Besökare och uppställda flygplan på flygbanan på Bromma flygplats vid invigningen den 23 maj 1936. Civilregistrerade flygplan, bland annat tyska. I förgrunden flaggstänger med svenska flaggan. Text vid foto: "Invigningen av Bromma"
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Flygvapenmuseum - Photographer Okänd fotograf

When Bromma airport opened in Stockholm here in Sweden, it was the first land based airport in the city. Other airports like Barkaby in Järfälla outside the city limits existed but were seen as too cumbersome to get access to.

So Bromma was built.

And in 1936 it was opened with large celebrations and international guests.

If you look closer at the photo you can see aircraft from France and Germany, with the German planes having swastikas on the tail.

Before Bromma, Stockholm had a seaplane airport at Lindarängen, the area of which was later taken over as the freeport of Stockholm expanded over the years, there is still a hangar from back then that is still in use, in this case as a cold storage.

Over they years as Stockholm expanded, airplanes grew in size and speed, requiering longer runways and larger facilities, and in 1962 the new international airport Arlanda opened.

Bromma is still active, mostly serving smaller commuter planes and private jets.

There is a decades long debate on wheather or not to close the airport and when, I suspect it will be closed within ten years or so.

The photo is in the public domain.

  • m_‮fMAEnglish
    2·
    2 months ago

    I wonder how the German planes were received at the time. The swastika has a long history before Nazism, but it seems heavily used by Nazis at that point:

    On 14 March 1933, shortly after Hitler’s appointment as Chancellor of Germany, the NSDAP flag was hoisted alongside Germany’s national colours. As part of the Nuremberg Laws, the NSDAP flag – with the swastika slightly offset from centre – was adopted as the sole national flag of Germany on 15 September 1935.

    The Nuremberg Laws mentioned straightforwardly created legal dehumanization, but it wouldn’t really surprise me if a lot of people just said “not my problem” and didn’t think anything of the swastikas at the time.

    I also wonder if at this point, Germany had started focusing on producing warplanes. A quick search shows this chart, which indicates that they were already ramping up for war: