The eastward aspect
It faces the route the aircraft flew.
Thomas Kroemer — CC BY-SA 4.0 · Heidas — CC BY-SA 3.0 · Wolfgang Pehlemann — CC BY-SA 3.0
Because the airlift was an operation between two ends: the departure airfields in western Germany and the landing fields in blockaded Berlin. The two memorials represent the two ends of the same line, and their identical form is deliberate so that a viewer reads them as one piece divided between two cities — exactly as Germany itself was at the time.
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The Airlift Memorial at Frankfurt Airport commemorates the operation that supplied West Berlin by air between 1948 and 1949 — and Frankfurt's part in it was central: from here and other bases in western Germany, aircraft loaded with food, coal and fuel took off for the blockaded city. The form carries the meaning: three curved concrete arms rising toward the sky, representing the three air corridors the Allies were permitted to use over Soviet-held territory to reach Berlin. The memorial faces east, along the route the aircraft took. An identical twin stands at Tempelhof airport in Berlin at the other end of the airlift, and both are popularly known as the hunger rake. The base of the memorial carries the names of the pilots and ground crew who died during the operation — around seventy-nine people, American, British and German. The site is at the airport and free to see.
It faces the route the aircraft flew.
Around 79 aircrew and ground staff who died.
Frankfurt Airport, 60547 Frankfurt