Rob P wrote:Wasn't something similar proposed for Templehof Airfield?
..
There was a precedent in West Berlin. Soon after the Potsdam agreement dividing the city into 4 Sectors, the Military Governors and new Berliner Mayor of the 3 Western Sectors (France, UK, US) agreed that the rubble clearance needed to allow rebuilding would be best done 'wholesale'. All the rubble was trucked into the middle of an open park in the British Sector, and accumulated. The resulting pile became known as 'Teufefsberg' (the "Devil's Mountain"). It was so high that its top was (just) in line-of sight to the nearest bit of West Germany, enabling higher datarate wireless communications invulnerable to Soviet cable-cutting. The peak soon acquired an array of 'interesting' antennae, looking both West
and East, which were in turn soon covered by radomes; within a joint UK/US military base; perhaps unsurprisingly, there has been more publicity (and fiction!) about the US involvement than the British
. When the Warsaw Pact collapsed it was soon abandoned, and is now covered in graffiti. It (or rather, external shots and imagined internal ones) has featured in a few TV dramas about the Cold War.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teufelsberg[I do have a nice photo of one of the 'Gatow Deterrent' Chipmunks, taken from the other, flying over it, just after the 'Fall of the Wall'; given me by a former RAF Gatow contact. As it's not my copyright I shall not post it here, but have used it in lectures about Cold War aviation]
(mere guide at) Jet Age Museum, Gloucestershire Airport
http://www.jetagemuseum.org/TripAdvisor Excellence Award 2015
http://www.tripadvisor.co.uk/Attraction ... gland.html