The Airport

In 1925, a branch of the Aeroclub was founded in Hradec Králové at the instigation of Mayor František Ulrich. Its activities, however, did not begin until 1933, when the civil part of the airport was built. In 1926, the Masaryk Aviation League was founded in Hradec Králové, which marked the true beginning of aviation in the city. In the same year the first aviation day was held. Later, a gliding school was established within the league and in 1936, it was allowed to build its own wooden hangar. However, the first experiments, including Jan Kašpar’s experimental flight, took place on the military training ground at Plachta.
 

In 1925, discussions began on the establishment of an airport. An agreement was made between the state military administration and the city to lease land for the construction of the airport. The airport in Hradec Králové was to be a newly built airport and the landing area was to be 800 × 750m. The construction was to include administrative buildings, two barracks buildings, an airport station, a guardhouse, and a reinforced concrete hangar. The contractor was the local firm Capoušek and Šandera, supervised by military aviation engineers. The first stage of the construction was completed in 1930; on 20 July the operation of the military airfield started with an air day. The barracks and facilities, designed by the local builder Stanislav Novotný, were designed in a traditional style: they were one- and two-storey buildings with a hipped roof. The whole complex had a rectangular layout – in the middle, there were two opposite single-tract buildings with central and lateral avant-corps; the space was closed by two large L-shaped buildings; and the complex was complemented by smaller, single-storey buildings. There was also a reinforced concrete hangar for aviation clubs, the construction of which was supplied by Alfred Ippen’s company. In the next phase in 1935, a small airport building for civil flights was completed, first for the Prague–Hradec Králové line, later also for the line to Liberec and Moravská Ostrava. According to historians Zdeněk Doubek and Helena Rezková, 409 passengers were transported to Prague during the first three months of operation.
 

In 1938, Václav Rejchl Jr. was approached to design the modernization of the runway and several buildings. Rejchl added one floor to the barracks and unified their façades with crystalline lesenes. In his memoirs, he reflected on his work at the airport at the beginning of the war as follows: “We started work in August 1938 but the work was stopped in the autumn. When the Germans came to the dug-up airfield in March 1939, they insisted on finishing the work quickly. They suggested some improvements and changes and according to them, we finished the work on the area of 60 x 350m in July 1939. The Germans were very happy and the construction director Havelka and Lüdke asked me to do more work for them, but I categorically refused and did absolutely nothing for the Germans for six years.”

 

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