Flughafen Berlin-Tempelhof

[nuuumannn]

A few years ago when I was in Europe for the 75th anniversary of Overlord, I went to Berlin and went on a tour of the big terminal at Tempelhof, now closed. Here are some images.

Tempelhof is today located on Platz der Luftbrucke, literally, place of the Air Bridge, harking back to its Airlift days.

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Exterior facade. Tempelhof is the second largest building in the world in terms of floor plan size, the biggest is of course the Pentagon, becoz, well, USA.

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Interior corridor to the restaurant.

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The restaurant counter.

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View from the Restaurant.

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Tempelhof Aerodrome was jointly owned by Lufthansa and the Junkers aircraft building company and although the massive terminal was finished before the war, it never saw a single fare paying passenger under Nazi rule. During the war it was used as an aircraft manufacture and overhaul facility run by the Weser Fluzeugbau and over 1,000 Ju 87 Stukas were built on site. A photo taken from roughly the same spot as the one above.

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Departures board next to a boarding gate.

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Boarding gates. Tempelhof is a marvel of architectural design. Entirely balanced on the enormous T-shaped steel beams, which take the weight of the overhang, the concrete terminal provides the counterbalance to the structural load of the overhang.

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During the war the previous terminal built by Lufthansa and funded by Junkers was in use. It sat where the clump of bushes is. It was destroyed by the advancing Soviet army in 1945.

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The overhang was designed so that seating that could hold thousands could be draped down from it, for air displays and rallies that celebrated the Reich, but the stadium was never erected. That massive radar tower housed a very powerful search radar that could see some distance into East Germany, the Osties not being aware of just how much intel gathering went on from Tempelhof.

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The C-54 was delivered to the airfield by the Candy Bomber himself, Gail Halvorsen, and was displayed outside the terminal next to a C-47 for many years, the latter now at the Deutsches Technikmuseum in downtown Berlin.

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The admin block where ramp facilities were managed from. The restaurant was on the first floor, which is actual ground level, as we'll see later. Tempelhof is built within a natural depression and the ramp is located below ground level.

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Looking toward the control tower.

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More to come.

[nuuumannn]

More from Tempelhof.

Within these hangars it is hoped to relocate some of Berlin's museums to make use of the space, including the Alliertenmuseum, which has a Hastings that took part in the airlift.

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A sliver from a bygone era.

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The terminal entrance. There was a function on in the arrivals hall so we couldn't go in there. On the platform at the very top of the terminal sat a massive metal Reichsadler.

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This is its head, the Soviets knocked the sculpture from its perch but when the Americans took over that sector of Berlin they mounted its head outside the carpark.

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Here's another.

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This was taken below ground next to one of the wings in front of the big semi-circular terminal.

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Several storeys up we can see how much of Tempelhof is set below ground. The roof of the concrete structure with the tunnel opening is ground level.

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Tempelhof opened for business in 1950 and its new custodians were the USAF, who built extensive facilities for its occupants. This is a bowling alley.

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A tastefully decorated bar.

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More entertainment for the troops.

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This area is directly above the arrivals hall, where a false roof was installed, as when originally built the roof of the arrivals hall stretched six storeys high, in typical Nazi grandiosity. The scorching came from a fire during Soviet occupation. Marble panels were removed to aid in finishing passenger areas that remained incomplete after the exterior was finished by the Nazis.

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This big picture hanging in the upper mezzanine gives an idea of the sheer size of the structure. That's a C-5 Galaxy to the right.

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More to come.

[nuuumannn]

The last from Tempelhof.

Designed by Ernst Sagebiel, the massive terminal was built in part by slave labour and a ready supply came from a Konzentratzionslager built on site, which was across the road from a notorious Gestapo run prison known as Columbiahaus, for that extra motivation to work. Columbiahaus was so named because it and the airfield sat on Columbiastrasse, named after the Bellanca WB-2 "Columbia" flown by American Clarence Chamberlin, who flew to Germany non-stop in June 1927.

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This picture clearly illustrates why Tempelhof was closed in 2008.

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Below the terminal was a network of bomb shelters, as if the Germans knew what was coming. They were painted up with German folk tales especially for the families huddled within them during Allied bombing raids.

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Conveniently, there was also a squash court down there.

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With a floor space of 300,000 square metres, the terminal is 1.23 kilometres in length and is supported on its exterior face by 16 towers.

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Tempelhof is currently council owned and although much of the enormous space is empty there are some 100 residents in the building, occupying a small portion of the 46,000 sq metres of offices and corridors.

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Directly across the road is the monument to the airlift, with its three prongs representing the three air corridors to Berlin over East Germany.

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At its base are the names of Allied personnel who lost their lives during the year-long effort.

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That's all from Tempelhof. More images here: www.flickr.com/photos/147661871@N04/albums/72177720301924400/with/52342391184/

Thanks for looking.

[thebrads]

Very interesting, thanks for posting

[Deleted]

My jaw is agape - I knew Tempelhof was big, but not THAT big. Incredible! Thank you so much for sharing, Grant! A truly fascinating start to my day.

[nuuumannn]

Thanks Zac, when I lived over that way I flew into and out of Tempelhof a few times as I was dating a girl in Berlin. Somewhere I have prints of the interior of the arrivals hall and the mural commemorating the airlift on the wall, but I can't seem to find them.