Værløse lies about 18 kilometres north-west of Copenhagen, and its military story begins on the ground, not in the air. The Cold War heritage portal Danmark under Den Kolde Krig, in an entry by Jens Perch Nielsen, dates the Værløse camp to 1910, when the army set it up as a training camp and barracks for the defence of Copenhagen. The Nature Agency’s history of the site gives the detail: the Army Act of 1909 paved the way, land was bought from 1910, and in 1913 the camp was inaugurated as a tent camp for two battalions.

Flying came in the 1930s. According to the Lex encyclopedia entry by Søren Nørby of the Danish Defence Academy, the Army Air Corps, Hærens Flyvertropper, moved to Værløse in 1934 and kept its base there until the independent air force was created on 1 October 1950. The Cold War portal says the corps laid out the airfield in what became the South Camp (Sydlejren), with five hangars.

The Nature Agency records that the camp was expanded into an air station between 1934 and 1940, and that the expansion went so far that a whole village, Bringe, was removed. By the spring of 1940 Værløse was the main base of Danish army aviation, which is exactly why it was the first target on the morning of the German invasion.

Germany invaded Denmark before dawn on 9 April 1940, and the Danish government ordered no resistance. At Værløse the aircraft had been made ready. The Nature Agency’s history says 45 aircraft stood on the field, armed, loaded with ammunition and bombs and ready to take off. German fighters attacked the camp. The Lex article on 9 April 1940 describes the attack as coming from German fighters shortly before the Danish capitulation took effect.

Only one Danish aircraft got into the air. Its crew, Second Lieutenant G. F. Brodersen and Lieutenant V. Gotfredsen, reached a height of only 50 metres before they were shot down and killed. Lex counts them among the Danish soldiers killed that day, as the two flying lieutenants killed at Værløse. Their memorial plaque lies in front of the main building in the Laanshøj quarter.

The size of the destruction depends on the source. The Nature Agency says that of the 45 aircraft, 11 were totally destroyed, 14 were badly damaged and the rest partly damaged. Lex says that all the other Danish military aircraft parked on the airfield were destroyed. The English Wikipedia article, used here only as a finding aid, says Messerschmitt Bf 110s attacked in five waves over about 45 minutes; no Danish official source read for this page confirms the type, the number of waves or the duration, so they are given here only as that article’s account.

Either way, the morning ended the Army Air Corps as a fighting force. The Germans then took Værløse over. The Nature Agency records that hangars and the concrete roads between them were sprayed with green camouflage paint and that field hangars were dug into the ground to hide German aircraft. Those earth-covered field hangars can still be seen today, and sheep graze the slopes around them.

After the liberation the army returned, and when the army and navy air services were merged into an independent Royal Danish Air Force on 1 October 1950, Værløse became its first headquarters. The Cold War portal states this plainly, and Danish Defence’s own history of the air force records that the headquarters was set up at Vedbæk in 1952. In the early years, Danish Defence says, Værløse was also one of the air force’s two regional commands, alongside Karup.

The new air force needed an airfield fit for jets. The Cold War portal records that a new concrete runway for jet aircraft was completed in 1953 as Værløse was expanded in the 1950s. The finding-aid Wikipedia article adds that the runway upgrade was controversial from 1952 and that the eastern command merged with the western one and moved to Karup in 1955; neither point has been confirmed from an official source read for this page.

As the fighter force moved west to the new NATO bases in Jutland, Værløse settled into a different role. The Nature Agency names the two squadrons that made it their home in the 1950s: the transport squadron, which flew for the armed forces’ units, and the rescue squadron, which carried out search and rescue. It also served, in Danish Defence’s words, as a supplementary base for use in crisis and war.

Eskadrille 721, the air force’s transport squadron, flew from Værløse until the base closed. Danmarks Flymuseum’s list of Danish military aircraft since 1945 gives its types: eight C-47A Dakotas from 1953 to 1982, six C-54D and C-54G Skymasters from 1959 to 1977, three C-130H Hercules from 1975 to 2004 and three Gulfstream III jets from 1979 to 2004. The Cold War portal says the squadron also flew Catalinas and carried out VIP flights and missions to the Faroe Islands and Greenland. The squadron’s exact arrival date at Værløse is not confirmed by an official source.

The C-130H needed a large hangar. The Cold War portal records that Hangar 46 was built in 1978 as a hangar and workshop for the Hercules and the Gulfstream III. In the 2000s the Hercules were replaced by C-130Js, which Danish Defence says fly from Aalborg; the squadron left Værløse when the base closed.

Eskadrille 722, the rescue squadron, grew up alongside it. Lex, in an entry by Johannes Lundstrøm, says it was formed gradually in the early spring of 1951; Bell 47D-1s arrived in 1956, seven Sikorsky S-55Cs in 1957 and eight S-61As in 1965. Danish Defence’s 2004 news item says the squadron had its headquarters at Værløse from 1957. Danmarks Flymuseum lists nine S-61As rather than eight, a difference not explained in the sources read.

The S-61A made the squadron famous. Lex notes that there were doubts at first about buying such large helicopters, and that they were silenced in 1966, when five of the eight S-61As and Eskadrille 722 won worldwide recognition for the rescue after the Norwegian ferry Skagerak sank. Rescue crews stood on permanent standby, and the squadron kept detachments elsewhere in Denmark as well as its headquarters here. The S-61A served for 45 years: Lex records that the last ones were retired with a formation flight from Skalstrup to Karup on 16 June 2010, after the Merlin had taken over.

In the Cold War Værløse was developed as a NATO redeployment base: an airfield prepared to receive allied reinforcements in a crisis rather than a home for resident fighter squadrons. The Cold War portal describes the hardened aircraft shelters built for that purpose. In 1974–1977, 84 shelters of this type were built at the six military air stations, each meant for one fighter and fitted with heating so that the aircraft could be kept warm and ready.

The count at Værløse differs by source. The Cold War portal’s entry on the station says 12 shelters were built there between 1973 and 1978, together with a new control tower, an operations bunker, a passenger terminal and hangars. The Nature Agency, which now manages the site, lists 11 F-16 shelters still standing. The sources do not say whether one shelter was demolished or whether the figures are counted differently, so both are given here.

The Nature Agency calls them F-16 shelters because of the type they were sized for; no source read for this page records Danish F-16s being permanently based at Værløse. Today the shelters serve as bases for outdoor activities and can be booked for events, while the older earth-covered field hangars from the German occupation stand nearby. Together they make Værløse one of the few places near Copenhagen where the airfield architecture of both the Second World War and the Cold War can be seen side by side.

The decision to close Værløse came in 1999; the Cold War portal dates the announcement to 25 May 1999. The closure itself is dated differently depending on what is counted. Danish Defence’s history of the air force gives 28 March 2004, Lex says March 2004, and the Cold War portal says operational activities were transferred to Karup, Aalborg and Skalstrup on 1 April 2004. Eskadrille 722 moved its headquarters to Karup in January 2004.

Flying did not stop at once. A Danish Defence news item says the rescue helicopter for eastern Denmark left the former air station at midday on 1 October 2004 and moved to Roskilde Airport, because Værløse was being wound down and could no longer be used in poor weather. The service has been known since then as SAR Roskilde. The film studio now on the site says the area housed the air station until 2008, and the Cold War portal records a final rescue helicopter departure in November 2009; neither later date is confirmed by an official source read for this page.

The site was then divided. Since 1 October 2013 the Nature Agency has managed 349 hectares as a recreational nature area open day and night, where the runway and asphalt taxiways have become, in its words, an eldorado for everyone on foot. Some areas remain fenced because of soil contamination from the defence years. The former North Camp has become the Laanshøj residential quarter, a film studio called Filmstationen occupies 17 hectares in the south-west, and the National Museum opened a store of Cold War army and air force equipment in Hangar 46 on 5 June 2016; it has been closed since 2019.