East German historic expedition, 12 photos

In early April I and a colleague spent a few days driving around the former German Democratic Republic, searching for historical sites from the war and East German era, this being my biggest interest outside of aviation. While most of the sites were military, there were some that might be of interest to some people here (Interflug62M? 😉 ), so here we go:

The disused passenger terminal at Flughafen Heringsdorf on the Isle of Usedom, just a few kilometres from the border to Poland. Heringsdorf was a Luftwaffe base during the war, but was then called Garz. During the GDR era, it was used both by the air force and Interflug who operated An-24s from Berlin-Schönefeld. The Isle of Usedom is popular for its bath resorts. Today some charter airliners and general aviation use the airport. A new terminal has been built next to this one.

History is evident everywhere in Germany. A few hundred meters from the terminal, there were a few wartime buildings – probably military hospitals at one time. On one of the facades, a propaganda slogan from darker times could be seen beneath poorly covering paint: Strebt mit Adolf Hitler zum Sieg (Strive with Adolf Hitler towards victory). Still visible after 60 years…

Appx 70 kms north of Berlin are the towns of Eberswalde and Finow. Eberswalde was a Soviet army base until the early 90s, while the former Luftwaffe base at Finow was used by the Soviet Air Force. Today there is a very nice open-air aviation museum at Finow with both civil and military objects. Here is an early Tupolev Tu-134A of Interflug. DDR-SCH was taken out of service already in 1983 and was used for ground instruction at Berlin-Schönefeld until 1990. It is open for visits and in fairly good condition.

In 1981, the GDR changed its nationality designator on aircraft from DM to DDR.

Cockpit of the Tu-134A. The early ones had a navigator station in the nose and lacked the centre pedestal; each pilot had his own set of throttles on the wall.

A Tu-134 flight simulator is on display in one of the shelters. A fairly basic simulator but nevertheless capable of doing the job.

A fixed base trainer for the four-engine Ilyushin Il-18.

Cockpit of the Il-18 simulator. Nice upholstery!

In one of the barracks the history of Finow Air Base was shown, from the early Luftwaffe days until today. Several very beautiful models were on display! Wish I could build mine as nice as this…

Won’t go into more military detail than this; a MiG-23BN with complete ground equipment was on display in a shelter. The whole area is filled with shelters and bunkers, just like the rest of the former GDR. It isn’t hard to understand they were prepared for the worst.

Last but definitely not least; while searching for the private palace of Hermann Göring – Carinhall (which we didn’t find), we drove onto a narrow road right into the forest. By accident we found a whole abandoned city in the middle of nowhere! After a few minutes of research, we came to the conclusion that this was a disused Soviet airbase and the apartment blocks were officers’ flats. This was Templin, one of the largest Soviet airbases in the GDR and abandoned in 1994. With housing for 10,000 people, schools and gymnasiums everything was now abandoned. It was almost spooky. The runway and some shelters are today used for driving tests, but these grounds a few kilometers away only saw the odd car or motorcycle drive through.

One of the several thousand flats. This is the living room. Everything was torn out and taken back to Russia when they left in 1994, even the windows were gone in some of the flats. Just think what has taken place in this room – an officer and his family have spent several years here, talking, laughing, sleeping and probably thinking of what life was like on the other side of the iron curtain. Wonder who lived here and what they are doing today.

Well, that were some of the 370 photos I took during three days in the ex-GDR. Hope you liked it!