 On 5 April the IX Engineer Command 852d Engineer Aviation Battalion moved in and began patching the bomb craters of the airfield's concrete runway.The airfield was heavily damaged by the Allied bomb attacks and it took a week for the engineers to fill in bomb craters and lay down a 5000' asphalt runway over the concrete runway used by the Luftwaffe.The airfield being designated as Advanced Landing Ground "Y-94 Handorf" on 12 April.