Berlin Tempelhof: Nazi Megastructure, Airlift Runways and a Public Park

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Berlin's Tempelhof stands on land once held by the Knights Templar and later used as a Prussian army parade ground, where French aviator Armand Zipfel and Orville Wright gave flight demonstrations in 1909. It became an airport in the 1920s, around the founding of Lufthansa. From 1934 architect Ernst Sagebiel designed a new terminal as the gateway to Albert Speer's planned Germania: an eagle-shaped limestone structure 1.2 kilometers long with a canopy roof built as a grandstand, which Norman Foster called the mother of all airports. During World War II, Weser Flugzeugbau used its halls to assemble Stuka dive bombers and Focke-Wulf fighters. In 1945 a Soviet charge ignited stored film in a three-level bunker, and the fire burned until the Soviets flooded it with the airport's own water.

In the American sector after the war, Tempelhof became the center of the 1948 Berlin Airlift. C-54 Skymasters landing every 90 seconds wrecked the Marston matting, so between July and October 1948 engineers and German volunteers built two 6,000-foot runways between landings, while pilot Gail Halvorsen dropped candy on handkerchief parachutes. By 1954 it was Europe's third busiest airport. Subsidized West Berlin flights set off a contest between BEA's 53-seat Super Silver Star Vickers Viscounts with hot meals and Pan Am's 128-seat Boeing 727s, and Pan Am took nearly 68 percent of the market within two years.

• Air France's Sud Aviation Caravelles lacked thrust reversers and could not reliably stop on the short runways, forcing a move to Tegel.
• After the 1973 oil crisis, Pan Am and British Airways followed to Tegel by 1975.
• A 2008 referendum to keep the airport open won 60.2 percent of votes cast but only about 21.7 percent of eligible voters, short of the 25 percent quorum.
• Flights ended on October 30, 2008, and three Antonov An-2 biplanes grounded by weather were allowed out weeks later.
• A 2014 referendum banned development on Tempelhofer Feld, a park that protects skylark nesting areas, and its hangars sheltered about 2,500 refugees from late 2015 to 2017.