[2] Brunolf Baade was born in and grew up on the southern edge of Rixdorf (today Neukölln),[3] a densely populated district then just outside the northern perimeter of Berlin.

When he was 14, his enthusiastic if brief involvement in some of the preparations for revolution, which erupted in post-World War I Germany, alarmed his parents, who were never themselves particularly political, and suggested that his rather conservative school environment had released a rebellious streak in the boy.

He joined the Academic Flying League and started to construct gliders, asroduction and operation of powered aircraft in Germany had been restricted under the provisions of the 1919 Treaty of Versailles.

Incorporated into his study period with the DVS was an internship that ran from 27 November 1927 to 5 December 1928 and based in Berlin, which involved responsibility for static load testing.

Once there, however, he loosened his ties with BFW, remaining in the USA for some years, working at various times for Eastern Aircraft, North American Aviation, and the US subsidiary of the (since 1919 Dutch domiciled) Fokker Company.

[3] World War II ended in May 1945, but the previous month, Brunolf Baade had been arrested by an advance party of US soldiers who had surprised him at the outsourced Junkers design office at Raguhn.

[3] Between April and June, the Americans occupied Dessau; they comprehensively looted the Junkers library and technical documents, along with the latest aircraft and engines that their soldiers removed apparently as trophies.

In the end, more than 2,000 written reports were prepared and shipped to the Soviet Union,[6] though as matters turned out, the subsequent research of the Junkers engineers would be of greater value than their memories of the past.

On 22 October 1946, however, as part of Operation Osoaviakhim, Soviet troops appeared outside the houses of selected company personnel who were given four hours to pack their possessions and prepare for a two-week journey by truck to a village north of Moscow, and close to Dubna, called Podberezye (Подберезье).

[6] When they arrived, they were confronted by a large complex of otherwise abandoned military buildings containing a considerable quantity of machinery that the Soviets had managed to gather from various formerly German aircraft manufacturing facilities.

In any event, Baade, whose talents for leadership and for charming people were not in doubt,[6] quickly emerged as the leader of the relocated German engineers, and as a man whom the Soviets were in large part prepared to trust.

[6] Under Baade, work continued on developing the Junkers Ju 287 jet bomber with its characteristic "forward-swept" wings, now renamed as the OKB-1 EF 131, although progress was hampered by the Soviet refusal to allow the German engineers near the military airfield used to test the prototypes.

As with the earlier project, progress was hampered by the inconsistent nature of support from the Soviets in obtaining materials and permitting the German expatriates the freedom necessary to develop and test the aircraft effectively.

[6] After a period of uncertainty, in December 1953 Baade persuaded the Soviets to permit his team to develop the abandoned OKB-1 150 bomber into a world-class jet-engined passenger aircraft.

[6] Holding the German aeronautical engineers in a village north of Moscow made less sense once the decision had been taken to lift the ban on aircraft manufacture in East Germany with effect from 1955.

[2] In terms of stealing a march on the west, political support from the national leadership was enthusiastic, but sources written with the benefit of hindsight nevertheless surmise that Baade had underestimated the challenges.

[2] No infrastructure remained to support an aeronautical industry in terms of a supply chain, and although enthusiasm was plentiful, no experienced labour pool existed from which to draw workers.

He had been forced to leave key technical documentation behind, and never passed over: whether this resulted from overlapping bureaucratic structures in the Soviet system or from some high level decision was never entirely clear.

[3] To secure continued funding and political support, Baade was committed to a 1958 launch, but when the 152 appeared outside the hangar at Klotzsche for its high-profile "roll-out" in April 1958, the "152-V1", it did so without engines.