly been right all along . When I asked a 70-some local about where the beach used to be when he was a child, he scratched his head and answered "well, about 50 meters from where the road is now" Also, the "visible feature" I was ranting about actually exists, in the form of a 4-5 meter high artificial cliff running on the left side of the highway as you go from Constanta. The airfield is located on the plateau right behind this feature, as well as an Anti-Aircraft Artillery Base (currently abandoned) that I was told had been there since WW2. Ths fits the map I saw, on which the AAA facility was marked only by the contour and marked "Institution", and that had a shallow gulf between its southern side and the Mamaia sandbar, now apparently filled in. From there, the coast ran more or less straight to the north, and not curving into the sea as it does today, so we can safely asussume most of what we see there now is landfill.


I considered the matter of the Hidroaviation Hangars settled, since I knew for sure where they were and they are still visible today, but while talking to one of the architects, he told me how he first came to Constanta in 1963 from his small village in the Danube Delta and the old hangars of the Romanian Hidroaviation were being demolished. I stood totally bemused for a second, then realised he wasn't talking about the hangars I allready knew, but of some different ones I never even knew existed!
As it turns out, the hangars that still stand (unfortunately in the navy training base, so access as well as pictures are strictly prohibited) were used during WW2 by the German Hidroaviation (The "Achte Seenot" or 8th Sea Rescue Squadron) and the hangars of the Romanian Seaplanes were just opposite on the other bank of the lake. Unfortunately, as stated earlier, they have been used as boat hangars for the "Electrica" sports club until the late '60s, but they were torn down to allow for a reshaping of the coast in that area. When I went "on site", I did manage to track down a local that remembered where the hangars had been, but his indications were rather vague, since he moved in the area in 1973, when the dredging and reshaping operations were allready in full swing, and the only thing still remaining of the hangars were the foundations and one of the back walls incorporated in the cayack repair shop.
The only pertinent piece of information I got form him was the fact the hangars were located somewhere between a large water tank (built about the same time for a plan that never materialized of swaping water for oil from the Persian Gulf) and the edge of the peninsula. Unfortunately, that area is inside the training base of the Merchant Marine, so I wasn't allowed in.



This post has been edited by Wings_of_wrath on February 23, 2006 01:33 pm

[Dénes]

Nice piece of detective work, Wings_of_wrath. Congrats!

Gen. Dénes