Berlin Wall Airlift Airfields

The Berlin Airlift’s great construction feat: Tegel airport was built from nothing in around 90 days by 19,000 Berliners – more than 40 per cent of them women – working around the clock in the French sector. Its 2,428-metre runway was the longest in Europe when the first aircraft landed in November 1948. When two Soviet-controlled radio masts obstructed the approach path, the French commandant Jean Ganeval had them dynamited. Tegel went on to become West Berlin’s main airport, with its iconic hexagonal terminal, until it closed in 2020; the site is now being redeveloped as a technology and residential quarter.

RAF Gatow in the British sector was one of the Berlin Airlift’s three airfields, handling the British share of the lift while Sunderland flying boats landed on the nearby Havel. Throughout the Cold War it remained the Royal Air Force’s Berlin station, its radar watching over the air corridors. Handed to the Bundeswehr when the British left in 1994, it is now the Military History Museum Berlin-Gatow (Luftwaffenmuseum), with more than 100 aircraft, air-defence systems and Cold War exhibits in the historic hangars and on the former airfield. Entry is free.