Berlin Wall Airlift Airfields — Inner City

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.