FW 200 Condor crashes on flight from Tempelhof to Riem

On Saturday April 21, 1945, the Focke Wulf 200B-2 Condor D-ASHH "Hessen" took off from Berlin-Tegelhof at around 20:20 for a transfer flight of the DLH flight control from Berlin to Munich. It was the last flight of a private airline from the Reich capital Berlin after the ring around Berlin was closed by the Red Army at the end of the Second World War.

A few days earlier, the Lufthansa management decided to move an alternative headquarters to Munich. With immediate effect, a staff of 35 Lufthansa employees was ordered to Munich.

At around 9.45 p.m. the engine noise of the Focke Wulf from the north-east, coming from Berlin-Tempelhof, approaching the Munich-Riem airport, was audible.

The weather was extremely bad with gale force winds and heavy snow flurries. Landing was therefore out of the question! The flight captain August Künstle turned the Focke Wulf in a loop in an easterly direction, in the hope that a landing would be possible after the snow shower and better visibility had been removed. Radio traffic was severely disturbed by atmospheric disturbances.

A short time later, some residents within a radius of about 10 kilometers around Piesenkofen saw the Focke Wulf 200B-2 Condor burning in the night sky. The machine made a great turn, brightly lit inside, and growling unusually loud. Then the machine shaved the tops of the trees in a forest, the Condor was pulled up one last time, then a crash occurred - about 500 meters northeast of Piesenkofen, Gde. Egglkofen - directly on the Piesenkofen-Jesenkofen road. The plane bored itself almost vertically into the forest floor and left only a small, circular path between the trees in the forest. After the crash, the machine stewed and burned for about three days. Three engines and the long hull were stuck deep in the forest floor. The wings looked like an "accordion".

About 25 people were killed in the crash. At first it was assumed that Hitler, Goebbels and Göring, among others, were on the plane because they might want to leave for Spain *, because this was the last flight of a private airline from the Reich capital Berlin before the end of the Second World War. This suspicion could only be refuted with the publication of the passenger list.

The investigation of the plane crash lasted until December 9th, 1954. Here the judgment was announced before the 3rd Senate of the Bavarian State Social Court in Munich that the Focke Wulf 200B-2 Condor D-ASHH "Hessen" crashed tragic accident, the causes of which are to be found exclusively in the danger area peculiar to civilian flight operations, but not due to influences caused by the war.

* Until the end, the fact remains mysterious that one day before take-off, on April 20, 1945, the Spanish Ministry of Aviation issued a landing permit for the D-ASHH to land in Barcelona. On April 21, the day of the crash, the Barcelona radio station received the start message from the D-ASHH via the Munich radio station, which also radioed Barcelona that the plane had flown over Munich. Later, Barcelona received the message from D-ASHH via the Munich radio station: “Flying directly to Barcelona”. This was the last message from D-ASHH.

Swell: dorf-binabiburg.de, arlan.de, schmiede-scheidhammer.de, lufthansa.com