Dresden Airport Dresden Airport Dresden Airport is the international airport in Dresden, the capital of the German Free State of Saxony. It is located in Klotzsche, a district of Dresden north of the city centre. It was known in German as "Flughafen Dresden-Klotzsche". Destinations from the airport include a few European cities and several holiday destinations. Elbe Flugzeugwerke (EFW), a subsidiary of Airbus and ST Aerospace, is based at the airport. EFW is mainly tasked with freighter conversions. The airport was opened to commercial traffic on 11 July 1935. Though planned as a commercial airport, its importance to the military increased dramatically
Bombing of Dresden in World War II east-west along the central European uplands. The city was at the junction of the Berlin-Prague-Vienna railway line, as well as the Munich-Breslau, and Hamburg-Leipzig lines. Colonel Harold E. Cook, a US POW held in the Friedrichstadt marshaling yard the night before the attacks, later said that "I saw with my own eyes that Dresden was an armed camp: thousands of German troops, tanks and artillery and miles of freight cars loaded with supplies supporting and transporting German logistics towards the east to meet the Russians". An RAF memo issued to airmen on the night of the attack indicated that a