Maurice Bishop International Airport

Grenada / Saint George / Saint Georges /
 international airport  Add category
International Airport (IATA: GND, ICAO: TGPY) is located in the parish of St. George's. The town of St. George's is about 5 miles north of the airport and is the capital of the island nation of Grenada. The airport is located on Point Salines, the most southwestern point of the island.

In the early 1980s, the pro-Marxist Grenadan government invited Cuban construction teams to build the airfield, with the goal of allowing large inter-continental Soviet transports and bombers to use the facility. The rapid developemnt of the facility was one of the key reasons the U.S. decided to intervene and oust the island's government.

The improved airport was chosen as the jump off point for the invasion of the island by the United States. In OCT 1983 over 500 Rangers from 1st and 2nd Battalions of the United States Army 75th Ranger Regiment conducted a daring daylight low altitude parachute assault onto the Airfield. Despite heavy resistance from paramilitary and Cuban military forces, the Rangers secured all of their objectives on the airfield quickly.

The seizure of the airfield allowed follow-on United States Air Force C-141 transport planes to land and unload paratroopers from the 82nd Airborne Division.
Wikipedia article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maurice_Bishop_International_Airport
Nearby cities:
Coordinates:   12°0'15"N   61°47'12"W

Comments

  • Is that cause of 1983 Invasion, "Urgent Fury" ? U.S. President Ronald Reagan pointed to this airport as the potential threat posed by Grenada towards the United States (by constructing facilities to aid a Soviet-Cuban military build-up in the Caribbean and to assist Soviet and Cuban transporting weapons to Central American insurgents) Even with the help of Cuba and USSR it wood take years to make it usefull !!!
This article was last modified 5 years ago