Soesterberg began as a private venture on the heath between Utrecht and Amersfoort. According to the Soesterberg Movements history, two car dealers from The Hague, Verwey and Lugard, laid out an airfield there in 1910; the English Wikipedia gives 1911. Both agree the Dutch army took the field over in 1913, and the Nationaal Militair Museum dates the founding of the army’s aviation department, the Luchtvaartafdeeling, to 1 July 1913. The museum calls Soesterberg the bakermat, the cradle, of Dutch military aviation.

The start was modest. The Ministry of Defence’s own history says Dutch military aviation began in 1913 with one aircraft; secondary sources name it as the Brik, flown by a department of four pilots and joined within months by three French Farman HF.20s. The official history then records a rapid expansion. Soesterberg was the centre of all of it: training, maintenance and the first attempts to turn a handful of fragile biplanes into a military arm.

The Netherlands stayed neutral in the First World War, and Soesterberg flew border patrols rather than combat missions. Foreign aircraft that strayed across the border and landed were impounded; by 1918, according to the Soesterberg Movements history, about 70 of them had ended up on Dutch soil, and serviceable machines were used for training. By 1938 the field was judged too small for a modern air arm, and the decision was taken to build three more military airfields elsewhere in the country.

The sources differ on how the field fell. The Soesterberg Movements history says the Germans bombed the base at the start of the invasion in May 1940; the Luftwaffe airfield study by Henry deZeng says the airfield was taken intact, and the English Wikipedia dates the German occupation to 15 May 1940, the day after the Dutch capitulation. The two accounts are compatible: the field could be bombed in the opening days and still be captured with its buildings largely usable.

From about 1 June 1940 the Germans rebuilt Soesterberg as a major Fliegerhorst. By early 1941 there were three camouflaged concrete runways of 1,700, 1,350 and 1,250 metres, hangars and shelters for 100 aircraft, repair workshops, command and flak bunkers, underground fuel storage, a large ammunition dump and barrack camps. deZeng lists bomber units including Kampfgeschwader 4 (June 1940 to July 1941), II./KG 40 (September 1941 to March 1943) and the staff of KG 2 (December 1941 to March 1944).

The Nationaal Militair Museum records that large Heinkel and Dornier bombers flew from the field against London soon after the capitulation; the Soesterberg Movements history names the He 111 and the Do 217. The Allies struck back repeatedly. deZeng records two raids by US Ninth Air Force B-26 Marauders on 8 March 1944, a large RAF Lancaster day raid on 15 August 1944 and a second on 3 September 1944 that forced the Germans to evacuate by mid-September. The order to close the field came on 28 February 1945, and the last Germans left on 11 April 1945, wrecking it as they went.

Canadian troops liberated the airfield in May 1945, and rebuilding took until 1951. The English Wikipedia gives 5 August 1951 as the date the Royal Netherlands Air Force declared Soesterberg operational again, in the air-defence role. Gloster Meteors came first, followed by Hawker Hunters and F-86K Sabres; 325 Squadron flew its Hunters from here until it was disbanded in August 1968, and 326 Squadron also flew Hunters from the field.

The early jet years were costly. The Soesterberg Movements accident index lists 54 entries between 1951 and 1990 for aircraft based at, or lost at, Soesterberg. In 1952 alone it records eight separate Meteor accidents, two of them involving two aircraft each. The first on the list set the tone: on 20 September 1951 a Spitfire crashed near the base after the student pilot accidentally shut off the fuel supply; the student was killed and the instructor severely injured.

The index is an enthusiast compilation, not an official record, and it counts accidents rather than deaths. It is nonetheless the most complete public list of Soesterberg losses we found, and its individual entries, where they name crews and causes, are used for the incidents on this page. No official Dutch figure for the total number of aircrew killed while flying from Soesterberg was found.

In 1954 the Dutch government agreed to host a US Air Force fighter squadron. The exact start date depends on the source: the 32nd Squadron’s lineage, as cited by Wikipedia, has the first American airmen arriving on 6 October 1954; Soesterberg Movements dates the delivery of 27 F-86F Sabres to 1 November 1954; and the Soesterberg Air Base article gives 16 November 1954 for the arrival of the 512th Fighter-Day Squadron from RAF Manston. The squadron itself celebrated its 25th anniversary on 16 November 1979.

On 8 September 1955 the 512th’s aircraft and people became the 32nd Fighter Day Squadron. The Wolfhounds name came from the unit’s Second World War hunt for U-boat wolf packs in the Caribbean. In 1959 the Dutch government allowed it to add the crown and wreath of the House of Orange to its badge. Its American quarters on the north side of the field were called Camp New Amsterdam, and for the rest of the Cold War the squadron stood 24-hour NATO air-defence alert over the Netherlands.

It worked through five types: the F-86F, the F-100C Super Sabre from August 1956, the F-102A Delta Dagger, the F-4E Phantom II from 6 August 1969 and the F-15 Eagle from 13 September 1978. The F-102 date is disputed: 1959 in one Wikipedia article, 17 December 1960 in another, while the Soesterberg serial listing shows the first aircraft arriving on 20 April 1961. The 32nd Tactical Fighter Group was activated on 16 November 1989.

The Wolfhounds deployed to Incirlik in Turkey for the 1991 Gulf War, where, according to the squadron lineage cited by Wikipedia, Captain Donald Watrous shot down an Iraqi MiG-23 on 28 January 1991, the squadron’s only victory of the war. With the Cold War over, the last three Eagles left for Otis Air National Guard Base on 13 January 1994. The colours were furled on 19 April 1994 with members of the Dutch royal family present, the units were inactivated on 1 July 1994, and the American part of the base was handed back on 27 September 1994.

In September 1968 three Dutch units arrived from Ypenburg: 334 Squadron with Fokker F27 transports, 298 Squadron with Alouette III helicopters, and a search and rescue flight, which moved on to Leeuwarden in 1977. In August 1981 336 Squadron was re-formed for maritime patrol in the Netherlands Antilles with F27s. The Ministry of Defence records that 334 Squadron took its F27s from Soesterberg to Eindhoven in May 1992.

In 1995, according to the English Wikipedia, 300 Squadron joined 298 Squadron at Soesterberg; 298 converted to the CH-47 Chinook and 300 received the AS 532 U2 Cougar. The Ministry of Defence’s Gilze-Rijen history confirms that Soesterberg housed the Alouette, Chinook and Cougar helicopters of the tactical helicopter group alongside Gilze-Rijen. In its last years Soesterberg was essentially a helicopter base with a famous past.

Flying officially ended on 12 November 2008. The last jet to take off was a Greek F-4E Phantom II, delayed by bad weather at its destination, Aviano. The base closed formally on 31 December 2008, and the two helicopter squadrons moved to Gilze-Rijen. These closure dates come from the English Wikipedia and Soesterberg Movements; no official Ministry of Defence closure notice was found online. Soesterberg Movements attributes the closure to defence budget cuts.

The Nationaal Militair Museum opened on 11 December 2014 in a new building at the centre of the former airfield. It merged the Legermuseum from Delft with the Militaire Luchtvaartmuseum, which had already been at Soesterberg. It belongs to the Royal Defence Museums Foundation, set up on 24 June 2014, and King Willem-Alexander granted it the Royal designation from 1 January 2015. Nineteen aircraft and helicopters hang from the ceiling of the main hall, and an observation tower on the sixth floor looks out over the old runways.

The rest of the airfield is now Park Vliegbasis Soesterberg. According to the English Wikipedia, the nature organisation Utrechts Landschap bought about 400 hectares in 2018, excluding the museum and Camp New Amsterdam. Shelters, bunkers and the Air Force monument, where fallen airmen are remembered every year, remain in the landscape. The southern runway is closed from 15 March to 15 August so that ground-nesting birds can breed undisturbed.

Archaeologists now treat the site as layered heritage. A 2020 Internet Archaeology paper on protecting Dutch landscapes used a hardened aircraft shelter at Soesterberg as an example. There is also a memorial to 33 executed resistance fighters, with a service each year on 19 November, and in 2022 a monument was unveiled, in the words of Soesterberg Movements, “to permanently remember the presence of the Americans in Soesterberg.”