As the historic Berlin-Tempelhof Airport closes its doors today(Friday 31st Oct) it's only right to dip into the Flight Archives and pick out a few highlights from its rich history.
The early years saw Templehof used as trialling grounds for such prototype aircraft as the Hoffmann, Zipfel's Voisin Aeroplane, and even Orville Wright who made a "spectacular flight before the Kaiser" in a visit in 1909.
The massive Tempelhof terminal building as we know today was built during the Second World War during which the airport played an important role for the Nazis.
In 1949 the airport was thown into the global spot light as it played the leading role in The Berlin Airlift.
For those of you who wish to reminisce further there's a great image gallery on the Berlin Airport website ...
on November 2, 2008 6:51 PM | Reply
A Tempelhof VR scene, shot in August 2007 can be seen here:
http://www.zmetro.com/archives/011782.php
on November 10, 2008 7:02 PM | Reply
During the Vietnam War, I was stationed for awhile at Ft. Hood, TX. I was with the 1st Armored Div., 501st MP Co. While with that unit I met a 1st Lt. who at one time as a enlisted man, was stationed in Berlin, on the Berlin Wall. He was a MP Dog Handler. He told a couple of us that during the Russian attack on Berlin a number of high ranking Nazi officials and their families and "others" took refuge UNDER Templehof. Along with these individuals was a lot of
LOOT taken by them. As the Red Army approached Berlin this became common knowledge of that fact. There was supposed to be between 4 to 6 floors below that airport for storage and also was used a bomb shelter.
The Russian got into the second level and stopped. They them flooded the rest of the 4 to 5 floors below, drowning all of the one below. After World War II was over, sometime between 1946 to 1947, the staircases were sealed by concrete.
IS THIS TRUE?