Thursday, July 1, 2010

DDR-Luftraum mit Google Earth

A friend passed me a link to another Google Earth project. This one represents the airspace of the German DDR during the 1980s. It’s very difficult to interpret but it suggests that the divided geographical and social mess of that period also extended into the airspace. Berlin is represented as a confusion of restricted Soviet airspace blocks, Allied zones, military zones, transit corridors, invisible ‘walls’ and other unidentifiable volumes. It is surprising to think that at some level the Allied and Soviet authorities must have had a detailed and ongoing dialogue about airspace design. This project is by the Military Airfield Directory and is definitely a fascinating contribution to the emerging field of airspace ‘histories’.