I wanted to see Tempelhof Airport mainly because of the Berlin Airlift of 1948. The Soviets had blocked off all land access to West Berlin in an attempt to make that part of the city dependent on their supplying it and hopefully eventually forcing the allied powers to quit the city. The allies responded with a sustained and massive airlift and the Soviets ended the blockade a year later. The para below, from the Wikipedia link above, gives an idea of what had to be airlifted into the city every day.

The American military government, based on a minimum daily ration of 1,990 calories (July 1948), set a total of daily supplies needed at 646 tons of flour and wheat, 125 tons of cereal, 64 tons of fat, 109 tons of meat and fish, 180 tons of dehydrated potatoes, 180 tons of sugar, 11 tons of coffee, 19 tons of powdered milk, 5 tons of whole milk for children, 3 tons of fresh yeast for baking, 144 tons of dehydrated vegetables, 38 tons of salt and 10 tons of cheese. In all, 1,534 tons were required each day to sustain the over two million people of Berlin. Additionally, for heat and power, 3,475 tons of coal and gasoline were also required daily.

My friend Vivion also reminds me that

The airlift was a logistical nightmare. Aircraft flew with a separation of four minutes. If you fluffed your landing approach you flew back to base - there was no possibility of inserting an aircraft into such a tight pattern. If an aircraft got stuck on the runway it was bulldozed off to avoid disrupting the line of aircraft on approach. Aircraft flew with minimum fuel to maximise the weight of cargo carried.

Vivion also drew my attention to The Chocolate Bomber. Well worth clicking on. And here's an interview with the pilot.

And my friend Bob, who had been through Tempelhof just before it closed, has this to say about the interior of the terminal.

The scale of the terminal inside is amazing, especially for a 1930's building, if you had been in it you would not forget. They had some aircraft hanging from the roof and there were more inside than outside that day. There are also some painted decorative elements left over from the original builders, in a politically inappropriate scheme, in some of the closed areas, amazing that they were never painted over.

He also gave me this photo he took at that time.

I was also not sure if I'd been to Tempelhof previously, probably not. In early 1992, en route from Dublin to Vilnius (Lithuania) on EBRD business, I had landed at one Berlin airport and got a taxi to another. I don't know which two of the three main airports were involved then. I'm told it was more likely Tegel & Schönefeld. So it's good to be in Tempelhof.

Incidentally it was through EBRD that I ended up sharing a dinner table in a posh Paris restaurant with Horst Kohler, then a German State Secretary and subsequently President of a united Germany. I also met, through the Bank, Miklos Nemeth, the former Hungarian Prime Minister whose opening of Hungary's borders was instrumental in the fall of the wall. These encounters made me more acutely aware of the whole east/west history during my stay in Berlin.

Tempelhof airport is a huge open green space facility within the city of Berlin. Apart from the former terminal building, which is not open to the public, there are two huge runways, each about a mile long, a fairly wide perimeter road and large areas of grassland. The public come to cycle, skate, skateboard, walk, fly model airplanes and indulge in a host of other outdoor activities.

I'm told that the city is being constantly pressured by developers to sell off some, if not all of the land for development, but, to their credit, the authorities have so far resisteed the temptation. So this great facility and breathing space remains freely available to the people.

A refreshing aspect of Tempelhof is that the authorities, while presumably doing a certain minimum of maintenance, have not tried to tart it up.

You have probably guessed by now that I am principally interested in Tempelhof in its historical context. But don't let that put you off coming along and chilling out in the wide open space. We were there very early on a Saturday morning when most Berliners had not got out of bed. I am reminded by Donal that later in the morning:

There would be hundreds of people spread out about the place all walking, cycling, running, etc... and there would be even more in the afternoon. There are also small bars, food places, and little attractions dotted around.

That said, the place is so vast it just swallows them all up.

You can stand at the end of a runway and imagine how it was during the airlift, or later as a partly commercial airport.

Leaving some of the old aircraft directions in place evokes the air of a ghost town and you are almost expecting a light breeze to drive the tumbleweed along the runway. Except there is no tumbleweed and this is a living facility.

See a Tempelhof FOLLOW ME car

Still, the evocation of the past gives it a certain depth and there is plenty of room to manoeuvre..

The terminal area and apron are fenced off.

But that doesn't stop you sticking the camera lens through the wire and photographing this troop carrier. I assume it's there for show.

A reminder that these hangars once housed American military aircraft

Finally, the tower. I doubt that a fine facility like this would just be abandoned but it is very hard to know what might be going on inside it these days.

There is a great post with all the history and a whack of great photos here.

You ask a question and you get an answer. This from Greg Horine

I just wanted you to know that that big white ball on top of the tower at the end of the Tempelhof Airport building is a long range (300 nautical mile or 556 km range) radar, used by the US Military and now the German government to control air traffic in and out of the city's airports. The radar is a Westinghouse AN/FPS-117 SEEK IGLOO 3 Dimensional (range, azimuth, and height) phased array system, which was a top of the line system back in the 1980s when it was originally installed. I used to work on that radar, and a couple of other radar systems that are no longer there.