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It seems like an ordinary story. An old urban airport is shutting down. The facilities are worn out. The neighbors complain about the noise. The runways can’t handle modern jumbo jets. For some reason an Air France flight is the last to take off.
Here’s the rest of the story... https://twitter.com/Quicktake/status/1326570664019578881
Here’s the rest of the story... https://twitter.com/Quicktake/status/1326570664019578881
In the summer of 1948, three years after the end of WWII, the Soviets cut off western Berlin--which consisted of French, British, and U.S. sectors, deep in the heart of the Soviet occupation zone of Germany-- from everything its more than 2 million people needed to survive.
In order to buy time before they had to decide whether to go to war with the Russians or abandon Berlin and Berliners to them, the Americans and British began a ragtag airlift of a few dozen planes carrying what food and supplies they could from west Germany, 24 hours a day.
Tempelhof airbase in the U.S. sector and the British airfield in Berlin, Gatow, were both small and did not have the capacity to handle the number of flights needed to bring both the food and coal the city would need when the weather grew cold.
Everyone from journalists to President Truman’s Cabinet believed that supplying Berlin by air in the winter was a laughable impossibility, but Lucius Clay–the commander of U.S. forces in Europe–began to think otherwise. A new Berlin airbase would be needed to handle the planes.
An open meadow was surveyed in Tegel, a neighborhood in the French sector. It was a few grassy hills, on one of which stood radio towers.
It had been from those towers that the last broadcast of Nazi radio had been transmitted at 1:55 a.m. on May 2, 1945 – as the Soviet flag flew over the Reichstag – “The Führer is dead. Long live the Reich.”
On August 17, Curtis LeMay (who led the Air Force in Europe) wrote to Clay. The “present estimate of the Tegel Airfield is February 1949, of course dependent to a great extent on the severity of the coming winter.”
Three days later, Clay responded. “I don’t accept this February 1949 estimate for Tegel. It is much too long.” They did not have until February.
Construction on the airport at Tegel got underway. A call for workers went out and 17,000 hungry Berliners showed up. Most were ordinary women who labored alongside barefoot peasants, one-time professors, and maimed veterans of Hitler’s army, in three shifts, around the clock.
The wages being offered were low, though it included a daily warm meal of a ladle of potato soup and a hunk of black bread. But the workers said that what really brought them out to the deserted field was the chance to contribute to the survival of their city.
Oftentimes, they would stay after their shift–when they were no longer on the clock–to finish up a job they had begun that day.
An airfield able to handle the steady beating of heavy cargo planes landing all hours of day and night would need runways built with foundations of a minimum depth of two feet. Such an amount of concrete was not available in Berlin, nor was it feasible to fly it into the city.
One American engineer had a realization. Looking around Berlin, he said, “Our own Air Force had the foresight to provide all the material we need over three years ago. There’s enough brick rubble from bombed-out buildings in Berlin to build a dozen runways.”
It was calculated that to build the Tegel runway would require ten million bricks. These had to be picked up by hand, one at a time, from rubble piles or wrung out of decrepit walls.
The Americans got a broken-down, left-behind Russian truck to run and used it to pull three others through the city, collecting the bricks and bringing them to Tegel. There, they were carried into place and pulverized.
On November 5, after less than three months of construction, the first plane landed at Tegel Airport, carrying ten tons of cheese. The French provided an honor band which played the “Star Spangled Banner,” “God Save the King,” and the “Marseillaise.”
At a length of 5,500 feet the runway was the longest in Europe. It was stronger than the average runway in American airports at the time. It had been built almost entirely by hand, by 17,000 hungry Berliners working day and night.
There was, however, one major problem. The two Soviet-controlled Radio Berlin towers were still standing and in use about 400 yards from the runway, presenting a danger to pilots, particularly in the fog. Neither was lit, and both lay directly in the flight path.
The French had been avoiding antagonizing the Russians. They feared the Red Army if war were to come, the Communists had rising power in French domestic politics and the French had seen the democracies of Eastern Europe fall over the previous year.
So the French commandant in Berlin, Jean Ganeval, sent Russian General Aleksandr Kotikov a polite letter requesting the Soviets pull down their two radio towers in the French sector. The Americans were offering to pay for the rebuilding of the towers in a different location.
He received no response. Ganeval called to make an appointment to see Kotikov on the matter. Kotikov did not return his call. Ganeval then simply showed up at Kotikov’s headquarters and asked to see the Russian commandant in person. He was told Kotikov would be unable to see him.
He wrote Kotikov another a letter on November 20. Ganeval told the Russian that he had until December 16 to pull down the towers or action would be taken.
On December 16, just after 9am, the telephone lines to the broadcast station at the towers were cut. Moments later, French military police officers broke into the station offices, ordering the technicians onto buses that would take them to east Berlin. The buses took the long way
A short while later, the American and British officers at Tegel were welcomed into French General Ganeval’s conference room for a special, hastily-called reception. They thought it strange when, after they had all entered, the room was locked shut behind them.
But the French had provided a spread of pastries and drink so the officers shared in the feast without considering whether there was an occasion.
At 10:45 the room rattled with an explosion. They all rushed to the large windows to see the two radio towers collapse into a tangled web of steel. As they stood in stunned silence, they heard Ganeval say softly, “You will have no more trouble with the tower.”
Ganeval announced to the press that the Soviets had ignored his deadline. “I could no longer accept responsibility for possible accidents” at Tegel from the towers.
With the Russian radio station knocked off the air, the manager of west Berlin station sent a note to the Soviets offering to let them broadcast there for an hour that afternoon. There was no reply.
By 2:30 that afternoon, Kotikov called Ganeval asking for a meeting. He was at the Frenchman’s office by 4.
“How could you do it?” Kotikov demanded.
Ganeval's answer was simple: “With dynamite – from the base.”
“How could you do it?” Kotikov demanded.
Ganeval's answer was simple: “With dynamite – from the base.”
The end
