The victorious Allies of World War II
divided Germany into occupation zones: the American, French, and British zones
in the west and a Soviet zone in the east. Within the Soviet zone lay Berlin,
formerly Hitler’s capital, also divided into four sectors, each administered by
one of the wartime allies. The only guaranteed means of access to isolated Berlin
was by air. The Soviet Union had granted each of the three Western Allies a 20-mile-wide
air corridor leading from their respective occupation zones to the city; but no
such arrangement governed travel by road or rail--that depended upon the continuing
cooperation of Soviet authorities.
Scarcely had the war ended when relations between the Western Allies and the Soviet
Union began to deteriorate. Eastern Europe came under Soviet domination. As early
as 1946, Britain’s wartime Prime Minister, Winston Churchill, in a speech in Fulton,
Missouri, warned: "From Stettin on the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic, an iron
curtain has descended across the continent." Behind that curtain, Soviet control
tightened; a sphere of influence became a ring of satellite states, as happened
to Czechoslovakia in February 1948 when a Communist faction seized control of
the government. Shortly afterward, the Soviet Union began exerting pressure on
the overland routes leading into Berlin, imposing arbitrary restrictions on access,
such as temporarily halting coal shipments and, on 24 June, establishing a blockade.
Lacking the ground forces to punch through the blockade, the Western Allies had
no choice but to rely on airlift if their sectors in Berlin, with a combined populace
of some two million, were to survive. Never before had any nation mounted so ambitious
an aerial resupply operation. The Soviet leadership, conditioned by failure of
the German airlift at Stalingrad during the war, could hardly have taken seriously
the Allies’ prospects for success.The task of supplying Berlin by air devolved
upon the U.S. Air Forces in Europe, commanded by Major General Curtis E. LeMay,
who had at his disposal 102 C-47s, each with a cargo capacity of 3 tons, and 2
of the larger C-54s that could carry 10 tons apiece. He called for reinforcements
and entrusted the operation to Brigadier General Joseph Smith, who called it Operation
Vittles because, "We’re hauling grub." The first deliveries took place on 26 June
1948, when C-47s made 32 flights into Berlin with 80 tons of cargo, mainly powdered
milk, flour, and medicine. As the days passed, General Smith increased the use
of his C-47s and newly arriving C-54s by dispatching aircraft according to a block
system that grouped them according to type, allowing radar controllers on the
ground to deal more easily with strings of aircraft having the same flight characteristics.Within
a month, American officials realized a massive airlift of indefinite duration
afforded the only alternative to war or withdrawal. The transports would have
to deliver not only food for the populace but also coal to heat their homes during
the winter, and bulky bags of coal would cut deeply into the available space within
the aircraft. The airlift would continue after the good flying weather of summer
had ended and winter fog, clouds, rain, and ice commenced. Because so extensive
an operation exceeded the capacity of the U.S. Air Forces in Europe, Operation
Vittles became the responsibility of the Military Air Transport Service, created
on 1 June 1948 by the merger of Air Force and Navy transport units and directed
by the Air Force as the executive agent of the Secretary of Defense. Chosen to
command the Berlin Airlift was Major General William H. Tunner, a veteran of the
aerial supply line across the Himalayas, from India to China, during World War
II.General Tunner arrived in Germany late in July 1948 and promptly set about
speeding up the delivery of cargo, an effort that earned him the nickname "Willie
the Whip." He established a truly impossible goal of a landing every minute, day
or night if the ceiling at the destination was 400 feet or more. At times the
aircrews participating in the operation came close to achieving this goal, touching
down 3 minutes apart. The transport aircraft entered the air corridor at a prescribed
time and altitude, followed the beams from radio ranges to keep on course, and
obeyed instructions from ground radar controllers who regulated speed and interval
within the aircraft stream. Each pilot in this endless procession had one chance
to land. If the weather or some other reason prevented a landing, he would return
to his home station and reenter the cycle later. On Easter Sunday, 17 April 1949,
this system delivered 13,000 tons of cargo, including the equivalent of 600 railroad
cars of coal. This so-called Easter Parade set a record for a day’s tonnage during
the operation.
Templehof Airfield
C-47s during Berlin Airlift
The Easter Parade required near perfect teamwork. Fuel and bulk cargo were first
loaded onto ships in the United States, sent across the Atlantic, and unloaded
in Germany. Once there, the fuel and cargo were shipped to one of our U.S. Air
Force airfields: two were in the American Zone and two in the British Zone. Freight
from the American Zone went to Templehof Airfield and cargo from the British Zone
went to Gatow Airport. The transports themselves were flown by crews from the
U.S. Air Force, U.S. Navy, and the Royal Air Force. Initially, the Royal Air Force
mounted its own airlift, called Plane Fare. After mid-October 1948, however, a
combined airlift task force headquarters melded the British and American efforts.Soviet
forces harassed but did not attack the cargo aircraft of the Anglo-American alliance,
although fighter pilots and antiaircraft gunners occasionally opened fire near
the corridors, and searchlights that might temporarily blind a pilot sometimes
played upon the aircraft by night. By the spring of 1949, it was obvious these
tactics of harassment had failed to deter the American and British airmen involved
in the airlift of supplies to Berlin.Consequently, the Soviet Union entered into
negotiations which culminated in an agreement, signed on 5 May 1949, that resulted
in the lifting of the blockade, but it did not settle the basic issue of freedom
of access. Despite the resumption of surface traffic into the city, the airlift
continued until 30 September to mass a reserve of food, fuel, and other supplies
in the event the Soviets reimposed the blockade.Between 26 June 1948 and 30 September
1949, the airlift delivered more than 2.3 million tons of cargo, approximately
75 percent of it in American aircraft. American aircrews made more than 189,000
flights, totaling nearly 600,000 flying hours and exceeding 92 million miles.
To keep the aircraft going, military and civilian mechanics worked around the
clock to support airlift operations. Maintenance technicians would perform periodic
checks of aircraft components and systems after every 20 hours of flying time
to ensure proper operation. After 200 hours, the aircraft received a major inspection,
and after 1,000 hours, the transports were flown to depots in the United States
for a major overhaul. The operations sustained over the 15-month period were surprisingly
safe despite crowded airways and bad winter weather; the accident rate of the
airlift forces averaged less than half that of the entire Air Force. Nevertheless,
breaking the blockade cost the lives of 30 American servicemen and one civilian
in 12 crashes.
