The 22nd Air Base (Polish: 22. Baza Lotnicza) is a Polish Air Force base, located near Malbork. It was officially constituted on 1 January 2001, replacing the disbanded 41st Fighter Aviation Regiment. The main unit based there is the 41st Air Tactical Squadron flying MiG-29 fighters.

History

A civilian airfield was established in 1929 at Königsdorf near Marienburg - as it was known then. It was acquired by the Luftwaffe in 1934. Near the airfield was a 100-acre (0.40 km 2 ) Focke-Wulf aircraft production plant that had been moved from Bremen and which produced approximately half of all Focke-Wulf Fw 190s ,and the Stalag XX-B prisoner-of-war camp was nearby. A US Eighth Air Force air raid on the "industrial area in Marienburg" on October 9, 1943, by 96 B-17 Flying Fortresses was called the Marienburg raid by Life magazine. The plant was attacked a second time by 98 B-17s on April 9, 1944.

Post-war, Marienburg became Malbork , Poland; and Soviet Air force units were based there for a few years. In 1952 41st Fighter Aviation Regiment of the Air Force of the Polish Army was formed to be based there, initially equipped with MiG-15 fighters, later replaced with MiG-17s , and from 1964 MiG-21s . In 2001 the regiment was dissolved and its ground and air components separated, to form the 22 Air Base and 41st Air Tactical Squadron respectively. In 2003 the last MiG-21s were retired, and in 2004 the squadron was rearmed with refurbished MiG-29s obtained from Germany.

The base was used by French Air Force aircraft deployed in May 2014 as part of NATO's response to the 2014 Russian military intervention in Ukraine . Initially, Dassault Rafale aircraft were deployed, though on 2 June 2014, four Dassault Mirage 2000 fighters from EC 1/2 and EC 2/5 relieved the Rafales. General Dynamics F-16 Fighting Falcon from the Netherlands and then from Belgium stationed in Malbork until August 2015 when Baltic Air Policing activities were reduced from three to two bases.

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