The Berlin Air Safety Centre (BASC) was established by the

Allied Control Council The Allied Control Council or Allied Control Authority (german: Alliierter Kontrollrat) and also referred to as the Four Powers (), was the governing body of the Allied Occupation Zones in Germany and Allied-occupied Austria after the end of Wo ...

's Coordinating Committee on 12 December 1945. It was located in the former

Kammergericht The Kammergericht (KG) is the ''Oberlandesgericht'', the highest state court, for the city-state of Berlin, Germany. As an ordinary court according to the German Courts Constitution Act (''Gerichtsverfassungsgesetz''), it deals with criminal a ...

Building, on Kleistpark,

Berlin Berlin ( , ) is the capital and largest city of Germany by both area and population. Its 3.7 million inhabitants make it the European Union's most populous city, according to population within city limits. One of Germany's sixteen constitue ...

. Operations began in February 1946 under quadripartite flight rules Paragraph 4. Paragraph 4 of the rules begins: "The Berlin Air Safety Centre has been established in the Allied Control Authority Building with the object of ensuring safety of flights for all aircraft in the Berlin area. BASC regulates all flying in the Berlin control zone and also in the corridors extending from Berlin to the boundaries of adjacent control zones." Berlin_Air_Safety_Center_DF-SN-83-08062

The BASC was one of two

four-power organizations Following the defeat of Nazi Germany and then the partition of German territory, two Four-Power Authorities, in which the four main victor nations (the United States, the United Kingdom, the Soviet Union and France) managed equally, were created. ...

to continue functioning following the onset of the

Cold War The Cold War is a term commonly used to refer to a period of geopolitical tension between the United States and the Soviet Union and their respective allies, the Western Bloc and the Eastern Bloc. The term '' cold war'' is used because the ...

, the other being

Spandau Prison Spandau Prison was located in the borough of Spandau in West Berlin. It was originally a military prison, built in 1876, but became a proto-concentration camp under the Nazis. After the war, it held seven top Nazi leaders convicted in the Nurem ...

, which ceased operations following the death of

Rudolf Hess Rudolf Walter Richard Hess (Heß in German; 26 April 1894 – 17 August 1987) was a German politician and a leading member of the Nazi Party in Nazi Germany. Appointed Deputy Führer to Adolf Hitler in 1933, Hess held that position unt ...

on 17 August 1987. The BASC continued to ensure safety of flight, for 24 hours a day, with the three western powers being represented by a chief controller, along with a deputy and general duty controller; all were Air Force officers. The Soviets, in attempt to mitigate being out numbered, had both a controller and interpreter on duty until its closing on 31 December 1990, following the lapse of Allied responsibilities in Berlin. Berlin kammergericht

The BASC coordinated air traffic in and out of Berlin and was responsible for air safety in the three corridors established in 1946 as well as in the Berlin control zone, the airspace within a radius of a pillar located in the cellar of the Allied Control Authority building. Each of the three corridors were wide and linked Berlin with the Western Zones of Occupation of Germany (later

West Germany West Germany is the colloquial term used to indicate the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG; german: Bundesrepublik Deutschland , BRD) between its formation on 23 May 1949 and the German reunification through the accession of East Germany on 3 O ...

). The three corridors were usually open, without restriction, only to the Four Power nations: United Kingdom, United States, France and USSR – other nations wishing to use the corridors had first to request and obtain permission from the BASC. Requests to use the southern corridor were handled by the US desk, the centre corridor by the French desk, and the northern corridor by the UK desk. The requests were then handed to the USSR desk for coordination, with Soviet air defense authorities, and in turn would be stamped in one of three ways: ''permission granted, safety of flight guaranteed''; ''permission granted, safety of flight not guaranteed''; or ''permission denied''.

Berlin Air Route Traffic Control Center, 1987

Coordinating closely with the Berlin Air Route Traffic Control Centre (BARTCC) facilities at

Tempelhof Tempelhof () is a locality of Berlin within the borough of Tempelhof-Schöneberg. It is the location of the former Tempelhof Airport, one of the earliest commercial airports in the world. The former airport and surroundings are now a park called ...

Air Base, BASC personnel were responsible for logging protests of infringements upon Allied air corridors, and fielded the political ramifications of Eastern Bloc defectors escaping into

West Berlin West Berlin (german: Berlin (West) or , ) was a political enclave which comprised the western part of Berlin during the years of the Cold War. Although West Berlin was de jure not part of West Germany, lacked any sovereignty, and was under mi ...

by aircraft. Tensions reached an understandable high during the

Berlin Airlift The Berlin Blockade (24 June 1948 – 12 May 1949) was one of the first major international crises of the Cold War. During the multinational occupation of post–World War II Germany, the Soviet Union blocked the Western Allies' railway, road ...

in 1948–49, during which many fights broke out among controllers, though the success of the campaign was in large part due to the coordination carried out within the BASC.

Further reading