Luftwaffe use, 1934–1945 The airfield was originally constructed in 1934 and 1935 by the
Luftwaffe as a staff and technical college,
Luftkriegsschule 2 Berlin-Gatow, in imitation of the
Royal Air Force College at
RAF Cranwell. The initial personnel came partially from the
Naval Academy Mürwik. Opened on 1 April 1936, the air force college was renamed
Luftkriegsschule 2 on 15 January 1940. Its
satellite airfields were
Güterfelde and
Reinsdorf. Airborne flying training ended in October 1944, due to fuel shortages. From 5 March 1945, aircrew officer cadets were retrained as paratroops, for ground operations which had very high casualties. Clues to the airfield's original use survive in the barrack block accommodation, each block of which was named after a famous German airman of the
First World War, with the airman's bust above the entrance door. The architect was
Ernst Sagebiel, an architect who worked full-time for the Luftwaffe and also designed
Tempelhof Airport. Other surviving features during the entire period of the airfield's use as
RAF Gatow (1945–1994) included light bulbs in the main
hangars, many of which dated from the 1930s.
Royal Air Force and Army Air Corps use 1945–1948 Late April 1945, towards the end of the
Second World War in
Europe, the airfield was occupied by the advancing
Red Army. Following the division of Berlin into four sectors,
Soviet forces relinquished part of the airfield and access roads, the so-called
Seeburger Zipfel to the
British after the
Potsdam Conference in exchange for
West-Staaken on 30 August 1945. Earlier on 25 June 1945, 284 Field Squadron,
RAF Regiment, arrived at Gatow by land via
Magdeburg. Their reception by Soviet troops was extremely hostile, the Soviets attempting to confine 284 Field Squadron behind barbed wire fences, as the Squadron was said to have arrived "too early". This set the pattern for relations, with Soviet checkpoints being set up beside the airfield manned by fully armed and unfriendly troops. RAF Regiment officers occasionally surveyed Soviet positions by air from
Avro Ansons, and the tour of duty of RAF Regiment detachments at Gatow was limited to six months, because of the constant activity occasioned by the Soviet presence and the
Berlin Airlift. and
Lucius D. Clay at RAF Gatow during the Potsdam Conference in 1945 The first landing by a
Royal Air Force aircraft was by Avro Anson
serial number PW698 on 2 July 1945 at 11.55 hours. Initially, Gatow was called
Intermediate Landing Place No. 19, but on 19 August 1945 was renamed
Royal Air Force Gatow, or
RAF Gatow for short. The Station was given the
Latin motto
Pons Heri Pons Hodie, which may be translated as
A bridge yesterday, a bridge today. Among the aircrew who flew in to RAF Gatow was the then RAF Navigator
Errol Barrow. During his distinguished RAF career, Barrow was posted to the personal flight of the Commander-in-Chief of the
British occupation zone in Germany,
Sir Sholto Douglas, as his Navigator. Douglas and Barrow became friends, and Douglas made Barrow
Godfather to his only child. Barrow went on to be instrumental in achieving
Barbados' independence and was the first and third
Prime Minister of Barbados. RAF Gatow was also used as a civilian airport for a limited time. In 1946,
British European Airways (BEA) inaugurated an
RAF Northolt –
Hamburg – Gatow scheduled service at a frequency of six flights a week, using
Douglas DC-3 (
"Pionair" in BEA terminology) and
Vickers VC.1 Viking piston-engined aircraft.
Berlin Airlift, 1948–1949 The Station was modernised with a long concrete runway, using 794 German workers, in March 1947. Along with the
American airfield of
Tempelhof and the
French airfield of
Tegel, RAF Gatow played a key role in the
Berlin airlift of 1948. Initially, about 150
Douglas Dakotas and 40
Avro Yorks were used to fly supplies into Gatow. By 18 July 1948, the RAF was flying 995 tons of supplies per day into the airfield. Alongside the
Royal Air Force and various British civil aviation companies, the
United States Air Force, the
Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF), the
Royal Canadian Air Force (RCAF), the
Royal New Zealand Air Force (RNZAF) and the
South African Air Force all flew supplies into RAF Gatow during the Airlift. On 20 June 1980, the Royal Australian Air Force presented a
Douglas Dakota to RAF Gatow in commemoration of its role. Its aircrew included
Air Marshal David Evans, an Australian airlift veteran. As only British, French and American aircraft were allowed under international law to fly inside the
Allied Air Corridors, the Dakota received the
RAF serial number ZD215. The Dakota is still at Gatow, inside the
German Air Force barracks. In November 1948, the latest RAF transport aircraft, the
Handley Page Hastings, was added to the squadrons flying into RAF Gatow and some aircrews and aircraft were redeployed to train replacement aircrews. Many of these were based at
RAF Schleswigland, near
Jagel, which is currently used by the German Air Force and the
Marineflieger. A Hastings aircraft, which served on the airlift and was later RAF Gatow's 'gate guardian' until the station's closure, is now preserved in the
Alliierten Museum. By mid-December, the RAF had landed 100,000 tons of supplies. In April 1949, commercial airline companies involved in the airlift were formed into a Civil Airlift Division (co-ordinated by British European Airways) to operate under RAF control. Apart from BEA itself, these included a number of
Britain's fledgling independent airlines as well, such as the late
Sir Freddie Laker's
Air Charter, Harold Bamberg's
Eagle Aviation and
Skyways. By mid-April, the combined airlift of all nations' operations managed to make 1,398 flights in 24 hours, carrying 12,940 tons (13,160 t) of goods, coal and machinery, beating their record of 8,246 (8,385 t) set only days earlier. similar to those used during the
Berlin Airlift RAF Gatow has the unique and unlikely distinction of being the base for the only known operational use of
flying boats in
central Europe, during the Berlin Blockade, on the nearby
Wannsee, a lake in the
Havel river. On 6 July 1948, the RAF began using 10
Short Sunderland and 2
Short Hythe flying boats, flying from
Finkenwerder on the
Elbe near
Hamburg to
Berlin. These were supplemented by the flying boat operations of
Aquila Airways, an early post-
war British independent airline that became an operating division of
British Aviation Services. The flying boats' specialty was transporting bulk salt, which would have been very corrosive to other aircraft, but was not as corrosive to the flying boats because of their
anodised skins. The novel
Air Bridge by
Hammond Innes is partially set in RAF Gatow at the time of the Berlin Airlift, and is notable for its accurate descriptions of the Station, including corridors and rooms within it. Some of the descriptions were still accurate some 40 years after the book's publication.
1949–1994 After the
Berlin Blockade, RAF Gatow served as an airfield for the
British Army's
Berlin Infantry Brigade, and was prepared to revert to its role as a supply base, if another Berlin Airlift to
West Berlin ever became necessary. BEA moved to
Tempelhof Airport in 1951, where most of West Berlin's commercial
air transport operations were concentrated from then on.
Britannia Airways and
Autair/Court Line under contract to the
MoD. T10 The
RAF Gatow Station Flight used two
de Havilland Canada DHC-1 Chipmunk T.10s, one of which is now owned by the
Alliiertenmuseum, to maintain and exercise the British legal right under the
Potsdam Agreement to use the airspace over both
West and
East Berlin, as well as the
air corridors to and from
West Germany to the city. In the 1950s the base was also an important centre for intelligence gathering by Royal Air Force Linguists monitoring on a 24/7 basis Soviet air traffic broadcasts from its bases all over Eastern Europe. These aircraft were also used for reconnaissance missions in co-operation with ''The British Commander-in-Chief's Mission to the
Soviet Forces of Occupation in Germany, commonly known as BRIXMIS''. Known from 1956 as
Operation Schooner and then
Operation Nylon, they were authorised, at the highest level, on an irregular basis to carry out covert photographic reconnaissance flights. All flights had to be notified to the
Berlin Air Safety Center (BASC), a quadripartite organisation responsible for authorising all flights in the three Air Corridors and the Berlin Control Zone (BCZ). All the Chipmunk Flight Notification Cards in the BASC were stamped by the Soviets "Safety of Flight Not Guaranteed" due to their interpretation of the 1946 Agreement as excluding flights outside West Berlin. Within the BCZ were many Soviet and
East German military airfields and other installations. After the fall of the Berlin Wall, Chipmunk reconnaissance flights soon ceased and the two Chipmunks were flown to
RAF Laarbruch, in Western Germany to await disposal action. Chipmunk WG466 was flown back to Berlin Tempelhof from RAF Laarbruch on 30 July 1994 and was donated to the
Alliiertenmuseum in Berlin. It is currently on loan to the
Luftwaffenmuseum der Bundeswehr at Gatow, WG486 is still in RAF service with the
Battle of Britain Memorial Flight. RAF Gatow was from 1970 also used by the UK's
Army Air Corps,
7 Aviation Flight AAC, later renamed
No. 7 Flight AAC being based at the station initially flying four Westland Sioux (UK-built
Bell 47) and later three
Westland Gazelle AH.1 helicopters. A Signals Unit (26SU) was also based at RAF Gatow and on the
Teufelsberg in the
Grunewald. 26SU was a specialist
Signals Intelligence unit operated by the RAF on behalf of
GCHQ Cheltenham tasked with monitoring
Warsaw Pact military communications over East Germany and Poland.
Escapes to Gatow from East Germany At least three successful escapes were made from East Germany to RAF Gatow. On 9 April 1978 the two
East German brothers Lothar and Dieter Weber defected by flying a
Zlin Z-42M light aircraft of the
Gesellschaft für Sport und Technik (
GST – an East German paramilitary training organisation) with the call sign DM-WNX to RAF Gatow. The escape had been planned over the previous three years. The aircraft was dismantled and returned to East Germany over the
Glienicker Brücke with painted slogans such as "Wish you were here". On 24 June 1979 an East German glider landed at RAF Gatow, its pilot seeking political asylum. The glider was handed back to East Germany at the
Glienicke Bridge four days later. The flying control surface lock for the rudder bore the message "remove before the next escape". On 15 July 1987, a young
East German, Thomas Krüger, defected by flying a
Zlin Z-42M light aircraft of the
Gesellschaft für Sport und Technik. His first words to the
RAF Police were a request for
political asylum. He was handed over to the civil authorities and received
West German citizenship. His aircraft, registration DDR-WOH, was dismantled and returned to the East Germans (by road) by RAF station flight personnel, complete with humorous slogans painted on by RAF airmen such as "Wish you were here", "Come back soon". DDR-WOH is still flying today, but since 1991 under registration
D-EWOH.
East German invasion plans tank and armoured personnel carrier The closest military neighbour to RAF Gatow was a tank unit of the ''
National People's Army (NVA'') of
East Germany. This was located immediately opposite the airfield, behind the section of the
Berlin Wall which ran along the western side of the airfield, and was clearly visible from RAF Gatow's control tower. The Berlin Wall section opposite Gatow was not in fact a wall, but a wire fence. East Germany claimed that this was a "military courtesy", but nobody at RAF Gatow believed this, thinking that it was instead intended to make a military invasion easier. This surmise was confirmed after the
reunification of Germany, when the
East German invasion plans for West Berlin, codenamed "Operation CENTRE" were found.
Grenzregiment 34 "Hanno Günther" of the
Grenztruppen der DDR was allocated the task of attacking and occupying RAF Gatow. The invasion plans were continually updated, even in 1990 when it was clear that East Germany would soon cease to exist. ==Closure==