The textbook drawing nature of these towns was enhanced by the lack of motorized traffic or new construction. Two generations of dictatorships and untimely deaths had dragged the economy down, so that whether by rail or air, the differences between East and West Germany were obvious to the traveler.
Steady nerves from the stiff-upper-lip British European Airways pilots made these flights seem almost routine, unless we passengers thought a lot about our situation. When the clouds closed in again, and the plane began bucking and tossing in the thick air, the pilot was navigating on a radio beam, maintaining a precise course within the twenty-mile wide two-way corridors. Beneath us, there was little margin for error, as we were only two miles up. In front or behind was another BEA or Pan Am or Air France plane, five to ten minutes off of our time, in an era when such frequent operations were still uncommon. Above us may have been Soviet and GDR military aircraft. (Civilian aircraft were the subject of buzzings during various incidents before my time in Berlin, although I am unaware of any during my time. As radar monitoring and radio monitoring had become more sophisticated, the Warsaw Pact authorities knew that any agressive interference with civilian flights might be tracked and identified. --rwr--)
Flights were under the management of the Berlin Air Safety Center, located at the Allied Control Authority Building in the American Sector of West Berlin (see the building and a discussion of its role in Allied Control Authority Building ). This entity included Soviet Air Force representation, but in the convoluted situation that developed through the years, the GDR's air traffic control at Schoenefeld Flughafen, near the south side of West Berlin, did not report to the center, even though it was within the 20-mile ring known as the Four Power Control Zone around all of Berlin. It was not healthy to think too much about rival air traffic control systems maintaining a touchy relationship in this manner.
Pressure against the interests of the Western Allies and West Berliners continued from the end of the Berlin Airlift up to the end of the Soviet role in East Germany. Routine checks of the radio navigation system had to be made in order to prevent planes being either lured off course or traffic being disrupted by a switch to more primitive navigation techniques. During Warsaw Pact military excercises, attempts were made to temporarily shut down air corridors on "safety" grounds, somewhat as the surface routes had been temporarily shut down during the Berlin Blockade for "repairs." Intense electronic activity during these excercises would blind the BASC radar system.
During Warsaw Pact maneuvers, the scenario might be something like what I experienced in 1971. In the middle of a pleasant and educational expedition to Hamburg on BEA, my French colleague and I were confronted by newspaper headlines announcing that the Soviet Union would be closing the air corridors for safety reasons during military training exercises. Unlike the surface routes, air travel did not require military "Flag Orders" and so we had no paperwork other than our identification and my DA31 (Army pass, see Going Places - Berlin style ) for travel back to Berlin on the military trains. Furthermore, were we to travel on the same train, it meant that one of us had to get papers from our own country's military offices to be authorized to ride on the other country's train.
I pictured taking the train to Helmstedt and throwing ourselves on the mercy of the Checkpoint Alpha transportation offices there. However, dozens of other people in each of the three Western Allies' forces, as well as government civilian employees, would be doing the same thing. The next step was to try and enjoy the rest of our stay in Hamburg.
More headlines: the United States government announced that U.S. Air Force fighters would be in the air corridors during the period of the projected closure. The Royal Air Force announced that one of their jets would be in the corridors. The French government announced that its air force would be put on alert. (This was in the period of Gaullist flirtation with the Soviet Union, and so the French often "split the difference" in terms of the action that they would permit their military forces to take.)
And finally, headlines announcing that nothing would be happening. The Soviet and GDR authorities had found a way to have their exercise without interfering with traffic. My French colleague was a bit miffed, though in a way unsurprised, that our uneventful and punctual return flight was courtesy of France's allies.
Why was air travel so important in Berlin? Aside from the symbolism, it offered the only means of accessing the "island" city of West Berlin without being subject to border controls and inspections by the GDR for civilians or the Soviet Army by Allied military personnel. There were many Germans who had reason to fear the treatment that they would have experienced, for any number of reasons. (During my time in West Berlin, Mayor Klaus Schuetz was pulled off of a sleeping car and held at the GDR border for several hours in the night on the ground that he did not have proper identification.) Refugees from East Berlin left via this method, 121,778 of them in 1960, the last full year before construction of the Berlin Wall. There were Allied personnel whose comings and goings would have been documented by the East German Stasi had they driven the Autobahn. Only about 0.1% of the weight of goods shipped in and out of Berlin went by air, but often the value of the cargo was immeasurable. There was Air Mail that would have been searched by the Stasi had it been transported as First Class letters in the regular mail trains.
The importance of the Air Mail service was underlined by a network of post boxes marked with special information on a very late night pick-up. Put an Air Mail letter in the box by that time, and it would be delivered in the Federal Republic of Germany on the next day. The air mail flight in the still of the night was a reassuring nuisance as it roared over the flashing warning lights on the rooftops and balconies of apartment buildings adjacent to Tempelhof Flughafen.
--rwr--
Dedication:
This page is dedicated to P. O. Marsubian, my Geography teacher at U.S. Grant High School in Portland, Oregon and Instructor in Geography at Lewis & Clark College. Should any of his family find this through a Google or other search engine, please know that he was a wonderful teacher and that I still think of him whenever I see a photo like this.
Bibliography:
Giangreco, D.M. and Griffin, Robert E.; Airbridge to Berlin; Presidio Press; Novato, California; 1988; 247 pages. (This book provides further information on the air operations and the policies of the nations involved, covering four decades.)
Kremling, Ernst, Dr.; Sonderdruck aus der "Aktuellen JRO-Landkarte"; Issue No. 167; Press and Information Service of Land Berlin; late 1961 or early 1962.
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