The Tunnels of Tempelhof - another video

Here is a video my friend Manfred posted of a tour of the tunnels under Tempelhof Central Airport (TCA, as we called it), taken during August 1991.  I'm hoping a number of my friends will get a chance to take a look at this one - it is quite a point of interest about old building. 

The accompanying photos include a plan of the building from the '80's, pointing out some of the features on the side the USAF used.  Also, there is a photo from the annual Open House below, dated 1984, which would have been one I participated in.  (I've lost the source info for this photo...if you recognize it, please leave a comment.)

Here's a plan of Tempelhof Airport from the late '80s.

The tunnels are legendary; there are any number of stories of adventures of people exploring down there.  I often heard stories of people going long distances in them until they found a guard at a desk or came out above ground over in Potsdamer Platz.  What we do know for sure is that the tunnels were used during World War II for communications, and aircraft manufacturing actually took place here later in the War.

An aerial of the airport during the 1984 Open House.

The "modern" infrastructure of the building figures prominently in Manfred's clip, but starting at around 6:50, there are areas that still show a connection to the War history.  The area was burned - the fires went on for weeks - and there are a bunch of initials scratched into the burned areas.  It looks like there are years marked there in some cases - I saw some from the '50's all the way to the '80's.

I'll close out this post with a reference to my colleague Dale Lindemann's book "Last Flight from Tempelhof" - Amazon link below.  The tunnels figure prominently in this thriller that weaves a story connecting the Cold War and today's geopolitical terrorists.  A good read! It's on Kindle now too!

Last Flight from Tempelhof