Browning303
Airman
Hi all,
I'm currently reading 'Franco and the Condor Legion' by Michael Alpert, a good and detailed book if you have an interest in the topic. There's one section where Alpert talks about how Nazi party members in Morocco acquired a civilian registered JU 52 and flew to Berlin to appeal to Hitler to intervene in the Spanish Civil War and help Franco.
After their meeting, they had to return to Morocco urgently and their JU 52 was modified in Berlin to remove the passenger seating and replace it with lots of fuel tanks so it could make a direct, non-stop flight back to Morocco. It got me thinking, in the late 1930s, what was the procedure for flying through other countries airspace? Did you have to plan a flight path and notify the countries and seek permission? Obviously aerial radar was still in its infancy at this time. Did European countries have radar capable of monitoring their interior airspace or the airspace near their borders? Would they even have been able to detect a solitary aircraft as opposed to a formation of bombers? Was there any early sort of 'open skies' style agreement where civilian and commercial aircraft could fly freely over other countries?
Be interested to know if anybody can share any knowledge on this! Cheers.
I'm currently reading 'Franco and the Condor Legion' by Michael Alpert, a good and detailed book if you have an interest in the topic. There's one section where Alpert talks about how Nazi party members in Morocco acquired a civilian registered JU 52 and flew to Berlin to appeal to Hitler to intervene in the Spanish Civil War and help Franco.
After their meeting, they had to return to Morocco urgently and their JU 52 was modified in Berlin to remove the passenger seating and replace it with lots of fuel tanks so it could make a direct, non-stop flight back to Morocco. It got me thinking, in the late 1930s, what was the procedure for flying through other countries airspace? Did you have to plan a flight path and notify the countries and seek permission? Obviously aerial radar was still in its infancy at this time. Did European countries have radar capable of monitoring their interior airspace or the airspace near their borders? Would they even have been able to detect a solitary aircraft as opposed to a formation of bombers? Was there any early sort of 'open skies' style agreement where civilian and commercial aircraft could fly freely over other countries?
Be interested to know if anybody can share any knowledge on this! Cheers.
