Practically everyone knows about the Goetz Brewery in Okocim, but hardly anyone knows that on the estate of this family — near the palace and brewery — in the spring of 1915, approximately 1/100 of all aircraft that existed in the world at that time were stationed. Nor that from the airfields of the Okocim hub, the world’s first aircraft to direct the fire of the heaviest howitzer, 420 mm caliber, by radio, took off. The first landing strip — established in late December 1914 — located in a bend of the Uszwica River, adjacent to the road to Nowy Sącz and the palace park of the family that owned the local brewery, the Goetzes, served as a temporary field landing strip directly next to the headquarters of the 4th Army staff, which resided in the palace. The first aviation company to land there was Flik 8. On January 5, 1915, aircraft and supply wagons were deployed there — on the same day, a second airfield in this area — at Jasień Brzeski — also began operating.
A so-called “field airstrip” of an Austro-Hungarian aviation company was not, contrary to appearances, just any randomly chosen meadow. Peasant fields divided by boundary strips were not suitable for this purpose. Spacious manor pastures were selected for airfields; before the aviators’ arrival, engineering units built drainage ditches, and the terrain was — at least roughly — rolled. In the middle of such a launch field, an “island” of tent hangars was organized, and each company usually operated from its own section of the field located opposite their quarters. “Everything was a travelling circus,” as Leonhard Adelt, aviator and war correspondent in Galicia in 1914–1915, wrote.
