It began officially at midnight on June 23, 1948 and ended at 5:32 a.m. May 12, 1949. It was one of the greatest events in aviation history—the Berlin Airlift.
Authors Ann and John Tusa wrote a book in the 1980s called The Berlin Airlift, which was published in 1988. Ten years later Ann gave a talk on the Airlift to an audience at London’s Imperial War Museum. Here, courtesy of the Tusas, is the text of her compelling lecture: “Imagine yourselves sixty years ago. It’s June 24, 1948 and you are in West Berlin. Last night, soon after midnight, all the electricity went off. Most of it came from Soviet-controlled power stations and the Russians have cut the supply. A few generators are now struggling to provide emergency supplies but the Underground and the metropolitan surface railway are not working. Nor are the buses—the city is about to run out of petrol and doesn’t expect to get any more. No one has told you that there are only stocks of coal in West Berlin for forty-five days, but you know perfectly well that no more coal can get into the city—the Russians won’t let it—so light, heating, anything using electricity is soon going to stop. You panicked this morning and filled the bath, the basins and every bucket, pan and jug in the house with water. Then the radio told you to calm down and use as much water as you want; ‘there are ample reserves,’ it said. Yes, there is plenty of water, but it comes from deep wells and has to be pumped out electrically. You have queued all day for food. Any food. Because none got into the city today and none is expected—the Russians have cut the road and rail communications which brought it. There have been radio broadcasts all day telling you not to hoard, because there is food in store for the ‘immediate future.’ But how long is that? The Town Hall knows—there are stocks for thirty-five days. They put them under lock and key today while they worked out rations to stretch those meager quantities. Tomorrow you’ll find there is not a single pint of fresh milk available; if you ate fresh fruit or vegetables today, they may have been your last for eleven months. You’re under siege.
“You’re not really surprised by any of this. For months now you have been dreading a crisis. You’ve known that a major international confrontation has been simmering and that it would come to a boil in Berlin.
“Since the end of the Second World War in May 1945, Germany has been under military occupation by the four leading members of the coalition which defeated Hitler—the Soviet Union, United States, Britain, and France. They have divided the country into four zones, set up their government, the Allied Control Council, in Berlin and divided the city into four sectors. Berlin, however, is inside the Soviet Zone of occupation; it is over 100 miles by direct road or rail from the western zones. In the first chaotic weeks after the end of the war, the Russians said they did not have transport to carry supplies and their own zone was starving. They persuaded their western allies to take responsibility for providing three quarters of the food and fuel for the three western sectors of Berlin. To carry these supplies, the Russians only conceded one road, one railway line, and a few canals from West Germany. The western allies hadn’t argued: they were too appalled by the devastation they faced in Germany, too anxious to get Soviet cooperation in running the place. Anyway, they assumed these ludicrously inadequate arrangements were only temporary and they could renegotiate them once Four-Power government was set up. Indeed, Field Marshal Montgomery recalled: ‘We thought we had a gentleman’s agreement and that everyone would do his stuff. Well, the Russians were never gentlemen in Germany; the stuff they wanted to do there was very different from western ambitions. So, the traffic rules for the western sectors were never changed. The vulnerabity of one road, one railway line from the West through a hundred miles of Soviet-held territory made two and a half million West Berliners potential Soviet hostages. On June 24, 1948, the Russians were demanding a ransom.
“It’s not entirely clear what the Kremlin’s plans and hopes had been in the three years since the end of the war. There were those in the Soviet regime who thought in terms of a Marxist duty to world revolution—they wanted to take over western Europe, just as they tucked the states of eastern Europe behind an Iron Curtain since 1945. Every state had been bankrupted by the war, wrecked by fighting, stripped by Nazi pillage. There was endemic hunger and economic depression everywhere—and neither hope nor resource to rebuild. Stalin could exploit economic misery and political unrest through increasingly popular Communist parties.
Air Traffic controllers at Tempelhof Airport, Berlin during the airlift;
A C-47 bringing in flour for the bread bakers of the city;
Members of the 92nd Troop Carrier Group unloading cans of gasoline during the airlift operation.
Key figures in the Berlin Airlift—General Curtis LeMay and General William Tunner, right.
“But by early 1948, dramatic changes were clearly on the way and Germany was the key to all of them. German coal and steel were vital to refuel west European recovery. But until now, German workers had been simply too weak from hunger to produce them—mining couldn’t get up to half the pre-war level. According to the United Nations the daily ration for a healthy active man or woman was 2,650 calories. For three years since the end of the war, the western zones of occupation in Germany had struggled to provide 1,500. In the terrible winter of 1946-47, some cities only got 900 calories. German industry was at a standstill—and all Germany’s neighbours depended on trade with her. There was no market in Germany; the Reichsmark was hopelessly inflated and the only acceptable currency was cigarettes. So far, the Russians had blocked every move by the West to cure the European disease; in Germany they had vetoed any common policies, in spite of a wartime agreement that Germany would be run as a single unit. They ran their zone as a separate fiefdom and were milking it dry—money, goods, anything they could lay their hands on was being shipped out to the Soviet Union. The western powers had put up with this for a while, believing that Four-Power coalition was essential to secure the peace and to rebuild Europe. They had tried to buy Soviet cooperation with concessions, but by 1948, they had lost patience and decided to go it alone.
“The British and Americans, and eventually the French, had already fused their occupation zones and were running the joint economies as best they could. They now wanted to get Germans motivated, give them something to work for. In February 1948 they proposed to a west European conference in London that Germans should draft a constitution for a temporary semi-independent West German state—a stopgap until there was agreement with the Soviet Union on a unified, autonomous Germany. In June 1947, the American Secretary of State, George Marshall, had offered huge financial assistance for rebuilding the economies of Europe. That offer had been siezed by the West and turned down flat by the Soviet Union—on her own behalf and that of her satellites. To crank up the West German economy in time to make use of Marshall aid, the West had announced the introduction of a new, sound Deutschmark—it would be brought into use in the western sectors of Berlin in June 1948.
“Currency reform was the last straw for Stalin. He’d fought every western change and proposal so far and throughout 1948 he’d been venting his rage in Berlin. There was constant Soviet interference with traffic on the road and railway from the West, delay in the mail, flickering of the electricity supply. In March 1948 the Soviet Military Governor walked out of the Allied Control Council—that was the end of Four-Power Government of Germany; on June 16th the Soviet representative stumped out of the Allied Kommandatura which ran Berlin—that was end of quadripartite administration of the city and any pretence of Four-Power cooperation.
Two cockpit views of the approach to landing at Berlin’s Tempelhof airfield as it looked to pilots during the airlift.
“The West had not wavered in any of its policies, so on June 24th Stalin played his biggest card: total blockade of the western sectors of Berlin. The road, the railway, the electricity supply were cut. Two and a half million lives were now at risk. Every plan for the recovery of Europe was at stake. If the western sectors were starved out it was inevitable that the Russians would take them over. Once Berlin fell, there was no hope for West German recovery: Everyone in the western zones would simply wait for the Red Army to arrive. And without German coal, steel, and economic momentum there would be neither the means nor the confidence in western Europe to use Marshall aid.
“How could the western sectors possibly survive a siege? The western garrisons in the city numbered only 12,000 men in all and there were reckoned to be up to 300,000 Soviet troops surrounding them. Could a relief army break through? The chances were that the West Berliners and the western garrison would be dead before it got there—and, even worse, sending in troops could spark off a war with the Russians. And the West was in no position to fight one. According to U.S. service chiefs it would take eighteen months before they were ready for it, the British Chiefs of Staff warned that meanwhile they would be unable to prevent a Soviet advance into western Germany and that would precipitate ‘complete disorganization leading to disaster.’ The West had only one form of military strength—Atom bombs, but everyone believed that if they used them there would be no Europe left to rebuild.
“We now know how the Berlin blockade was broken, how western Europe was saved. But an airlift didn’t seem a solution to the crisis at the time. No one dreamed that it was possible to supply a great city by air. There had been major supply operations during the war—over the Hump into China, for instance. But then, there had been time for forward planning, building up stocks, laying airstrips, ensuring command of the skies. In 1948 there were no contingency plans, no preparations. There were two airfields in Berlin—Tempelhof and Gatow. Each of them had only one runway, and that was made of PSP [pierced steel planking] which would break up under heavy landings and rip the tyres of laden aircraft. Access to these landing points was along three air corridors across the Soviet Zone from the West whcih had been allocated by the Russians in November 1945 and with remarkably little argument, which suggests how insignificant air transport had seemed at the time. Each of the corridors was twenty miles wide. They were quite as vulnerable as the road and rail links to Berlin; they could be blocked by barrage balloons, come under fire from artillery in the Soviet Zone. Navigation was no joke, even when traffic was light—and the Americans didn’t even have the BABS or Rebecca Eureka aids the RAF relied on—they had to fly by radio compass and the seat of their pants. The three corridors converged in a circle of twenty miles radius over Berlin—dangerous. Ground control facilities were primitive, certainly not capable of coping with heavy traffic, let alone in bad weather. Last, but most pressing of arguments against an airlift: there were not enough aircraft to mount one. In Germany the British had six Dakotas and were expecting two squadrons more. The Americans had 100 of the Dakota’s equivalent, the C-47. Each of these aircraft could carry two and a half tons. Yet every day before the blockade the western sectors of Berlin had received 9,000 tons of supplies from the West, and a further 3,000 from the East. Service chiefs in Britain and the States all argued against sending more aircraft to Germany; they were heavily committed else-where. The Americans in particular wanted to save time and trouble over Berlin and put all the effort into preparing for the war likely to develop from this crisis.
The bomb-ruined Reichs Ministry after the war. It would later be redesigned by British architect Norman Foster and rebuilt in the 1990s to serve as the home of the German Parliament.
“It was the politicians who insisted on air rescue for Berlin. General Lucius D. Clay, the American Military Governor in Germany, tends to get the credit for starting the airlift. He did indeed ask the U.S. Air Force on June 24th to fly in food, and the next day he called for coal. In fact, the RAF got the same orders at the same time. And Clay was merely calling for a few days of morale boosting. Thereafter, he thought the only way to raise the blockade would be to send armed convoys up the Autobahn and shoot [their way] through if they were stopped. His opponents thought this was not a clever way to start a war. The man who from the very beginning saw the possibilities in a full-scale, prolonged operation was the British Foreign Secretary, Ernest Bevin. On June 25th he ordered planning for an all-out air effort. On June 28th he laid into two American visitors, the Under Secretary for the Amry and the Director of Army Plans and Operations. He shouted at them, wheedled, jerked a few tears, and told them that the United States must put everything it had into supplying the western sectors. He said afterwards: ‘I really enjoyed frightening those generals.’ He then spent the next few months nagging their President, Harry Truman, for big aircraft—which could carry ten tons. Truman was more than willing, but had to frighten a lot of his own generals before he got them—it was October before a vital 100 C-54s arrived in Germany.
“Neither Bevin nor Truman believed that an airlift in itself could solve the Berlin crisis. And they were taking a gamble: that the Soviet Union would just stop short of shooting down and starting a war. What they wanted the airlift to do was buy time to get food and fuel into the western sectors and save them from quick Soviet take-over; time to impress the Kremlin with western determination and air strength. Significantly, Beven got American B-29 bombers stationed in England—potential nuclear weapon carriers. It so happened they were not loaded, but Stalin wasn’t to know that. Given time, West Germans could draft a constitution and western Europe could polish its plans for using Marshall aid. And then, against a background of western confidence, the Allies could negotiate with the Soviet Union to get the blockade lifted withouty making concessions over any western plan for reconstruction.
“The airlift did eventually become that vital ‘cushion of time,’ as someone once called it. But for many months it was what the Duke of Wellington would have called a “damn close run thing.” Western Berlin was used to getting 12,000 tons of food and fuel a day. Once the blockade started, the city government agreed to struggle on for a while with a bare 4,000 a day, but said they would need 5,500 once winter started and more coal was consumed. Yet it took from June to the end of September before the airlift could cope with 4,500 tons a day and it was January before it could carry 5,500. The problems were overwhelming. There was the early shortage of aircraft. Then, once C-54s arrived and the British had laid on Yorks, Hastings, Sunderlands, and a pot pourri of civilian machines, there was never enough time or ground crew for servicing, never an adequate supply of spare parts for maintenance. Templehof and Gatow had to be upgraded for landing and unloading—that meant flying in materials and heavy building equipment, seven supply airfields had to be rebuilt in the British zone and two more expanded in the American zone. State-of-the-art ground control facilities had to be imported. It was all very well in the early days for keen pilots to grab an aircraft, get it loaded as fast as possible, then streak off and drop into Berlin wherever there was a gap. But once the air corridors were packed with carriers, there had to be ways to stop them bumping into each other: one-way traffic, takeoff in blocks from rear airfields in turn, flights and landings timed to the split second.
“The early months of the airlift had required a steep learning curve in the matter of what to fly and how. Coal was a priority—for heat, light, industry. But it was bulky and heavy—and unless it was loaded properly it upset the aircraft’s trim. Coal dust got everywhere and clogged controls, sweeping had to be rigorous. Sacks were the best packaging for it but by October the British had lost one and a third million of them and the Americans a million more—at a cost of two shillings each. Flour was another essential—and dirty—load, too. Bread was baked in Berlin because 15% of its weight is water, more than the weight of coal which had to be flown in for the bakers. Again to save weight, meat was boned, and preferably tinned or turned into sausage to preserve it—one sausage was so disgusting that not even hungry Berliners would touch it. A civil servant came up with the very Alice-in-Wonderland idea that they could be bribed to eat it by offering a double ration. They preferred to starve. Vegetables and fruit were all dried to save bulk and weight. Old Berliners remember to this day the horror of tonsil-clotting dried potato—Pom (West German factories could never produce more than a third of the dried potato Berlin needed. British Army warehouses in Egypt were stripped of stocks, then contracts were placed with Hungary, and the stuff was sent through or round Berlin to be flown back in). Once there was enough airlift capacity, planners had to think what else a civilized society needed to keep going: newsprint, spare parts for lorries, needles and thread, shoe leather for repairs, knitting wool, x-ray plates, and medical supplies. And they had to balance priorities: send all that, or use space for steel girders, heavy plant, and cement to build a brand new power station and a third airfield at Tegel, and a new mascot goat for the Welsh Fusiliers, an American camel called Clarence who disrtributed toys and sweets to children in hospital.
A C-47 Skytrain arriving with desperately needed supplies for the German citizenry,
Two souvenir Berlin Airlift air crew cigarette cases;
Examples of postal commemorative Airlift cover envelopes;
A Berlin Airlift commemorative medal.
A plaster souvenir wall plate brought back to England from Germany by a British serviceman. Such plates were made in local German workshops and sold in clubs on the bases of the Berlin Airlift crews.
Flown postal covers that commemorated the great air lift.
German children playing ‘air lift’ in a Berlin street.
“One argument never settled, was whether to fly goods out of as well as into Berlin. The Americans always wanted the quickest possible turnaround: unload, refuel, and out. The British insisted that keeping Berlin industry ticking over was part of the whole campaign to save the western sectors. So they took a backload: anything from grand painos to electric light bulbs: tricky loading and very time consuming. That backload explains the airlift tonnage figures about which the British have sometimes been hang dog. Between June 1948 and July 1949 the Americans carried one and a half million tons; the British just less than half a million. The Americans, though, stuck to standard loads, coal and flour, predictable and quick. The British took their share of them but also awkward and dangerous cargoes like salt and liquid fuel, and they added the backload.
“Everything the joint airlift achieved would have gone for nothing if it hadn’t been for the courage and endurance of the Berliners who tightened their belts. They got four hours of electricity a day—if it came on in the middle of the night, that is when they did the ironing, the mending, and cooked something for the next day. There was no coal for heating in the winter, but they refused Russian offers of free coal, and they chopped up furniture to burn in the grate. They were under constant political assault. Democratic politicians and their supporters were beaten up or kidnapped by Soviet-controlled police, others were dragged off in the night to be interrogated by Soviet officers, were threatened with the loss of their ration cards, had their flats measured by billeting officers and their furniture confiscated. The Town Hall, which was in the Soviet sector, was several times besieged for days on end by howling, Communist-led mobs, trying to take it over. Berliners would not surrender. They said that as long as they could hear the drone of aircraft they had hope. They turned out, sometimes a quarter of a million of them at a time, to hear their great mayor Ernst Reuter tell them that the struggle for Berlin was ‘a struggle for the freedom of the world’; they backed his call to the West not to barter the city away by compromise with the Soviet Union, to ‘bring help not just with aircraft but with common lasting ideals.’ Then they went home and laughed at the current Berlin joke: ‘Aren’t we lucky. Imagine if the British and Americans were besieging us and the Russians were running the airlift.’
“That airlift delivered the means for their survival in the end. But it took a miracle to save them over the winter.
Russian victories have always depended upon General Winter; this time he defeated them. There was less frost and ice in Germany than ever on record—the airlift was not frozen to the ground. There was fog but by then navigation and ground control could cope with it, and pilots had the skill and guts to land well under the standard safety regulations for poor visibility. And thanks to more and bigger aircraft, and smooth delivery routines, nearly six and a half thousand tons a day were delivered to Berlin in March, and it was confidently predicted that the figure would soon be up to eight thousand and would keep rising. Berliners were now better fed than they had been since the war—they were actually putting on weight.
Maintenance was a round-the-clock effort for these American mechanics during the airlift.
“Stalin, the realist, could read the writing on the wall. West Berlin was going to survive; thanks to the new mark and future Marshall aid, the German economy would blossom and with it western Europe. By February 1949 German politicians in Bonn had drafted the Basic Law, a constitution for a separate West German state. That month, by no coincidence, the Soviet ambassador at the United Nations began secret talks with his American counterpart on a settlement of the Berlin crisis—and while the airlift flew and grew, there would be no need for western concessions. The western allies had a new strength and confidence: they had agreed to set up NATO, and each member would assist any other attacked. This North Atlantic Treaty was signed on April 4th; the Basic Law was approved on May 9, 1949. And on May 10th the Russians announced they would lift the Berlin blockade.
“The airlift had been a major turning point; it had precipitated a new Europe. Sadly, it was a divided Europe: two separate and hostile political and economic systems in East and West and two armed camps: NATO and eventually the Warsaw Pact. The dividing line between them ran through Germany and split the country in two. In 1945 Germans had been seen by the occupation powers as enemies; now each German state was claimed as an ally by East and West. Divided Berlin was the potential flashpoint for any conflict between the two blocs. The western sectors were as vulnerable as ever: they still depended on food and fuel deliveries along a single road and rail link—in their anxiety to get the blockade up in May 1949, the western allies failed to negotiate better communications.
“For all its faults, this settlement for Germany and Europe turned out to be a peace settlement. It was uneasy; it gave grounds for tension and fear in the coming years, and once both sides had nuclear weapons it relied on avoidance of mutually assured destruction. Yet it gave Europe forty years of peace—the longest period in our history. And a new Europe was born in 1989 without war.”
Again, from The Berlin Airlift by Ann and John Tusa: “In those first two vital, chaotic weeks the British and Americans had to scour their records for men of every expertise: air-traffic controllers, mechanics, electricians, drivers, staff experienced in loading. They rummaged stores for spare parts, pierced steel planking for runways, radios, fuel lines, marshalling bats, flares, cords for lashing down freight. They rounded up lorries, jeeps, cars; signed on thousands of Germans and Displaced Persons as labourers and loaders; found stoves, pots, and pans to feed the sudden influx onto the airfields.
“As if manpower, equipment, and organization did not present problems enough, the airlift faced truly appalling weather. In what was supposed to be the height of summer there were thunderstorms, snow and heavy icing, fog if the wind dropped, continuous low cloud which was often below 200 feet, and incessant driving rain. For three weeks and more, aircraft struggled to and from Berlin against conditions in which, as a British officer admitted, crews would not normally be asked to fly. Some American pilots encountered such icing that they had to maintain full power just to stay in the air; when they used their de-icing equipment, great lumps of ice would crack off the wings and thud down the fuselage. The RAF could seldom meet its target of 160 sorties a day because of poor visibility which prevented landings or because Gatow was closed while sheets of water were swept from the runway. Tempelhof was unusable for hours at a stretch thanks to dense cloud or violent tailwinds. Everyone on the ground was soaked to the skin—little or no protective clothing could be found. Rain seeped into the aircraft and engines would not start—on July 2nd, twenty-six Dakotas were out of service because of electrical faults caused by damp. Aircraft and motor vehicles churned the airfields into quagmires. Bulldozers laboured night and day to flatten the fields; PSP, rubble, and bricks were thrown down to give some solid-standing. Crews waded to their aircraft through heavy, glutinous sludge, then flew in caked wellingtons or boots which glued or even froze to the rudder pedals.
“The only thing not dampened was morale. Men worked round the clock without grumbling or slacking. Pilots flew every hour the weather would let them and took frightening risks to land in minimal visibility. A Flying Control officer at Wunstorf was on-duty for fourteen hours non-stop. Drivers worked for twenty-four hours without a break. Ground staff put in regular sixteen-hour shifts. High-ranking officers stood in the pouring rain and marshalled aircraft or exchanged their warm offices for a freezing aircraft packed with flour for Berlin. U.S. airmen gave up their Independence Day holiday and kept flying—the New York Times commented: ‘We were proud of our Air Force during the war. We’re prouder of it today.’ Even when there was some time off, there was little rest. Aircraft and motor vehicles kept up an incessant din. American aircrews lay in rows as Nissen huts were hammered together around them and men clattered in and out, on and off duty at all hours; RAF pilots climbed ladders into attics at Wunstorf to sleep on the floor and be trampled on by people looking for a space to lie down. Other ranks, American and British, settled into sodden tents and tried to rest on the soggy ground. Everyone kept going on adrenalin. Old hands recognized ‘a flap’ and responded to it as they had in the war; young recruits were excited and keen to show how good they were. On paper the odds against the airlift being able to feed Berlin were impossible; the results of the first few weeks were paltry. The people involved saw only a challenge and leapt at it. Never mind the problems: ‘Do your best,’ ‘Every little pound helps.’ Men who only three years before would have set out to bomb Berlin were now using all their skill and energy to feed it. It was a target into which they put their hearts.
A Douglas C-54 Skymaster turning onto final approach to landing at a German airfield in the airlift.
“And by the second week in July the airlift began to show signs of coming to grips with its problems, even though they were far from solved. Systems for handling freight had been developed, staffs of all kinds expanded, air-traffic control improved, equipment scrounged. The C-54s and Yorks were being integrated into the operation. On July 4th, half a dozen Sunderland flying boats landed at Finkenwerde on the Elbe and next day made their first trips to the Havel. The Russians protested at their use of the lake and claimed to control all Berlin waterways (and they were right), but they were ignored. Sunderlands could carry ten thousand pounds in their lower decks and bomb compartments. Their primary use would be to transport salt—they were anodized against salt water and their controls were tucked up out of reach of cargo so that, unlike other aircraft, they would not be corroded. They soon settled to taking other freight as well: meat, cigarettes, sanitary towels. The Havel made a natural flying boat base: calm, thanks to the shelter of low hills on all sides, with a long take-off run (often afflicted with cross-winds), and deep moorings close to the shore. Finkenwerde, on the other hand, was not ideal. The Elbe was choppy and strewn with wrecks and rubble. There were no facilities for refuelling, and the job had to be done by hand from 40-gallon drums until REME mechanics brought out a barge with a pipeline floating on jerrycans. Objectively, the Sunderland itself was something of a liability—slow and ponderous, it presented scheduling problems because its run had to be slotted between those for Gatow and Tempelhof. Yet it did much to cheer the Germans, who saw it as a sign that efforts were being made and that resources were available. The ten daily Sunderland landings on the Havel attracted crowds of delighted spectators, and children especially were enchanted by this new monster duck.
“With more and bigger aircraft and better back-up, allied tonnage figures started to rise. On July 8th, 1,117 tons were flown into Berlin; next day the total dropped to 819; but on July 11th it was 1,264 and by July 15th 1,480. Obviously this was still short of the 2,000 tons of food needed every day, let alone the 12,000 tons of goods in all. Even so, measured against the 1,404 tons brought in during the whole of June, it was quite an achievement.
“As the airlift grew, so did ambitions. The allies were no longer satisfied with just trying to feed Berlin. At the beginning of July, Yorks carried 100 emergency generators. Pilots watched with horror as two of these 6,000-lb machines were swung into their holds without the slightest regard for the standard load factor or the usual rules for distribution of weight, and they wondered if they would get off the ground without the cargo dropping through the floor. The Americans and British flew in petrol—a dangerous, volatile consignment which had to be carried in heavy metal drums taking up valuable space and difficult to load and secure. The backlog of letters and parcels from Berlin was cleared and more industrial goods were brought out, though the British drew the line at transporting an upright piano and a baby grand destined for export to South Africa.
“Most dramatically, the decision was taken early in July to fly in coal. The Americans had practiced in their zone dropping it from the bomb bays of B-29s, but faced at the receiving end with piles of dust they soon gave up the scheme. The first coal landed at Tempelhof on July 7th packed in old service duffel bags. Nobody two weeks before had dreamed of bringing fuel to Berlin. Even now no one imagined that they could ever meet minimal needs. Nevertheless, coal was a new demonstration to the Russians of allied determination and capability, a new offer of hope to Berliners, and another way of giving time to the politicians and diplomats to get the blockade lifted.”
The foundation aircraft for the Berlin Airlift was the Douglas C-47, and the primary aircraft used at the start of the operation. In the morning of June 24, 1948, Operation Knicker began with six RAF Dakotas carrying a daily total of sixty tons of urgently needed food and supplies between the Wunstorf base in Hanover and RAF Gatow in the British sector of Berlin. Knicker was intended as a temporary measure while the Russians were supposedly “making repairs” to the railway line used by the allies into Berlin. Three weeks later, Knicker became Operation Plainfare.
At the time, General Curtis E. LeMay, a high-achieving wartime commander in the American Air Force, was a commander of United States Air Forces in Europe. In the early days of the airlift into Berlin, the American part of the effort was referred to as “The LeMay Coal and Feed Delivery Service.” Their part was actually called Operation Vittles. The first flights in Operation Plainfare were thirty-two Dakota sorties flown on June 26, 1948. The planes delivered eighty tons of powdered milk, flour, and medicine that day. General LeMay had 102 war-weary C-47s at his disposal for most of the airlift operation and, until the arrival of 100 of the larger C-54s in October, they carried the load for the Americans. Veteran pilots and crews were grabbed from their peacetime situations in the United States, Britain, and elsewhere and brought to Germany to fly the lift. As the operation grew in scope, responsibility for the American role in it passed from the U.S. Air Force to the Military Air Transport Command, and a new MATC director was appointed in July. Major General William H. Tunner, the veteran commander of the wartime India-to-China “Hump” airlift operation arrived in Germany to bring a higher level of efficiency to the effort. His methods earned him the nickname “Willie the Whip” when he established a system in which an aircraft was to land every three minutes, day or night, as long as the minimum ceiling at the destination was 400 feet or better. The record for cargo tonnage delivered was set on Sunday, April 17, 1949 when 13,000 tons were flown into Berlin. The procession of aircraft that day was referred to as the “Easter Parade.”
If the winter fog, ice, clouds, and rain were not bad enough to hamper the flight operations, the Soviets provided further distraction, danger, and harassment when their anti-aircraft batteries and fighter pilots fired on the American and British cargo planes. In darkness, Soviet searchlight crews did their best to wreck the night vision of the airlift pilots. All of these tactics were relatively ineffective and, in the early spring of 1949, the Russians began conversations in New York about a settlement of the Berlin situation. The resulting agreement was signed in May and the Soviet blockade was lifted. The British and Americans, however, continued to bring and stockpile great reserves of supplies, food, and fuel into September against the possibilty of the Soviets starting another blockade.
With the increasing availability of the larger Douglas C-54 Skymaster by October 1st, the U.S. C-47 Skytrain transports were withdrawn from primary service in the airlift. The RAF, however, continued to fly its Dakotas into Gatow and into the new airfield, Tegel, in the French zone. In fact, by November, twenty-five additional Dakota crews had arrived from the air forces of Australia New Zealand and South Africa to supplement the RAF Dakota force and continue its contribution to the success of Plainfare. Several additional civil Dakotas were operated by half a dozen charter companies to increase the total air lifting capacity in the second half of 1948.
In the fifteen months of the great airlift to Berlin, the allies delivered in excess of 2.3 million tons of vitally needed cargo. There were crashes and fatalities. Thirty military personnel and one civilian died in the operation.
Airlift aircrew in a briefing before the resumption of flights in the operation.
