Abbeville Airfield
airfield in France
The Abbeville Airfield (French: Aérodrome d'Abbeville) or Abbeville Aerodrome (ICAO: LFOI) is an airfield serving Abbeville and located in Buigny-Saint-Maclou, 4 km (2.5 mi) north-northeast of Abbeville, both communes of the Somme département in the Picardie region of France.
History
It is not known when exactly the airfield was built, but it was in use with the British Expeditionary Forces in 1940. Detachments of No. 607 Squadron RAF with Gloster Gladiator biplanes were based here along with No. 151 Squadron RAF Hawker Hurricanes before they were withdrawn to English bases in June 1940 during the Battle of France.
It was seized by the Luftwaffe and became a German Fliegerhorst. The Luftwaffe immediately began preparing for the Battle of Britain and the airfield became home to Zerstörergeschwader 76 (ZG 76) with Bf 110Cs, and later Fw 190As of II./Jagdgeschwader 26 (JG 26) 'Schlageter' in December 1941. Judging from the layout of the airfield, it was the Luftwaffe that upgraded the airfield with three concrete runways in the familiar triangle configuration. The airfield was a major German fighter base between 1940 and 1943 with over 50 aircraft based here. JG 26 gained a considerable reputation with Allied pilots, who referred to the yellow nosed Bf 109s as the "Abbeville Boys", although they were never permanently at the base.
The public source identifies “Abbeville Airfield” as airfield in France. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Abbeville, Airfield and airfield.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 15, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q2234508. Authority coordinates are 50.142, 1.831. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1940, 1941 and 1943.
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This entry incorporates text from “Abbeville Airfield” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.