Comrades,
I’ve just returned from a week’s holiday in Berlin where I spent every day looking for traces of the Third Reich and East Germany (German history is my other main interest besides aviation). I’m not going to post those photos here, but I did have some time to spare for aviation history as well. I’ll show them in this forum as I’m not doing a trip report per se, so here goes:
Platz der Luftbrücke at Zentralflughafen Tempelhof. According to Norman Foster, this airport is “the mother of all airports”, and this autumn it will close forever. This memorial was erected after the Berlin Airlift in 1948-1949, where US and British aircraft transported supplies from West Germany to West Berlin every 90 seconds, during the Soviet blockade.
At “Eagle Square” in front of the main building, an eagle’s head is mounted on a pedestal. The whole eagle was mounted atop the building during the nazi regime in the 30’s when the airport was built, and wasn’t taken down until 1962.
A memorial plaque saying that Lufthansa’s head office was at Tempelhof from 1938 to 1945 and that their ties to Berlin are not forgotten. The plaque is probably from the old days, when Lufthansa was not allowed to fly to Berlin. Until 1990, only airlines from the occupying powers USA, UK and France were allowed to fly to West Berlin.
The main hall at Tempelhof, a brilliant example of the German architecture of the 1930s. The airport is pretty quiet with only a few movements per hour, but it fills its function very well. Too bad it’s closing.
Over to East Berlin! At Alexanderplatz, the former Haus des Reisens (“House of travel”) was the head office of Interflug until their closure of operations in 1991. In the autumn of 1989, demonstrations gathering tens of thousands of people took place right here, leading to the peaceful revolution which brought down the wall.
At Stölln, about one hour northwest of Berlin, are the hill where Otto Lilienthal made his first attempts at flying in the 1890s. Next to the hill and a 900 m long grass strip stands this beauty – an Ilyushin Il-62 of Interflug. This is what meets the eye when walking up to it…
This Il-62, DDR-SEG, was in service with Interflug from 1973 to 1989 and was flown from Berlin-Schönefeld to this grass strip in October 1989. The aircraft had been retired from service and donated to the museum by Interflug. A quite new aircraft, it is still in very good shape and taken care of by a society who keeps it open for visitors. It recently received a fresh coat of paint and looks almost new!
That beautiful tail…
A ground technician’s point of view…
Interflug originally operated IL-62’s but later received IL-62M’s which were in service right to the end and then returned to the USSR. If I’m not mistaken, the M’s are still in service.
A sturdy main landing gear, like all other Soviet airlines capable of using rough strips and even gravel runways – or in this case, grass!
The forward cabin, now housing an exhibition about Otto Lilienthal.
Flight deck of DDR-SEG – with the soothing familiar turquoise colour seen in military aircraft from the same country…
Closeup of the captain’s panel. The small control wheel is for the nose gear. Not also that the control column comes out of the panel and is not mounted on the floor!
Centre pedestal, with throttles and trim wheels.
After I returned from the cockpit, a tired and grumpy lady who was CEO of this aircraft said that photographing was not allowed in the aircraft and pointed to a sign saying the same! Unbelievable, what is the point of not allowing photos in a museum aircraft? So there aren’t any photos of the rear cabin which still had the seating, although facing rearwards as that cabin now was a combined cinema and wedding chapel! If desired, you can get married in the IL-62 and it’s apparently quite popular. The cinema was more interesting, though, showing a film about the grass field itself and how the IL-62 was flown there. It took three attempts to get it down, but when it finally landed it came to stop in a huge cloud of dust and grass. And when the dust had settled, the captain taxied the aircraft off the strip! Amazing…
Finally, to show that scars of the war are still visible in Berlin: granade damage on the pillars of the Pergamon Museum in central East Berlin. Still unrepaired after almost 60 years… many houses not facing the main streets still look like this, and it doesn’t take much imagination to understand that heavy fighting took place here during the last weeks of the war in 1945.
Hope you enjoyed this photographical journey through history! Have a nice weekend, folks…
By: MSR777 - 3rd July 2004 at 20:31
The Cubana IL62Ms that I used to work at STN had Cyrillic lettering on the flightdeck and English/Spanish in the cabin although later French signs appeared in the cabins. Certainly on the limited number of Interflug aircraft I worked the flightdeck legends were always Cyrillic with a few German labels on certain items/switches. Aeroflot aircraft were all Cyrillic as were most of the east-bloc carriers except Tarom which had Romanian signage on most items on the flightdeck. Hope this info useful.
By: Sonnenflieger - 3rd July 2004 at 17:43
Excellent photos !!! , any more ??? , even non-aviation ones ?? .
I have about 250 more photos of old buildings, monuments and the wall but they would probably fit better on a German history forum or something like that…
By: ageorge - 3rd July 2004 at 14:16
Excellent photos !!! , any more ??? , even non-aviation ones ?? .
By: Sonnenflieger - 2nd July 2004 at 23:39
Very nice pictures. Whats with the green-blue in the Russian cockpits?
Ok Dan, but first learn to read Russian.
Were the Russian cockpits also available in Western characters? Must have been for Cubana.
The special cockpit colour of Soviet/Russian cockpits are meant to be soothing and calming for the pilot. I’m not a pilot, so I can’t say whether it is true but seeing they have used this colour for a very long time there is probably some truth in it.
The Interflug aircraft I’ve been in (this IL-62 and the TU-134 at Finow) both had panel legends in German, but not throughout the flight deck. I’ve also seen Algerian IL-76 flight decks with panels having entirely English legends.
Someone probably knows this even better (Interflug62M?), so I’ll stop speculating here…
By: Jeanske_SN - 2nd July 2004 at 22:09
Very nice pictures. Whats with the green-blue in the Russian cockpits?
Ok Dan, but first learn to read Russian.
Were the Russian cockpits also available in Western characters? Must have been for Cubana.
By: A330Crazy - 2nd July 2004 at 21:59
Great to see a classic in such a great condition! As like you, i too am very suprised at the no Photography rule. 🙁 Though the ones you got are ace! Nice work.
By: Sonnenflieger - 2nd July 2004 at 21:33
Brilliant photos, thanks a lot for sharing! Wouldn’t you just love to fly on one of those Il-62’s?! I can only ever dream of flying on something like that, the reality has long passed….
The IL-62 is one of the types I long to fly on! The others are Boeing 707 and 727. Well, at least I got to try a 707 simulator last year and on that experience I can live forever… it was magic, it was wonderful, it was beautiful… 😀
By: wannabe pilot - 2nd July 2004 at 17:18
Brilliant photos, thanks a lot for sharing! Wouldn’t you just love to fly on one of those Il-62’s?! I can only ever dream of flying on something like that, the reality has long passed….
By: LBARULES - 2nd July 2004 at 16:57
Fantastic photos. 🙂
By: Whiskey Delta - 2nd July 2004 at 15:51
Great pictures, that IL-62 sure is in great condition. Suprising that they don’t allow pictures. What’s the point of preserving history if you’re not going to allow others to photograph it?
By: MSR777 - 2nd July 2004 at 10:45
Thanks a lot for the book info, have just ordered a copy from Amazon.de which was the same price.
By: Sonnenflieger - 2nd July 2004 at 10:05
I know I’m biased but great pics! I have book about the history of Interflug and it shows in several quite dramatic pictures the arrival of DDR-SEG at that field. The IF 62Ms are indeed mostly still in service, most of them with Uzbekistan Airlines including Erich Honeckers personal aircraft which I worked at STN around 5 yrs ago, although by then it had a normal pax interior. When I visited the “House of Travel” in 88 there were 3 huge models inside of an IL18, IL62 and an A310 all around 1/20 scale, there was also one the same size in a huge Interflug display case in the Alexanderplatz railway station…..hopefully someone saved them!
Speaking of books… there is a new book out in Germany on the GDR aviation (one would have thought that the brilliant Flugzeuge der DDR series was enough, but luckily no!) – Das große Buch der DDR-Luftfahrt. I flipped through it in Berlin and it looks great, with great photos and lots of tidbits like routemaps, tickets, timetables and other memorabilia. I’ll order it soon, I think… More info at http://www.hugendubel.de/default.aspx?gid=1458658&suid=0.
When I was in Berlin in February 1991, Interflug was still in operation and one thing I remember is a promotional banner on one of the railway bridges to the Alexanderplatz station.
By: MSR777 - 2nd July 2004 at 10:00
I know I’m biased but great pics! I have book about the history of Interflug and it shows in several quite dramatic pictures the arrival of DDR-SEG at that field. The IF 62Ms are indeed mostly still in service, most of them with Uzbekistan Airlines including Erich Honeckers personal aircraft which I worked at STN around 5 yrs ago, although by then it had a normal pax interior. When I visited the “House of Travel” in 88 there were 3 huge models inside of an IL18, IL62 and an A310 all around 1/20 scale, there was also one the same size in a huge Interflug display case in the Alexanderplatz railway station…..hopefully someone saved them!
By: Mark L - 2nd July 2004 at 09:53
That IL62 seems better maintained than the majority of in-service Russian airliners these days, who seem to take the Air France attitude to aircraft cleaning!
By: Papa Lima - 2nd July 2004 at 09:12
Thanks for those pics, Sonnenflieger, the condition of that Il-62 is amazing! All credit to the maintainers. Perhaps the curator was trying to get a tip, that sort of “grumpy attitude” used to be transformed in Poland years ago by a couple of dollars into great helpfulness!
Glad sommar, förresten!
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July 2, 2004 at 9:03 am