Today's
General-Steinhoff-Kaserne was between 1934 and 1994 home to an airfield, first used by the
Luftwaffe as a staff and technical college,
Luftkriegsschule II, and then by the
Royal Air Force and
Army Air Corps as
RAF Gatow. RAF Gatow has the unlikely distinction of having been home during the
Berlin Airlift to the only known operational use of
flying boats within central Europe, when the RAF used
Short Sunderlands to transport salt from
Hamburg to Berlin, landing on the
Havelsee lake. The airfield was handed back to the Luftwaffe on 7 September 1994 and was kept in use as an airfield for a very short time, being closed to air traffic in 1995. It is now called
General-Steinhoff-Kaserne and is home to some non-flying Luftwaffe units, and the
Luftwaffen Museum der Bundeswehr. This is the museum of the Luftwaffe which has many displays (including historic aircraft) and much information on German military aviation and the history of the airfield. Admission to the museum is free, and full details of the museum and how to get there are on the museum's website The history of RAF Gatow and of western forces in Berlin from 1945 to 1994 is told in the
Alliierten Museum (
Allied Museum) [http://www.alliiertenmuseum.de/. Also on the site of the former RAF station, but not part of
General-Steinhoff-Kaserne, is a school, the
Hans-Carossa-Gymnasium, and houses for government employees of the
Federal Republic of Germany. This has been from 2003 part of the district of Berlin-Kladow. ==References==