Amarda Road Airstrip | |||||||||||||||
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| Summary | |||||||||||||||
| Airport type | Defunct | ||||||||||||||
| Owner | Ministry of Defence[1] | ||||||||||||||
| Operator | Indian Air Force[2] | ||||||||||||||
| Location | Rasgovindpur,Odisha, India | ||||||||||||||
| Built | 1940 | ||||||||||||||
| Elevation AMSL | 130 ft / 43 m | ||||||||||||||
| Coordinates | 21°48′18″N087°02′49″E / 21.80500°N 87.04694°E /21.80500; 87.04694 | ||||||||||||||
| Map | |||||||||||||||
  Amarda Road Airstrip Location in Odisha Show map of Odisha Amarda Road Airstrip Amarda Road Airstrip (India) Show map of India | |||||||||||||||
| Runways | |||||||||||||||
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Amarda Road Airstrip, also known asRasgovindpur Airstrip is a former wartime airfield located near Rasgovindpur village inMayurbhanj district ofOdisha,India. It was used by theRoyal Indian Air Force duringWorld War II.
The Amarda Road airstrip, as it was called in war terminology, spreads across an area of nearly 900 acres.[3] Built in the 1940s at a cost of Rs 3 crore, it was eventually abandoned after the war.[4] It was probably named as Amarda Road Airfield because of the nearby Amarda Road railway station. The airfield was used byNo. 136 Squadron RAF,[5]No. 177 Squadron RAF[6] andNo. 607 Squadron RAF. The 'Air Fighting Training Unit', formed in February 1943, was also based here.
As an airfield, Amarda Road fell on the supply route for theNationalist Armies of China in their fight against the Japanese. Aircraft of the RAF and theUnited States Army Air Forces (USAAF) would regularly fly from this space toChina viaChabua (Dibrugarh),Jorhat andVijaynagar across the infamous hump route over Arunachal and East Tibet.
Amarda Road and other neighbouring airfields -Dhalbhumgarh,Dudhkundi,Salua,Digri,Salbani andChakulia - formed a web of airfields created by the Allies to stop the impendingJapanese advance in the east. During the war, Amarda Road was, to put it simply, a battle hub. After the war was over, most airfields, including this one, fell into disuse. Today, only theKalaikunda airstrip, which was declared an Air Force Station in 1954, exists.
Eight decades after the base was built, the 11,000 feet (3,400 m) concrete runway is still intact, though the buildings that once cluttered the edges are gone.
There are proposals to renovate the airstrip for future operations underUDAN scheme from 2022.[7][8] As of November 2022, theGovernment of India and theMinistry of Defence have cleared for the airstrip to be developed as a commercial airport by acquiring a land area of 160 acres, and developing it at a cost of ₹ 25 crores.[3][9]
