"THE LUFTWAFFE ACADEMY:
The airfield was originally constructed in 1934 and 1935 by the Luftwaffe as a technical and staff college, Luftkriegsschule 2 Berlin-Gatow, in imitation of the Royal Air Force College of RAF Cranwell. Opened on April 1, 1936, the German Air Force Academy was renamed Luftkriegsschule 2 on January 15, 1940: Air War School, where junior officers are trained to fly.
Prominent figures of the German High Command such as Ernst Udet, Adolf Galland, Hermann Göring, and Adolf Hitler himself frequently attended and encouraged the new generation of pilots Germany would soon need. In Gatow, the German Air Command's war room devised its plans for the blitzkrieg, a history surrounded by unknown facts about World War II.
As the war progressed and Germany's bitter end approached, Gatow survived. In late April 1945, at the end of World War II in Europe, the airfield was occupied by the advancing Red Army. After the division of Berlin into four sectors, the Soviet forces handed over part of the airfield and the access roads, the so-called Seeburger Zipfel, to the British after the Potsdam Conference on August 30, 1945.
Initially, Gatow was called Intermediate Landing Place No. 19, but on August 19, 1945, it was renamed Royal Air Force Gatow, or RAF Gatow for short.
Together with the American airfield at Tempelhof and the French airfield at Tegel, RAF Gatow played a key role in the airlift to Berlin in 1948 during the Western-Soviet crisis that year.
The Berlin Blockade (June 24, 1948 - May 12, 1949) became one of the major crises of the Cold War when the Soviet Union cut off railway, road, and waterway access to West Berlin. Their aim was to force Western powers to withdraw, thus giving Soviet control over the entire city.
In response, Western allies organized the Berlin Airlift to transport supplies to the people in West Berlin. The United States Air Force and the British Royal Air Force made over 200,000 flights in one year, delivering up to 4,700 tons of supplies daily, including fuel and food for the Berliners, making Gatow a crucial point during those tense days.
Following the Berlin Blockade, RAF Gatow served as an airfield for the British Army's Berlin Infantry Brigade and was prepared to return to its supply base role should another Berlin Airlift to West Berlin become necessary.
After the fall of the Berlin Wall and the end of the Soviet Union, the Allies bid farewell to Berlin. Now, the German Federal Armed Forces took over the airport on September 7, 1994, and completely ceased air traffic in early 1995, creating a military history museum there, in a space filled with stories.
The German Aviation Museum was installed in the spaces of this former Luftwaffe and Royal Air Force (RAF) airfield. The focus is on military history, especially the post-war history of the German Air Force. The museum has a collection of over 200,000 items, including 155 aircraft, 5,000 uniforms, and 30,000 books. There are also exhibits (including aircraft) on the history of the airfield when it was used by the RAF.
In this video from the Travel Through History channel, we show in our historical tourism itinerary in Berlin, the history of the Luftwaffe Museum: the Gatow Military Museum, one of the best war museums in the world, and its rich and unique collection, which includes World War II aircraft such as the ME163 Komet, the Heinkel HE 111, and the Focke-Wulf Fw 190, as well as at least one aircraft of each type of warplanes that has ever served in the air forces of East and West Germany.
The history of military aviation goes through Berlin-Gatow... and you can check out this gem of the military world in this video."
4 сен 2023
