Airport Stories - Berlin Tempelhof Airport 

I remember arriving into Tempelhof in the late sixties. That enormous curved terminal seemed so imposing as we taxied towards it. The aircraft stopped and we disembarked UNDER COVER. Wow, that was truly impressive.

My grandma remembers this airport when her flight was hijacked. She was a flight attendant based in Gdansk, and it always seemed the Gdansk flights getting hijacked, she says after the 2nd hijacking she wasn't even suprised about it, as it was the easiest way to cross the iron curtain

It's also been used for the last couple of years as the site for the Berlin Formula E race weekend, with part of the track going under the overhang.

I served at Tempelhof from 61 to 64. Thank you for this histoy.

My daughter and I went on a 2 hour guided tour of the airport this week, it is a fascinating structure, the scale of which is amazing. The site is well worth a visit if in Berlin.

Excellent video, very interesting, and the absence of any music enhances your wonderful narration. Thank you.

I have not been to Tempelhof, but remember reading about it in newspapers, magazines and various articles in the 1970's -90's. The archetecture was a masterstroke of Ernst Sagebiel.

Was stationed in Berlin 1975 to 1978 Tempelhof was a very interesting building and wathching your video brought back fond memories thank you

Thank you for this history lesson. Very much appreciated.

This is absolutely spiffing!

Another great video, so informative thank you 😊

Sorry, there are plenty of mistakes in this clip. Civil service to Berlin started in May 1946, and not 1945. British civilian carriers did not land at Tempelhof durring the airlift. They used Gatow and Tegel. Freddie Laker however did to some degree got involved in flying east german refugees out of Tempelhof to West Germany durring the fifties. Commercial operations to Tempelhof didn´t started in 1951. That´s when BEA moved their traffic from Gatow to Tempelhof. Air France started flights to Tempelhof in 1950. The landing of a 727 in Dcember 1964 was a demonstration by Boeing. Sceduled sevice with that type didn´t started until 1966. BEA started Bac 1--11 service in 1968 und durring that year also used Comet 4Bs. The 4 powers agreement of 1972 did resulted in a decline of passenger numbers, but the move of Pan Am and BEA to Tegel was long planed with the builing of the new Terminal at Tegel in order to cope with higher demands. Charter flights where already concentrated at Tegel in 1968 with flights operated by Dan Air, Laker Airways and Modern Air. Lufthansa did not fly children out of Tempelhof in, that was Schoenefeld. And British AIrways did not fly out of Tempelhof after the reeunification either. Never the less, US presidents Carter and Regan landed in Tempelhof, while visiting Berlin. Lockheed brought an L1011 to Tempelhof durring a european demonstration tour in 1973 and Pan Am had a 747SP in for the 1976 US Air Force open house and used 747-121 N741PA in June 1987 to transport 300 journalists into Tempelhof, accompanying President Reagan. The US Army had an aviation detachment based there until august 1994. That was the last US military unit to leave the airport.

This channel deserves more subs.

Hey Ruairidh could you do a video on the rise and fall of the Lockheed Tristar please?

I was stationed in the barracks there in 1982 before moving into an apartment in the Schonefeld district of Berlin. Such an incredible city. Wonderful people.

I really enjoy your content!

It's Sunday, and I can't stop binge watching this channel. Subed immediately. Great documentaries. Very nice.

If I could go back in time, one of the aviation relating things I’d do (besides fly on Concorde and fly into Hong Kong Kai Tak), is fly in on a commercial flight into here because of how unique this place was!

I believe I may have been one of the last pilots to ever receive a corridor check before the corridors were abandoned with the re-unification. I have a great picture of our squadron’s C-20 sitting under the cover while we waited for Chancellor Kohl. We had no idea what was about to take place but evidently the leadership of Germany understood as we were kept busy flying both the Chancellor and President Weisacker into the city since they were forbidden from flying on a West German aircraft. Several years before this, I flew a C-141 into the airport and was amazed you could see people’s TV through the apartment windows on either side of the flight path as you approached the runways. It was a tight fit. I remember the base commander telling me there were lowers levels of the building that were flooded and no one knew what was down there. I was amazed and still awed by the size of the terminal.

Heard a story regarding the movie bunker under the airport: As it was highly flammable film, a soviet soldier lighting his cigarette accidentaly started a fire.

A Excellent Video.. Highly Recommended.. Thank You Very Much For Sharing..

Great video, love your narration on the Tempelhof airfield, really adds to its historical perspective.

Please do LCNC Nicosia airport next I cant get enough of these videos

I was here in 1959, I used one of those elevators that one hops into (not at the airport)

One of the best content out there!! And incredibly interesting

Great video. I was station in Berlin from 1975 to 1977.I flew into the airport many times.Also,went to social events at the Silverwings.

Another 👍, Mr MacVeigh! You're the best!

Great video with a lot of historical information. I thought that some of the pictures of the early airlines were especially good. Thanks for posting.

Another great video which has been thoroughly researched. Personally I like the style of narration - A calm delivery with pauses is ok with me 👌👍

Was a lifetime wish to visit Tempelhof, my friends and I landed in their PA 28 Warrior a few weeks before it closed in 2008. Is my prized logbook entry. The apron was a huge parking lot covered in light aircraft. The interior of the building was amazing.

Thank you for the interesting upload. Glad to see this wonderful building is still around. I guess if it was in the UK it would have been torn down, like many other interesting building for more housing.

Thanks for a wonderful documentary on Tempelhof. I was based there late 60's/early 70's with BEA. Fond memories of the West Berlin of those days (and ice skating at the Europa Centre).

Excellent video, thank you. I enjoyed using Tempelhof when I was living in Berlin because it was so central and convenient to get to with the subway. I remember thinking, every major city ought to have a Tempelhof like airport, right in the middle of the city.

I was stationed there 1961-1964 USAF. Berlin Air Traffic Control Center. Thanks for the history.

Wow ... This is a really amazing video! Thx

That was great !! Thanks

Great presentation, I really enjoyed it. At time of writing I am scheduled for a tour of the airport and buildings. You have to sign up for it well in advance. I was in Berlin a few weeks ago and there wasn't a chance to get on a tour, so I am going back this week specifically for this.

i started and landed a few times there... i can remember it very well (untill i was 13 it was open)... i lived just a few hundred meters away on mehringdamm and as far as i know it was not noisy and i was living on the top floor...

Very informative! Great video, subscribed

A very enjoyable Video 10/10

Excellent documentary of a fascinating place. My father used to organise charter flights for works outings around 1961/2 and he always told me one of those trips was the first ever charter flight into Berlin Templehof. I've no reason to doubt it but he was given to embellishment, he defo went there but the first? I just don't know. He'd created a little company called Blue Skies Travel, which made nominal profit but he did manage to sell the name for a decent amount. He claimed to have met Freddie Laker a few times, but again, I suspect that was just to sound good at dinner parties! I love your documentaries (sorry, not into trains!) but this had a relevance to me so was doubly interesting. Thank you.

I was there recently. It's beautiful!

Lucky to have flown in/out of all three commercial Berlin airfields.

The only thing I (thought I ) knew was that in time for the 1936 Olympics, Templehof was the state of the art airport, and was the model for all future modern airports. For the first time ever aeroplanes landed and parked by the terminal allowing passengers to be under cover. Also Arrivals were separated from Departures etc. and the modern airport was in essence invented.

Wonderful explanation of a treasured facility by an obviously skilled British crew.

Very interesting !!

I my self, my son and a friend landed at Tempelhof june 2006 VM football. We flew as passanger on a Sterling Boeing 737 from Copenhagen and I have a picture some where of that. :)

Really enjoyed your video, hope to visit it someday

Amazing building. ☮

Very interesting documentary and very well done. Too bad it's closed. Hopefully it will reopen for private and limited commercial traffic. Airports are a vital necessity.

Really interesting video, but a little more research would have helped. The Berlin Airlift was by no means only into Tempelhof Airport but also into RAF Gatow in the south-west of the city and to Tegel where the French Air Force were based. At no time could Berlin have had a border with the Soviet Union! There was a border with the German Democratic Republic, which was under the control of the USSR, and a border ran through the middle of the city between the allied sectors of the city and the Soviet sector, which was the capital of the GDR. Also, the air corridors into West Berlin led not only to Tempelhof, but also to the airfields at RAF Gatow and Tegel.

Very good.

I had the chance to visit it (they give tours in English and German) and it's really worth it and a beautiful structure.

My friend lives near Templehof and was based there for much of his career. He has much nostalgia for the site. It would make an impressive multi activity park, a greenspace for flora and fauna.

interesting to hear that there were flights by lufthansa and cirrus air from berlin to the tiny mannheim airport, which is a mere twenty minutes drive from the home of late chancellor helmut kohl in oggersheim...

Great. Another railway video coming soon?

Templeholf airport should be designated and preserved as a historic site before plans have it demolished.

I had the privilege of visiting this airport back in 2005 with my dad.

Is this the build where they were shooting some "Counterpart" tv series stuff? Looks super similar.

Are there any remains of the original Templar buildings from the 13th Century or were they completely bulldozed away for the military buildings and the airfields? Will any archaeological dig be done to see what if anything is left?

The terminal was represented by USNS Treasure Island admin.building in Indiana Jones Last Crusade,also was the court martial scene for the Caine Mutiny

Tempelhof is likely to become a permanent racing facility similar to Mirabel airport

The airport and terminal was also used as a campsite in 2015 to house Syrian refugees when Angela Merkel gave the go-ahead for the refugees to enter the country.

As I recall, the city referendum resulted in a vote to keep the airport open, however the participation threshold needed to make it valid was not reached and so the original decision stood. This raises the interesting possibility that if more people had voted to close the airport it might have stayed open!

What happened with the other films?

Augustus the strong was never a Prussian king. He was King of Saxony at a time when Prussia and Saxony were competitors for the reign in Poland, although Augustus never went to war with Prussia...

Small sidenote: during the Nazi era Tempelhof was pronounced 'Tempelhoof'. No idea why, I just recently found out aswell.

Great pronunciation of German words! Something rare when hearing native English speakers try to say German words and names.

Such a shame they didn't keep it open as a general aviation airfield.

Could you make one on Le Bourget and Croydon?

There have been some car races held on the runways & access roads.

Great content! One suggestion: if you cut out the long breaks the pacing would be so much better and the video more interesting

With that much space it would make a great aviation museum

Sabena and SAS could only fly to THF on charters until 1990.

I feel that your pauses between sentences are a Beat too long. - but this is a good well made and interesting video.

i miss the music

Lest we forget!:-| 🖖

Why do you state that Templehof was THE airport for the Berlin airlift? without mentioning ther others? Gatow (in the British sector) and Tegel (in the French sector) were just as vital as receiving airports. The story of the expansion of Tegel is particularly impressive. (Built by military engineers and German civilians in 49 days.) Gatow received more than a third of all Airlift flights..over 110,000....

An excellent history video..such a pivot in the survival of germany after the llWW...my father was involved in that time as a engineer with Freddie Laker and another Ronnie Myhill...and then back go the UK .. southend airport..as can be seen with the Bristol Freighters... Thank you for that a ther little puzzle piece solved👍👏👏 Thank you

Please do Munich - Riem.

Funny you should mention Lufthansa's CityLine - well, I suppose not so much funny as surprising - but in lieu of typical 2 or 3 week holidays, my son (born in the early 80s) and I often opted for long weekend city-hopping, and airlines such as CityLine, which we discovered more or less by accident when our flight to London was cancelled, turned out to offer very different experiences, such as flying from Frankfurt to Heathrow or Gatwick not via some short-haul two-engine boring Airbus jet channelling future Ryan Air or Air Berlin cattle runs, but landing right in the middle of London at London City Airport on an Embraer (or Bombardier?) turbo-prop. PS: For some reason, though I used to fly into Berlin more or less regularly, my first thought when hearing Tempelhof Airport has always been Wilder's "One, Two, Three" (1961) film ( ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-bKaRLlGPfAE.html ), which begins and ends at that location. Not only do I immediately see Jimmy Cagney yelling "Sitzen machen!!" at his newly faux-denazified office staff which insists on standing at attention and clicking their heals every time he walks in the room, but of Aram Khachaturian's "Sabre Dance". It's positively pavlovian.

Sure it could be a regional smaller aircraft airport

The civilian version of the Air France "C-54" would be properly called a DC-4.

I have landed at this airport many times in war thunder.

Also in 1972, it became easier to transit the DDR via surface routes.

24:05 - AS the final plane took off, the pilot was heard to say: 'Vee Russians got ze last laugh afterl all'. ☮

Between mid 1950s and 1972 flew into Templehof to visit to visit my Grandparents. Invariably Glasgow-London-Dusseldorf-Templehof. As a child and young man it was absolutely thrilling. The last time I saw my Grandparents together was in foyer of Templehof. It will always hold a special place in my heart.

Marvel's civil war and hunger games were both filmed their.

I visited in 2002 ostensibly to go to the toilet. I couldn’t believe that there were working bomb shelters under the building!

I think it is also being used now - partially, at least - to house refugees and migrants.

I heard the news that after the lockdown, Brandenburg will open and Schoenfeld and Tegel will be closed

for some time it was also the biggest building on the planet

Great video, but what is that horrible noise on the audio. It's like a high pitched throbbing sound and it's so overpowering on this video!

Fantastically researched video, but dear god man... those pauses...

Tempelhof, do not demolish

why do you keep pausing?

Airport in Berlin in 1920s?

What did Stalin's slave labor build? And where were THEY "housed"???

'Germania' is pronounced with a hard 'G'.

So sad, this iconic airport. It will be turned into a refugee camp 😂 unbelievable. And when they say its temporary it will be forever. You know how it goes.