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Flughafen Tempelhof: Inside Berlin's Abandoned Downtown Airport
An inside look at Berlin's abandoned downtown airport which was the focal point of the Berlin Airlift. (wp.me) Mehr...
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I have it on good authority that there are multiple underground levels to Tempelhof with elevators to move aircraft up to the surface during WW!!. This was flooded at the end of WW`` and may still be flooded. i was stationed in Berlin from 72 to 73 but did not then know about the many underground levels to the airport. I was told it went down seven levels. My source was a former member of Det. A. l
Wolfgang, you are entirely correct. Tegel is now, by far, the busier of the 2 main Berlin airports. And yet still amazingly user-friendly! It will be a shame when they close it in a year or two, and move to the new Berlin Brandenburg "Willy Brandt" Airport next to Schonefeld. At a projected 27 million passengers per year, it will be bigger than all the others combined. I cannot imagine it will be user friendly, but perhaps legendary German ingenuity will find a way. Good luck to you, Berliners, with your new Brandenburg airport...we are all waiting to see your new design! We hope it will be like a schöne deutsche Mädchen (a beautiful German girl)!
Some additional info: During WWII, Tempelhof was used to assemble Junkers Ju 87 "Stuka" dive bombers and Focke-Wulf Fw 190 fighters.
Just outside the main entrance is the monument to the Berlin Airlift of 1948/49, but I was disappointed by the rundown state of the little park around it when I was last there in 2010. I've never seen so much trash flying around anywhere else in Germany, it looked like it was used as an illegal dumpsite. I hope this was just a temporary thing and that by now it has been cleaned up.
Just outside the main entrance is the monument to the Berlin Airlift of 1948/49, but I was disappointed by the rundown state of the little park around it when I was last there in 2010. I've never seen so much trash flying around anywhere else in Germany, it looked like it was used as an illegal dumpsite. I hope this was just a temporary thing and that by now it has been cleaned up.
Is that a Nord 262 in one of the pictures?
Here's a good video that showcases this airport. Pretty cool place. https://vimeo.com/88765672
Thanks for the pictures and story. My wife and I lived in Berlin in 1985-86. My wife worked with the USAF at Tempelhof, so we spent a lot of time there. I haven't been back to Berlin in 30 years and look forward to see the city and it's airport again.
I always found it amusing at Tempelhof that at the passport checkpoint they only looked at the outside cover of American passports and waved you through. It's good to win the war.