The record
Four segments obtained in exchange for two airlift aircraft, flown to Ohio in a chartered Starlifter and displayed behind a camouflaged Trabant.
More than three hundred aircraft stand in the three hangars of the United States Air Force's museum near Dayton, two of them given over to the Cold War, and since 2000 the galleries have also held two ensembles of the Berlin Wall.
The first four segments came from Rhein-Main air base at Frankfurt, and they were not bought. They were exchanged for two aircraft — a Douglas C-47 and a C-54 of the type flown in the Berlin airlift of 1948 — with General William J. Begert travelling to Frankfurt on 23 December 1999 to take delivery. At about sixteen tonnes the concrete needed a chartered C-141 Starlifter to cross the Atlantic. The segments were shown to the public on 11 November 2000.
The museum decided that plain grey concrete was not enough. The segments stand behind a Trabant painted in camouflage, a woman standing on its roof waving, her companion already over the wall and sitting cheering on the round anti-climb pipe, the two joined by a German flag. Two further segments arrived the same year as a gift from the AlliiertenMuseum in Berlin, carrying heads that Thierry Noir painted for the Air Force Museum specially.
The exchange is the fact worth keeping. Everywhere else in this catalogue the Wall is bought, given or lent. Here a museum traded two transport aircraft for four pieces of a border — the aircraft that broke the blockade of 1948 for the wall that went up thirteen years later.
How did it get here?
Four segments from Rhein-Main air base, obtained in an exchange for a Douglas C-47 and a C-54 of the Berlin airlift type, taken over on 23 December 1999 and flown to Ohio in a chartered C-141; two further segments given the same year by the AlliiertenMuseum in Berlin and painted by Thierry Noir.
Sources
Listed by the Federal Foundation as #214 and by the Berlin Wall Archive as #92.
Federal Foundation — Berlin Wall worldwide, site entry ↗
The two wall ensembles in the Cold War galleries since 2000, the exchange of four segments from Rhein-Main air base for two Berlin airlift aircraft, General William J. Begert's collection of them on 23 December 1999, the sixteen tonne weight and the chartered C-141, the public presentation on 11 November 2000, the camouflaged Trabant display, and the two further segments given by the AlliiertenMuseum and painted by Thierry Noir.
Inventory listingSource accessed 2026-09-17
Federal Foundation — Berlin Wall worldwide ↗
The source lists this place as a Berlin Wall location. Coordinates, where supplied, are source-reported and may represent a general area. This is not independent verification of authenticity, current presence, or public access.
Inventory listingSource accessed 2026-09-17 · Source record 214
Berlin Wall Archive ↗
The source lists this place as a Berlin Wall location. Coordinates, where supplied, are source-reported and may represent a general area. This is not independent verification of authenticity, current presence, or public access.
Inventory listingSource accessed 2026-09-17 · Source record 92
Source-reported segments: 6. This is not a separately verified count.
No photograph of this one has been published. If you have taken one, or know when it arrived or who gave it, we would like to hear. Contribute to this record