July 7, 2023 - Germany
German Museum of Technology, Berlin

We had a free day today so we decided to check out the German Museum of Technology.  Why hadn't we hit this museum three years ago when we spent three days in Berlin?  Because it wasn't in the Rick Steves book.  Therefore I did not know about it.  But it should be in Rick's book.  It's a world-class museum.

The Museum of Traffic and Technology was founded in 1982.  It is located on the former freight yard attached to the Anhalter Bahnhof in the Kreuzberg district of Berlin, including two historic roundhouses and several office buildings.  Renamed Deutsches Technikmuseum in 1996, the exhibition area was gradually expanded. An adjacent new building complex was inaugurated in 2003, topped by a prominent US Air Force Douglas C-47B "Raisin Bomber" -- visible at left.  Tje C-47 was formerly at the Tempelhof Airport.
   
Of course, I immediately headed for the floor where all the aviation stuff was loctaed.  Right off the bat I saw this Messerschmidt Bf-109E.
   
The Bf-109 was the mainstay German fighter of World War II.  Multiple versions flew combat the entire war:  1939-1945.  Total Bf 109 production was an astounding 33,984 units;
   
The Bf-109E or "Emil" is the earliest version, which flew combat from 1939 to 1941 in Poland, France, and the Battle of Britain.  This particular aircraft was assigned to Jagdgeschwader 77 in winter 1939.  In summer 1941 the aircraft made a forced landing in a lake near Murmansk.  The wreck was salvaged in 1993 and as you can see has been beautifully restored.
   
Here is what is left of the imfamous Junkers Ju-87 Stuka dive bomberr with its distinctive bent gull wings.
   
There aren't many Stuka's left.  I've seen the one at the Royal Air Force Museum in Herndon, London and the one in the Chicago Museum of Science and Industry.  That's about it for Stukas.  One aircraft is being restored to airworthy condition from two wrecks, owned by Paul Allen's Flying Heritage & Combat Armor Museum.
   
This particular aircraft is a Ju 87 R-4 which was built in 1941 and served with Stukageschwader 5. Shot down in April 1942 on a mission to bomb Murmansk, it was recovered in 1992.
   
Frontal view of the Stuka.  Acting as flying artillery, the Stuka, along with the Panzer Division, was a key part of the German combined arms team which overran western Europe from 1939 to 1941.
   
Fuselage of a Junkers Ju-88 G-1 night fighter.  The aircraft came off the assembly lines in August 1944.  It flew as part as NachJagdgeschwader Six in Hungary.  It was shot down by Soviet aircraft on 5 December 1944, crashing into Lake Belaton.   The wreckage was salvaged in 1996.
   
Close-up of the interesting camouflage pattern.
   
The nose of the Ju-88 has radar antennas which look like a cat's whiskers.  This version of the Ju-88 was a night fighter, which required the airborne radar.
   

This rare Messerschmidt Bf-110 F-2 is only one of two intact 110s known to exist.  The other is in the RAF Museum at Herndon, London.

The noseart emblem on this aircraft is the dachshund of Jagdgeschwader (JG) Five.   The Bf-110 was built in 1942, damaged in aerial combat over Finland where it had to make a forced landing on a frozen lake.  It was salvaged in 1991.
   
The twin-engined Bf-110 has a bad rap because it didn't do well in the Battle of Britain against Spitfires and Hurricanes.  But it was very useful as a fighter-bomber in Poland, Norway, France and Russia.  It's big claim to fame was as Germany's primary night fighter.
   
The remains of a British Avro Lancaster bomber.  The British did their bombing at night, the Americans by day.  This aircraft served with 57 Squadron as DX-O.  It was shot down over Berlin in September 1943 and crashed into a lake opposite Zahrensdorf.
   
Worn-looking Heinkel He-162, the "People's Fighter".
   
The 162 was designed and built quickly and made primarily of wood as metals were in very short supply and prioritised for other aircraft.  Although the famous British test pilot Eric Brown flew one just after the war and considered it a first-rate aircraft with few vices, the He-162 was a classic example of "too little, too late".  Only about 120 were delivered to the airfields and most of those never flew, usually due to shortages of parts, fuel, and pilots.
   

This V-1 flying bomb was built by Mittelbau-Dora concentration camp inmates at the Mittelwerk site.

On the left side of the picture is a R1 Rheintocther:   the German predecessor to modern air defence missiles.  It was also the world's first two stage missile.
   
The Bucker Bu 181 "Bestmann", a German training aircraft.
   

DFS Olympia-Meise.

After the Olympic games in Berlin in 1936 introduced gliding as an Olympic sport, plans were made to fly the 1940 Olympic championships with a standard design of sailplane to give each pilot the same chances. The Meise was redesigned to fit into the new Olympic class specifications. The new 'Olympia' Meise had the prescribed wingspan of 15 m, spoilers, but no flaps, and an undercarriage consisting of a skid and a non-retractable wheel.   Both the Meise as well as the Olympic class gained immediate enthusiastic support, and the 1940 Olympic gliding championship would probably have ended up as an all-Meise contest — if the Second World War had not intervened and the 1940 Olympics had not been cancelled. Nevertheless, 626 Olympia Meises were built in Germany during the war by Flugzeugbau Ferdinand Schmetz Herzogenrath (601 built) and Flugzeugbau Schleicher (25).  Most were destroyed during the war.

There is an Olympia-Meise at the US Southwest Soaring Museum near Albuquerque (where my old Schleicher Ka-4 now resides) and one at the National Soaring Museum in Elmira, New York.
   
A Focke-Wulf Fw-44 German trainer.  Designed by Kurt Tank  in 1931, it was the Focke-Wulf company's first major international success.  It was produced as a pilot training and sports flying aircraft and looks very much like a Stearman.
   
A model of Flughaven Tempelhof, one of the earliest commercial airports in the world, located in the south-central part of the city.  It is now a park called Tempelhofer Feld, the largest inner city open space in the world.
   
I was very excited to see this uncovered airframe of a Fokker D-7.  Much of it is very similar to the Fokker Dr-1 Triplane I tried to build from plans.
   
The D-7 does not have the single box spar like the DR-1.  Instead it has a forward and aft spar.
   
 
   
 
   
The tail section is very similar to the DR-1.
   

Supposedly the Deutsches Technikmuseum Berlin is restoring a Fw 200 Condor.  I think there is one complete reconstructed Fw 200 that exists today, and it is over at Tempelhof Park.

The Condor was a German all-metal four-engined monoplane originally developed by Focke-Wulf as a long-range airliner. A Japanese request for a long-range maritime patrol aircraft led to military versions that saw service with the Luftwaffe as long-range reconnaissance and anti-shipping/maritime patrol bomber aircraft. The Luftwaffe also made extensive use of the Fw 200 as a transport aircraft.

It achieved success as a commerce raider until mid-1941, by which time it was being harried by long-range RAF Coastal Command aircraft and the Hurricane fighters being flown from CAM ships.
   
This was the only Fw-200 Condor artifact.  They have a long way to go on this restoration!
   
A Rumpler Taube, a pre-World War I monoplane aircraft first flown in 1910. It was the first military aeroplane to be mass-produced in Germany.
   
The design provided for very stable flight, which made it extremely suitable for observation.  However, poor rudder and lateral control made the Taube difficult and slow to turn. The aeroplane proved to be a very easy target for the faster and more agile Allied Scouts of the early part of World War I, and just six months into the war, the Taube had been removed from front line service to be used to train new pilots. Many future German aces would learn to fly in a Rumpler Taube.
   
Front end of the Taube.
   
 
   
German officer pilots in World War I trying to relax in the evening.  Almost half of all German pilots lost their lives during the war.
   
The uniform and medals of Oswald Boelke, one of the earliest German fighter pilots in World War I and considered the father of the German fighter air force.  He was a highly influential mentor, patrol leader, and tactician in the first years of air combat, 1915 and 1916, achieving 40 victories.  He died in a mid-air collision with another German airplane in combat at the age of 25.
   
Portrait of Otto Lilienthal, German aviation pioneer (1848 – 1896).  His glider flight attempts in 1891 are seen as the beginning of human flight
   
Painting of Lilienthal in mid-flight.
 
At the beginning, in the spring of 1891, Lilienthal managed the first jumps and flights on the slope of a sand pit on a hill between the villages of Derwitz and Krielow in Havelland, west of Potsdam.  This is the site of man's first flight.  Later he made his flight attempts on an artificial hill near Berlin and above all in the Rhinow Hills. In 1891 Lilienthal succeeded with jumps and flights covering a distance of about 25 metres (82 ft). He could use the updraft of a 10-metre-per-second (33 ft/s) wind against a hill to remain stationary with respect to the ground, shouting to a photographer on the ground to manoeuvre into the best position for a photo. In 1893, in the Rhinow Hills, he was able to achieve flight distances as long as 250 metres (820 ft). This record remained unbeaten for him or anyone else at the time of his death.
 
Guinness World Records recognizes Otto Lilienthal as the first person ever recorded to be fatally injured in a glider accident.
 
Lilienthal's research was well known to the Wright brothers, and they credited him as a major inspiration for their decision to pursue manned flight. They abandoned his aeronautical data after two seasons of gliding and began using their own wind tunnel data.
   
This is a replica of Lilienthal's 1893 standard monoplane.
   
A replica of Lilienthal's 1894 Normal Soaring Apparatus.
   
The Normal Soaring Apparatus from another angle.
   

from 1933 onwards he began to collect World War I planes some of which he had flown. In 1943 he had a collection of almost 70 planes some of them extremely rare.

The origins of the "Deutsche Luftfahrtsammlung Berlin" in Berlin date back to the mid-1920s, a time when  Hermann Göring was nothing more than a drug-addicted former soldier, traced by the German police. An amnesty gave him the chance to return to Germany.

Ten years later, when he was in a position to promote military aviation and he had the patronage of the "Luftfahrtsammlung". He never was the owner, not even for a second. But of course he used his influence to support the collection, since much of his own fame (we are talking about the 1930s) was depending on his service in the Luftstreitkräfte during the Great War.

These were stored in an old hanger close to the Berlin railway station. Allied bombing, however, was taking a toll and when one of the bombing raids struck the hanger holding the planes, he decided to move the planes away from Berlin to a safer place that was out of range of the allied bombers.

After the order was given to transfer the planes to Poland, it was realized that none of the German trains could carry the planes. A decision was taken to remove the wings of the planes which were supposed to be sent in a separate train; unfortunately, this second train was probably destroyed and there is no record of the wings being found.

The main train left Berlin and reached a forest near Pomerania (currently the northwestern part of Poland). As the train was in the deep forest it was not discovered and remained almost intact. The Polish Army discovered the trains in the spring, of 1945, near Poznan. They were surprised by what they found. They found fuselages with no wings or engines, cockpits. and other aircraft parts and surprisingly a Polish Air Force fighter that was recovered intact.

It is a miracle that the collection of planes survived for any diehard fanatic could have destroyed them. These planes were taken over by the Polish government and in 1963 they were put on display in the air museum at Krakow. About 25 aircraft of Goering's collection are displayed here but many of them are without wings. They have been carefully refurbished by experts and displayed.

The German Museum of Technology in Berlin regards these exhibits as their property.  The restitution demand is especially directed to those of great significance to German aviation history.  As of 2009 however, there was no sign that this would happen in the foreseeable future. Given the scale of destruction caused by German occupation in Poland between 1939-1945 and the recent German unwillingness to discuss reparation payments for Poland, it is likely this collection will remain in Polish hands.

 
   
A Fokker Eindecker flies low over the Rumpler factory.
 
The first official airport in Germany was opened in Johannisthal in 1909 close to Berlin.  It is regarded as the birthplace of engine-powered flight in Germany.
 
 
   

A big Auntie Ju -- the Junkers Ju-52.

One plane I thought the Deutsches Technikmuseum had was the Cessna 172P that Mathias Rust flew to the Moscow Red Square during the Cold War.  But it wasn't here.  I asked a Museum person about it and he said it had been here, but has since been moved to the Air Museum at Gatow.
   
The floor below aviation was ships.  Here is a model of a big container ship.  [Late entry:  you know,  the same type as the one that recently took out the Frances Scott Key bridge in Baltimore.]
   
An interesting diorama showing the wide range in size and type amongst modern merchant ships.  Below you see oil and liquid natural gas tankers, container ships, roll-on-roll-off car carrier ships, general cargo ships, passenger liners, cruise ships, and probably many others.
   
This diorma is a shout out to the U.S. Navy with its aircraft carrier battle group consisting of the carrier, cruisers, destroyers and submarines.
   
A model of the Canot De L'Empereur, built in 21 days in honor of Napoleon, who used it only once in 1810 when he made a trip to the fortifications at Antwerp.  The actual boat is on display at the Paris Maritime Museum.
   
Ship of the line.
   
Incredibly ornate stern.
   
Mini-sub.
   
One of the causes of World War One was the arms race between Great Britain and Germany building Dreadnaughts (battleships).   Germany had quite a large fleet.  In the end, the fleet was scuttled at the British base at Scapa Flow.  This area shows all the German battleships laying at the sandy bottom of Scapa Flow.
   
This portion of a wooden ship's hull shows how it is put together.
   
Then we move to steel ships.  Look at those massive rivets!
   
Rivets were replaced by welding, seen in this example.
   
HMS Sovereign of the Seas was ordered as a 90-gun first-rate ship of the line, but at launch was armed with 102 bronze guns at the insistence of the king.   The elaborately gilded stern ordered by Charles I of England meant enemy ships knew her as the "Golden Devil".  She was launched on 13 October 1637, and served from 1638 until 1697, when a fire burnt the ship to the waterline at Chatham.
   
Santa Maria Del Pilar, 1535.  Spanish galleon.
   
Sailing vessel from the time of Christopher Columbus, 1490.
   
Galley, 1290
   
Viking ship.
   
Around 1855, this Kaffe barge carrying roof tiles sank in the Havel River off Eiswerder Island, close to the Spandau Citadel -- at the time, still outside the Berlin city gates.
   
The Kaffe barge was raised in 1987.
   
An entire tug boat -- the Kurt-Heinz -- cut away so you could see how everything went together, was inside the museum.
   
Aft end of the tug with the big four-bladed propeller.
   
Gigantic cloth-making machine.
   
Before electricity, everything in a machine shop was belt-driven.  A steam engine or later internal-combustion engine drove the belts.
   
The belt-driven system seen from another angle.
   
What are these?
   
An old telephone exchange system.
   
An extensive railway collection opened in 1987 in the rebuilt 19th-century roundhouses of the Anhalter Bahnhof locomotive depot (Bahnbetriebswerk) that had lain derelict for about 30 years.
   
Engines and railway cars were kept in two massive train sheds.
   
 
   
Massive Prussian G8 steam engine, one of the most manufactured passenger train engines ever made.  G8s were in operation from 1906 to 1979.
   
 
   
Front end of a German steam locomotive.
   
A freight car -- about 33 feet long -- used to transport Jews, as well as other victims of the Holocaust, to the Nazi concentration, forced labour, and extermination camps.
   
Boxcars were routinely loaded to 200% of capacity or 100 people per car.  An average transport took about four days.
   
 
   
Trains were the way people got around in Europe.  This diorama gives some idea of the massive infrastructure built up around trains.
   
Looking back through the railyard towards the main museum.
   
A map of the entire museum.
   
An American C-47 is on top of the museum, honoring the Berlin Air Lift which took place from 26 June 1948 to 30 September 1949.  The Soviet Union had blocked the Western Allies' railway, road, and canal access to the sectors of Berlin under Western control, and air supply was the only way to get food to the Berliners.  C-47s and C-54s were the main airplane types.  After the first two months, the airlift was succeeding; daily operations flew more than 1,500 flights a day and delivered more than 4,500 tons of cargo, enough to keep West Berlin supplied. Eventually the USSR gave up and lifted the blockade of West Berlin.
   
Looking out over Berlin.
   
More Berlin.
   
A hot air floats over Berlin.
   
 
   
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