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In the beginning . . . .
About 1910 some amateur fliers started to use some fields north of the village of Brackel, and by 1912 the amateurs were there on a very regular basis. The fields were located at the southern end of the area which became Napier Barracks, at the place where 47 Regt had its R.E.M.E. Vehicle Workshop between 1961 and 1965, and a chocolate factory is now situated, quite close to the local railway station on the main line between the cities of Dortmund and Hamm. Official sanctioning of the activities was encouraged by the Mayor of Brackel, a Dr Eichoff, and the council established an air station there in 1912 with the express purpose of founding a pilot training facility and promoting air services for the Dortmund area. After World War 1 the fields were used by postal flights, and by 1921 the German Air Freight Service had a dispatch office in a small wooden hut, which by some stretch of the imagination might have been the one used by the REME Wksps for the MT office where Cpl Wally Bohanna had his desk. Certainly that hut in 1960 was extremely old and quite unlike any other building on the site. The French Air Corps also appear to have used the airfield during their occupation until they withdrew in the autumn of 1924.
Negotiations were started by Dortmund City Council with Junkers Air Traffic (Luftverkehrs) AG and German Aero Lloyd to establish a local and international air service
and in the spring of 1925 the latter started flights from Brackel to Berlin. On May 25 the Luftverkehr Aktiengesellschaft Westfalen was inaugurated with a capital of
1,000,000 Reichsmarks with the specific aim of advancing area air services, however within a few months it became obvious that the city's coffers could not bear the
financial burden. In January of the following year Junkers Luftverkehrs AG and German Aero Lloyd merged to form Deutschen Luft Hansa AG, offering 12 daily flights
to and from Brackel, and to ease the financial strain of running the airfield Flughafen Dortmund GmbH was founded on 16th April with a capital investment of 835,000
Reichsmarks funded by the German Reich, Prussia, Westfalia, the City of Dortmund, local communities including the Chamber of Commerce and Industry and several
independent companies. On 16th April 2006 Flughafen Dortmund GmbH will celebrate its 80th year of operations.
Despite the volume of traffic the airport was always strained financially, and new business opportunities were always being considered for financial viability. In 1929 the idea of using the northern end of the area as a landing terminal for the newly-popular inflatible dirigibles was proposed. An anchor tower was built, and on August 10, 1930 the famous airship 'Graf Zeppelin' landed there in front of a crowd of 120,000 people. 
Photo: Flughafen Dortmund GmbH. However airfields were usually built to take advantage of prevailing winds, which makes these sites fairly unsuitable for dirigible airships. The high winds and marshy ground proved to be too much, and the airships departed for good after only a few months. In September 1934 the German Reichstag started expropriation proceedings "for the installation of Air-Stations (Fliegerhorste) for the Luftwaffe", and work began in 1935 during the 'extension years' until 1937. While most of them were built from scratch by private contractors, airship stations such as Dusseldorf and Frankfurt were simply taken over. The Luftwaffe completed the North-South runway at Dortmund-Brackel 1,100 meters long by 80 meters wide in 1936; it was linked at the southern end by a paved surface across the old airfields to the terminal buildings, and civilian traffic used it until August 26, 1939. World War II - 1939 to 1945 I do have some material covering the use of Dortmund Fleigerhorst 1939 to 1945 but it has yet to be edited and some of it still has to be translated. To be continued . . . . . The Post-War Years . . . . The last recorded Luftwaffe flight took off from Dortmund-Brackel on March 28, 1945, leaving a group of 70 army demolitions personnel to destroy as much of the runway and hangars as they could. A few days later on 8th April American tanks appeared at the perimeter, but did not occupy it. The Royal Air Force took over the airport soon after and immediately prohibited all German aviation, although it's not clear if the RAF ever stationed a squadron there. It's also not clear when the RAF left Dortmund-Brackel airfield, but in 1950 Aero-Clubs e.V. was formed by two brothers, Theo and Hans Hengsbach, and some other enthusiasts, as the successor to Dortmund Aviation Club. Powered aviation was prohibited by NATO as soon as it was formed in 1949, so Aero-Clubs used their efforts to build gliders, and the first one took flight on June 13, 1953. Powered flight was again permitted on May 5, 1955 and although sporting and recreational activities restarted the main user, Lufthansa, had abandoned Dortmund-Brackel because, at 1,100 meters, the runway was too short and all types of commercial aircraft then available needed at least 2,000 meters. Flughafen Dortmund GmbH gave some thought to expansion of the runway and airfield due to its ideal location as a part of the Rhein-Westphalia network, but there were several obstacles. Although there was more than enough land to the east of the runway, re-aligning the runway in the East-West direction was restricted by the proximity to the Dortmund-Hamm railway line and the inconvenience, not to mention the danger, of aircraft landing in the path of trains. Also, the runway could not be extended in its existing North-South orientation due to the marshy ground to the north. But the biggest obstacle was the NATO decree of April 1959 which put an end to all sporting and recreational flying activities at Dortmund-Brackel, and all existing tenants were evicted. The site was soon afterwards occupied by a British artillery regiment known as 47 (GW) Regiment, Royal Artillery, and 'Richtofen Kaserne' was renamed Napier Barracks after an action by No 4 (Sphinx) Battery early in its history. At this point history started to repeat itself. The Hengsbach brothers had started another aviation business in 1956, Hengsbach & Co., operating out of some fields at Wickede and offering holiday flights to the North Sea coasts. The Dortmund Aviation Club moved to Wickede at the same time, together with a flying school that was probably made up of the remnants of the one at Dortmund-Brackel. That airfield eventually became the Dortmund-Wickede Airport run by the original Flughafen Dortmund GmbH, although it didn't get permission to build the first 850-meter runway until 1969, and that wasn't completed until 1983. It was extended to 1,050 meters in 1987 and finally reached 2,000 meters in 2001. 47 Regiment, Royal Artillery, arrived at Fliegerhorst Dortmund-Brackel from Crookham in Hampshire in the summer of 1959 and was in fact the first occupational regiment to be stationed there. We didn't know it at the time, but it does explain why a few of the local residents adopted such a hostile attitude towards us. 47 Regt. (RA) stayed until 1965, after which the regiment was disbanded the following year.
Thereafter Napier Barracks was occupied by 36 Heavy Air Defence Regiment on two occasions, 1967-68 and 1971-77 and the Canadair drone was based there 1982-87. The photos available from Old Soldiers revisiting the area show the buildings in a sad state of dilapidation and neglect from at least 1987 onwards. As far as I can ascertain the entire British garrison of seven camps at Dortmund was finally abandoned for good in 1995 after many years of disuse.
Update April 2009
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Credits:
Deutsche Lufthansa -
Stadt Dortmund -
Horst Münter -
Holger Sprick -
Nick Edwards -
Bernhard Weiss