Posted on 07/23/2003 10:10:21 AM PDT by SquirrelKing
IN BERLIN
AN AIRPORT used by hundreds of thousands of tourists and business travellers each year could be sitting on top of thousands of live bombs.
Papers among thousands of files captured from the Stasi, the secret police of East Germany, claim tons of live Second World War munitions were buried in concrete bunkers beneath the runways of Schoenefeld airport in East Berlin. It is now the main destination for discount airlines, such as Ryanair, and numerous charter companies.
Not only did the commissars intern munitions beneath the runways, but also entire Nazi fighter planes, all fuelled and fully bombed-up, according to the Stasi.
The captured files of Interflug, the former East German government airline and the airport authority of the DDR, are now being examined to see if the Stasi claim is true.
Experts believe it entirely feasible that, in the aftermath of the Second World War, with Berlin littered with millions of tons of unexploded ordnance, the Soviets could well have pressured local officials to move to clear the airfield as swiftly as possible.
"They would have stuffed them anywhere they could - there was simply too much stuff to blow up all at once," said Karl-Heinz Eckhardt, a Berlin historian. "There was a warren of massive Nazi bunkers beneath the site of the present airport that would have suited their purposes."
City authorities claim the airport is perfectly safe, but a thorough check on the claims in the Stasi files - 140 km of them that will still take a number of years to decipher - is being undertaken.
Nearly two million passengers a year pass through Schoenefeld. According to the Stasi files, the ammunition was buried in bunkers between eight and nine metres deep.
A spokesman for the airport said: "We became aware of the bunkers in 1993, four years after the fall of the [Berlin] Wall. A check was undertaken then and everything was determined to be safe."
But he conceded that he was astounded at the claims that fully-fuelled and bombed-up aircraft lie beneath the runways and said new tests about the safety of the structures will be carried out.
He added: "We had no idea that so much ordnance is supposedly under there."
Frank Henkel, the Conservative interior ministry spokesman, said: "This must be investigated thoroughly and immediately and the runways strengthened if necessary."
Berlin, with its sandy, dry soil, was perfect for the bunker-building of the Third Reich. Hundreds of thousands of them were constructed during the 12-year lifespan of the Nazi government: for every one metre of building above ground in modern-day Berlin, there are three metres below ground.
Bunkers are being discovered every day and a group called Underground Berlin has turned several of them into tourist attractions.
No problem. FlugWerk will hook you up. It's not cheap (about $600k, plus instruments and labour, or your time to build) but it is a real FW190 with a real FW WrkNr. Also, a syndicate in the US has 2 Me262s for sale. Seriously.
What would be interesting is if there is a restorable He111 there. The last flying Heinkel was destroyed recently (and the crew of two lost their lives).
d.o.l.
Criminal Number 18F
Coming soon to eBay!
In the 1960's US personnel found a secret tunnel system underneath the one we had already explored in Bavaria. It was located under the General Walker hotel. Workers in the tunnels noticed that water was leaking through the floor and broke through and found a whole new tunnel system.
When I was at Rhein Main Air Base in the early 80's the Germans found a huge underground storage area full of mustard gas at the main airport.
My wife and I used to ride our bikes through the forest areas and we frequently found openings to bunkers located in the middle of nowhere.
I'm sure there's a lot that we still haven't discovered in Germany and it's been over 50 years since the end of WWII.
"Hoecake got to be flipped a few times befo' it's done." - Uncle Remus
Didn't Saddam and Osama hire German engineers to design and build their bunkers? Sounds like our Middle Eastern "friends" hired the world experts of bunker building. And the Dimwits in DC think that it is unlikely that there are any WMD buried in Iraq! If you believe that hogwash, I've got a bridge to sell you in NYC.
Might work on that neighbor who won't turn his stereo down too.
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