Rhein-Main Air Base
closed United States Air Force Base in Germany
Rhein-Main Air Base was a United States Air Force air base near the city of Frankfurt am Main, Germany. It was a Military Airlift Command (MAC) and United States Air Forces in Europe (USAFE) installation, occupying the south side of Frankfurt Airport. Its military airport codes (IATA: FRF, ICAO: EDAF) are discontinued. Established in 1945, Rhein-Main Air Base was the primary airlift and passenger hub for USAFE. It was billed as the "Gateway to Europe". It closed on 30 December 2005.
During its lifetime, the base's host airlift wing operated C-130 Hercules and C-9A Nightingale aircraft, as well as supporting many transient C-5 Galaxy, C-141 Starlifter, C-17 Globemaster III, KC-135 Stratotanker, and KC-10 Extender flight operations each day. Daily or weekly contract air passenger flights were also conducted for United States personnel arriving in or leaving Europe.
History
Post-war reconstruction
After the U.S. 7th Army moved through the Frankfurt area, the 826th Engineer Aviation Battalion (EAB), a unit of the IX Engineer Command, arrived at Frankfurt/Rhein-Main Airfield on 26 April 1945. The facility was classified as Advanced Landing Ground (ALG) Y-73. On 11 May 1945, the engineers began the task of clearing rubble and reconstructing major buildings.
The public source identifies “Rhein-Main Air Base” as closed United States Air Force Base in Germany. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Rhein-Main, Base and closed.
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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 Jul 19, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q455936. VIAF identifies the subject as 146803262. The Library of Congress control number is n2007054418. Authority coordinates are 50.035, 8.585. 3 of 4 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1945 and 2005.
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This entry incorporates text from “Rhein-Main Air Base” 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.