What happened
On the early morning of November 14th, a scheduled Pan Am cargo flight, operating as Flight 708, was en route from Frankfurt to Berlin. Due to ongoing runway maintenance at Tempelhof Airport, the flight was utilizing Tegel Airport for its operations.
The aircraft departed Frankfurt at 02:04 and initially climbed to an altitude of FL90. During the flight, the crew requested a descent to FL30, which was granted. Shortly thereafter, Berlin Control instructed the aircraft to perform a left turn toward heading zero three zero while descending to maintain two thousand feet. As the plane approached the Outer Marker, approximately 6.5 miles out, the controller cleared the aircraft for an ILS approach to runway eight right, directing a right turn to heading zero six zero.
Immediately following the crew's acknowledgment of these instructions, the Pan Am Boeing 707 (implied cargo flight) struck the ground roughly 10 miles from the airport within the Soviet occupation zone. At the time of the accident, meteorological conditions were poor, characterized by snow and visibility of only 2.6 km. Cloud layers were present at 500 feet and 600 feet, with temperatures at -1°C.
Following the impact, Soviet authorities recovered approximately 50 percent of the wreckage. Notably, several critical pieces of equipment were not returned, including the flight data recorder, cockpit voice recorder, navigation systems, communication gear, and flight control components.
Findings
The investigation identified that the aircraft had descended below its assigned altitude clearance limit prior to impact, though the specific reason for this unauthorized descent could not be determined.