-
AT12:30P.M.ONJUNE28.1948. President HarryTrumanstrodepur- BY
RICHARD HARRIS posefully into the Cabinet Room of the White House
and greeted Secretary of the Army Kenneth Royall, Secretary of
Defense James Forrestal, and Under Secretary of State Robert Lovett
with a curt nod. Characteristically; he got di-
rectly to the point. "Let's get one thing straight right now,"
he said, "We are staying in Berlin. Period!"
Truman was reacting to the latest crisis in the escalating Cold
War. In an attempt to
force their former allies out of West Berlin, the Union of
Soviet Socialist Republics had blocked access to the city. The
situation had unfolded five days earlier with an announcement in
West Berlin newspapers. "Berlin, June 23," it read, "Transport
Division of the Soviet Military Ad-
In 1948 the Soviet Union attempted to starve the Western-held
sectors of Berlin into submission. In response, Britain and the
United States resolved to keep the city supplied by air-a feat many
thought would
ministration is compelled to halt all passenger and freight
prove impossible. traffic to and from Berlin tomorrow at 0600 hours
because of technical difficulties." A second message declared,
"Water traffic will be suspended. Coal shipments from the Soviet
zone are halted. The Soviet authorities have also ordered the
central switching stations to stop the supply of electric pow-er to
the Western sectors. Shortage of coal to operate the plants is the
reason." The Soviets further announced that food brought into the
city from East Germany would be dis-tributed to the USSR-controlled
eastern sector of the city
48 AMERICAN HISTORY JUNE 1998
Three years after World War II ended, Berlin was still feeling
its effects. More than 10,000 laborers-6,000 of them women-worked
to clean up West Berlin, including these "rubble women" (above) who
worked in the dty~ British sector They borrowed their coats each
morningfrom the British mili-tary government and returned them at
the end of the work day. Two days after the Soviets began their
blockade, the U.S. Military Air Transport Service unsignia at left)
began supply-ing West Berlin residents with food. \Vhen the
blockade ended 11 months later, a group of celebrating West
Berliners waved to a US airplane approaching Tempelhof airfield
(right).
-
!
-------~ ------ -~----
Uke Germany itself, the city of Berlin was di-vided into Jour
zones-each administered by one of the victorious Allies (map).
General Llui.us Clay initiated the airlift shortly after the
Soviets began the blockade. At right, Clay and the American
Ambassador to Germany, Robert Murphy, drive to a meeting on the
cri-sis. When General William H. Tunner (top, left) anived in
Germany to take command of the Berlin Airlift, he called it a "real
cowboy operation" but soon turned it into an efficient machine.
Tunner worried that the airlift's first commander, General Curtis
E. LeMay (top, right), would feel insulted that he was being
replaced, but LeMay accepted the change without question.
only. West Berlin was now isolated 110 miles inside hostile
territory
Lieutenant General Lucius Clay, United States Military Governor
of Germany and Commander of the United States Forces in Europe,
strongly believed that West Berlin had to be held by the Western
Al-lies at all costs to "hold Europe against Communism." He decided
to begin a lim-ited airlift into the city. Clay's staff in Berlin
were divided in their support for it, but the general held firm.
When asked later how the War Department had responded to his
decision, Clay replied, "I never asked .... [W]e didn't have to
start fight-50 AMERICAN HISTORY JUNE 1998
-
ing to get through the air, so I never asked permission."
Three days before Truman's cabinet meeting, Clay called
Lieutenant General Curtis Emerson LeMay, Commander of the United
States Air Forces in Europe, at his headquarters in Wiesbaden,
Ger-many. Clay asked LeMay if his men could supply the needs of the
U .5. occupation force in Berlin, and possibly the entire
population of West Berlin as well, by car-rying coal and food to
the city. LeMay was silent for a moment, then replied, 'The air
force can deliver anything."
Despite his bravado, LeMay was painfully aware that the USAF was
ill-prepared to carry out any kind of opera-tion. At the height of
World War II's air war in 1945, the U.S. had routinely sent l ,000
bombers against targets, but by
z June 1948 there were less than 1,000 z ~ planes in the entire
air force. LeMay had a -~ki"fi~ ~ mere 102 beat-up C-47 transport
planes,
~ each capable of carrying just three tons of ~ supplies. The
United States did have a !5 larger transport in the four-engine
C-54,
with a 10-ton capacity, but there were only two of them in
Europe at that time.
The Soviets had insisted in 1945 that the Western Allies feed
the parts of the city they occupied; consequently LeMay knew that
to keep West Berlin alive, his fleet would have to fly in
approximately 641 tons of flour, 106 tons of meat, 105 tons of
cereals, 51 tons of sugar, 10 tons of coffee, 20 tons of milk, and
900 tons of potatoes every day.
THE SEEDS OF THE Berlin crisis had been sown more than three
years earlier, in February 1945 at the Yalta Conference on the
Crimean Peninsula. In atten-dance were the "Big Three"-U.S.
Presi-dent Franklin D. Roosevelt, British Prime Minister Winston
Churchill, and Premier Joseph Stalin of the USSR. The Allied
leaders decided that following the defeat of the Nazis, Germany
would be divided and administered by American, British, French, and
Soviet forces. Final details of the arrangement were clarified five
months later at the Potsdam Con-ference in Germany.
Germany's historic capital, Berlin, was given special status in
post-war Europe. Although the ruined city lay deep with-in the
Soviet zone, it was divided into four sectors. The USSR took
control of East Berlin, while the Americans, British, and French
controlled West Berlin. Stalin initially promised the Western
Allies free and unhindered ac-cess to their zones but then refused
to al-low any Western troops to enter the city for two months after
the Soviets accept-ed its surrender on May 2, 1945.
During that time the Soviets, who had already installed
Communist-backed governments in most of the eastern Eu-ropean
countries they had liberated dur-ing the war, solidified their
position in Berlin by installing German Commu-nists in key city
government jobs. They controlled the newspapers and radio and
created a centralized banking system un-der Communist supervision.
Finally on July 1, 1945, the Soviets permitted the Western Allied
occupation forces to as-~ sume their duties in the city. ~ It was
an uneasy partnership. By the 1E end of 194 7, the Soviets were
showing
~ signs that they wanted their wartime 0 . ~ colleagues out of
Berhn. They placed i more and more obstructions in the way
~ of freight and passenger services in and JUNE 1998 AMERICAN
HISTORY 51
-
out of West Berlin. They cut off water supplies due to
"technical difficulties," and closed roads for "repairs." On March
5, 1948, General Clay sent a warning message to Washington.
"Al-though I have felt and held that war was unlikely for at least
10 years," he wrote, "within the last few weeks I have felt a
subtle change in the Soviet attitude which gives me a feeling that
it may come with a dramatic suddenness." Al-though Clay had nothing
concrete tore-port, his comments caused Secretary of State George
Marshall to declare that the situation was "very, very
serious."
On June 1, the United States joined with Britain, France, and
other western European countries in a plan to unify their
occupation zones in Germany and create a West German state.
The unification, however, couldn't be completed without a
revival of the econ-omy, which had been reduced to a pre-dominantly
black-market system. On June 18, the Western Allies announced that
a new form of currency, the West German deutschmark, would replace
the
A group of Douglas C-4 ls waits in the unload- ~ ing line at
Berlins Tempelhof airfield in the it American zone (right). The
C-47s were the 9
"' mainstay of the USAFs "Operation Vittles" ~ during the first
two months of the airlift, but ~ they were withdrawn at the end of
September ~
-
tion of the Marshall Plan-which pro-vided American aid to
Western Europe to help its post -war recovery-provoked the Soviet
leader into closing off West Berlin.
On June 25, the United States and
Britain, little realizing the magnitude of the task ahead, began
supplying food and medical supplies to the more than two million
residents of West Berlin, mainly women, children, and old men.
LeMay threw every transport plane that
could fly into the airlift. On that first day, the 60th and 6lst
Troop Carrier Squadrons flew 80 tons of supplies from the U.S. air
base at Wiesbaden into Berlin's Tempelhof airfield in the Ameri-can
sector of the city.
The Douglas C-4 7 Skytrain. The milrtary version of the
Commercial DC-3, the C-47 flew under the colors of most of the
Allied forces in every the-ater of World War II. Wingspan: 95 feet.
Length: 64 feet, 6 inches. Height I 6 feet, I I inches. Payload: 3
tons. The Douglas C-54 Skymaster. Derived from the DC-4, the
four-engine Skymaster added a much-needed boost to the airlift.
Wingspan: I 17 feet, 6 inches. Length: 93 feet, I I inches. Height
27 feet, 6 inches. Payload: I 0 tons. The Douglas C-7 4
Globemaster. Wingspan: 173 feet, 3 inches. Length: 124 feet, 2
inches. Height 43 feet, 9 inches. Payload: 25 tons.
JUNE 1998 AMERICAN HISTORY 53
-
Theoretically, Britain and the United States could keep West
Berlin supplied with food by air for several months, pro-viding the
flight crews flew 24 hours a day, no aircraft broke down, and the
weather remained bright and sunnr To survive the crisis, however,
the city would also need a wide range of domes-tic goods for
industry and public ser-vices. The single most important com-modity
was coal. When the blockade began, the city had only a 45-day
supply
The airlifts first months were some-what disorganized. One of
LeMays many difficulties was finding pilots. To give the regular
pilots a brief rest, he utilized avia-tors who had been on desk
duty since the war's end. But even aided by the "desk jockeys," the
regular crews worked in-credible hours. Captain Hugo Krenk of the
60th Troop Carrier Wing was typical: he flew 160 hours that first
month. Lieu-tenant Robert Miller, the flight surgeon for the 60th,
noted that his fliers were strung out from too much strong coffee
and tor-tured by plugged ears. But no one quit.
During World War II the combat fliers generally held the men who
flew the
54 AMERICAN HISTORY JUNE l998
transport planes in disdain. The hot-shot "fighter jocks" and
the daring bomber pilots considered the "truck dri-vers" of the
Military Air Transport Ser-vice less than true aviators.
Neverthe-less, throughout the Berlin Airlift the "truck drivers"
came through, flying in weather that would have kept other pi-lots
on the ground.
The delivery of coal presented extra risks for the fliers. The
coal dust trickled from sacks, penetrating every nook and cranny of
the airplane, irritating eyes and noses. It eroded electrical
contacts and fouled hydraulic systems. Cabin floors were sometimes
covered with an-kle-deep layers of the dust.
Another problem was a critical short-age of airplane parts. "We
didn't have enough parts in Europe to rebuild the ass end of a
Piper Cub," a disgusted opera-tions officer recalled. During the
first two weeks of the airlift, maintenance crews used up a
six-month supply of wind-shield wipers. Tires and engines were
scarce, and fuel shortages threatened to ground the operation.
Initially LeMay believed the airlift
would last no more than 60 days. How-ever, by the middle of july
it was clear that the Soviets had no intention of lift-ing the
blockade. LeMay knew he would have to increase the tonnage of
supplies being dropped. For the capital to survive the coming
winter, he would need more than the 102 C-4 7s, and the 35 larger
C-54s that had recently been added to the fleet. He would have to
get his hands on every C-54 the air force could spare.
On july 20, 1948, General Clay flew to Washington to report to
President Truman on the Berlin situation. At a meeting on july 22,
Clay, the president, cabinet members, the joint Chiefs of Staff,
and the National Security Council considered their options,
including changing tactics and supplying the city by armed convoys.
Despite the risk of weakening American air strength else-where in
the world, Truman decided to send 75 more C-54s to Germany. They
came from as far away as Panama, Hawaii, and Alaska. One squadron
from Bergstrom Air Force Base in Texas re-ceived its orders to head
for Europe the day after returning from a two-year de-
-
"' ffi I ,_ 0 "' "' z
~-"' "'
"' "' I' ,_ 0 "' "' z 5: 0 "' "'
German worl~crs prepare to unload the first bag of coal
delivered to Tegel ailfield (oppo-site). Thanhs to the efforts of
five US pilots who conceived "Operation Santa Claus," the children
[!{West Berlin received thousands of Ch1istmas gifts from
communities in the United States (top, left). Ground crews load
fresh milh for the babies of West Berlin at Rhein-Main (above).
Some of the older chil-dren were evacuated from Berlin for health
reasons. At left, they board a C-4 7 bound for the B1itish sector
of Gennany US pilot Lt. Gail Halvorsen (bottom, left) started
"Opera-tion Little Vittles," in which air crews dropped candy and
gum to the children of the city
ployment in the Philippines. On the recommendation of
General
Albert C. Wedemeyer, Director of Plans and Operations of the
Army General Staff, Major General William H. Tunner arrived in
Wiesbaden on July 29 to offi-cially take command of the U.S.
airlift, and \Vi thin three months, with the agree-ment of the
British, was named com-mander-in-chief of the Combined Airlift
Force. General LeMay was an experi-enced combat commander, but he
knew little about this type of operation. Tun-ner, on the other
hand, had commanded the largest airlift in history. From 194 2
until the end of the war he had been in charge of the airlift
across "The Hump" of the Himalayas, transporting every-
]llNE 1998 AMERICAN HISTORY 55
-
thing from mules to bullets in support of Chiang Kai-shek's
Nationalist Chinese Army.
As soon as a C-54 anived in Gennany, maintenance crews swarmed
aboard to get the big plane ready for its new duty. They removed
long-range navigational equipment and troop seats in order to fit
more supplies in the aircraft. When the plane was ready, a 10-ton
trailer truck
The U.S. Army hired17,000 Gennan labor-ers, 40 percent of them
women, to help con-struct Tegel airfield in the French zone of
Berlin (below). The airfield opened with a ceremony on November 18,
1948 (bottom). The French supervised cargo operations and ci vi!
ian labm; while the Americans controlled flying operations.
backed up to the cargo door, and a l4-man crew of displaced
persons--Serbs, Latvians, Estonians, Lithuanians, and
Poles--commanded by an American cor-poral quickly loaded cheese,
dehydrated vegetables, boneless meat, or whatever else was being
shipped that clay.
Three aerial conidors led to and from Berlin. The British
followed the northern conidor from their seven Royal Air Force
bases in Germany to Gatow airfield in the British sector of Berlin.
The Americans flew the southern corridor from USAF bases at
Wiesbaden and Rhein-Main to Berlin's Tempelhof airfield in the
Ameri-can zone. The central corridor was re-served for both
American and British planes returning to their home bases. In
theory, it was possible for an aircraft to take off every three
minutes, but loading
delays, servicing needs, and the frequent poor \isibility made
that schedule impos-sible to maintain. Takeoffs were soon re-duced
to one every 15 minutes. To avoid mid-air collisions on the return
trip through the central corridor, the Ameri-can planes flew at
between 5,000 and 10,000 feet, while the British planes flew at
4,500 feet and below
The flight from Wiesbaden or Rhein-Main to Berlin took about 90
minutes. While in western airspace, the pilots had navigational
beacons to guide them. "At Ascaffenburg we'd tum 33 degrees north
toward the Fulda beacon," Lieutenant Victor Wiebeck from Adrian,
Michigan, later recalled. "At Fulda we received the report of the
plane in front of us, so we had to adjust our speed accordingly."
Sev-en minutes after passing the Fulda bea-con the planes crossed
the inter-German border and were over Soviet tenitory. For the next
40 minutes there were no bea-cons. The pilots were now on their
own.
ONE OF THE GREAT mysteries surrounding the Berlin Airlift is why
the Soviets never seriously tried to stop it. They may have
z simply believed it was doomed to failure ~ anyway. The only
airlift that the Russians t had \vitnessed was the pathetic
German
""_ .. _.,..:--..,c,.- ~ attempt to resupply their trapped
forces g at Stalingrad in the winter of 1942. Field
~ Marshal Hermann Goring had assured
-
Hitler that the Gem1an anny could be supplied by air V>ith
300 tons of supplies a day. Ultimately they delivered barely 90
tons a day and lost 300 planes.
Although the Soviets didn't try to stop the Berlin Airlift, they
did interfere. On July 6, 1948, their fighters buzzed trans-port
planes in the air corridors. Later they conducted anti-aircraft
exercises on the edge of the corridors. Several rounds burst inside
the Allies' air space without hitting any aircraft. General Tunner
re-called that the Soviets "were putting up barrage balloons and
towing gunnery targets in front of our planes. I told my pilots to
fly on. They did, refusing to be intimidated ...
The Soviets weren't the only threat. On Friday, August
13-''Black Friday, as it came to be known-rain fell on
1o offset the coed shortage, \Vest Berlin resi-dents bumcd
cmything they could find. The Jwuscwifc at top left is using a
kitchen knife to st1ip lxulzfmm Ll tree.for use in starting a .fire
for home coohing. TI1c women at top 1ight are
mobn,~ crsotz wol, a combination o.f coal dust. sawdust, nncl a
tar-lihe substance. On l\lor I, 19-19. people guthered around a
mo-bile louclspcuhCI Iabove) Lo hear the official unnow1ccmmt that
the Soviets were lifting the bloclwdc in fhc days.
Berlin in a torrential downpour. The air traffic controllers
couldn't see the run-way, and radar, which could penetrate clouds.
fog. and darkness, was virtually useless in heavy rain. A C-54
overshot the runway at Tempelhof airfield and burst into Dames as
the crew scrambled
-
i. j ji
was the temporary availability of a single new plane, the C-74,
a four-engine giant capable of carrying 25 tons and reserved for
heavy-weight cargo. On September 18 it flew for 20 hours and
transported 150 tons of supplies. Unfortunately, the air force had
only 11 C-7 4s. Six of those were in the process of being modified,
and the remaining five shuttled back and forth across the Atlantic
Ocean car-rying engines, parts, and other heavy equipment for the
airlift.
By the first week of October, the fran-tic pace that marked the
early days of the airlift had subsided. In its place was an orderly
assembly-line operation. When U.S. aircraft from the Wiesbaden
airfield were in the corridor, planes from Rhein-Main were being
loaded. Thanks to engineers brought in by Tunner to de-velop more
efficient systems, crews be-gan reducing tum-around time. At
Tem-pelhof, planes were met by "follow-me" vehicles that led pilots
to their unload-ing area. "When we parked at Tempel-hof I'd shut
down the portside engine and leave the starboard idling," recalled
former airlift pilot james HilL "A 10-ton truck would back up to
the plane and in
15 minutes we'd be empty. The ground crew would pull the chocks,
close the door and we'd taxi out. I'd start the oth-er engine while
we were moving into takeoff position. Our ground time was less than
20 minutes."
As winter approached, ground crews needed to find a way to keep
aircraft from icing over while they sat at Tempel-hof, Rhein-Main,
and Wiesbaden air-fields. The deicers available in 1948 were
totally inadequate for the task at hand. It took an unknown
sergeant to find a so-lution. The air force had several of its new
jet engines in storage at Tempelhof. "Why not put an engine in the
back of a truck and heat the wings with the jet ex-haust?" the
sergeant reasoned. The idea worked-just one of the many examples of
American ingenuity that helped make the airlift a success.
The weather in Germany during No-vember 1948 was terrible, and
December wasn't much better. The Soviet Union as-sumed the harsh
winter conditions would prove too much for the Americans and the
British. The airlift, however, kept going. Each morning, Berlin's
citizens awoke to the reassuring sound of Tun-
ners pilots overhead. On New Year's Day 1949, the food ration in
West Berlin was at an even higher level than before the
blockade.
Even so, life was becoming increasing-ly difficult for the
Berliners. Before letting the Western Allies enter the city in
1945, the Soviets had dismantled the largest power plant in the
western sectors, mak-ing West Berlin's residents dependent on the
USSR for electricity. Now, in order to conserve the coal and power
necessary to run the smaller power plants, stringent electricity
cuts were essentiaL By mid-winter the scarcity of power was causing
widespread unemployment, and with lit-tle coal available for
heating homes and public places, it was difficult for Berliners to
keep warm. People found it hard to live ordinary lives under such
extraordi-nary circumstances. While few fatalities from exposure
were reported, pneumo-nia and other cold-related illnesses did
cause some deaths.
FLYING THE BLOCKADE was deadly serious business, but it did have
its lighter side. When the airlift began, the U.S. enter-prise was
given the name "Operation
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Vittles," but a 2 7 -year-old pilot from Gar-land, Utah, started
an operation of his ow-n. His name was Lieutenant Gail Halvorsen,
but the children of West Berlin knew him as Ocr Schokoladen-flieger
(The Chocolate Flier). On one of his many missions to Berlin,
Halvorsen got an idea after he saw a crowd of chil-dren standing on
the rubble at the end of the runway at Tempelhof. The following
day, Halvorsen$ crew chief dropped can-dy and chewing gum to the
children in makeshift parachutes. That day "Opera-tion Little
Vittles" was born.
Other pilots in Halvorsen's squadron followed his lead, and the
word quickly spread to other squadrons. When the press heard about
Little Vittles, Halvorsen became a celebrity. Soon Girl Scouts in
the United States were collecting candy to contribute to the
operation. In the early spring of 1949, air crews made a massive
candy drop to the children of Berlin. Just three years earlier many
of these same children had run in terror at the sound of
approaching aircraft, but now they eager-ly awaited the arrival of
the planes, flown by some of the men who had once pounded their
city into rubble.
People in the United States got in-volved in other ways, sending
an aver-age of 600 CARE packages a day to the residents of West
Berlin. Stanford Uni-versity students sent 15 tons of food to
students of West Berlin colleges, and the National Institute of
Diaper Services of America donated 12,000 diapers a week to West
Berlin mothers. Relief agencies throughout the world supplemented
government supplies. Humanitarian groups such as the International
Red Cross, Mormons, Mennonites, Seventh-day Adventists, Society of
Friends, Swedish Red Cross, and UNICEF were
~mong the most active contributors. The media made it sound as
though
the Berlin Airlift was almost entirely an American operation,
but the British de-livered nearly a third of the total tonnage
throughout the campaign. The French didn't have any aircraft of
their own at the time, but they contributed to the suc-cess of the
airlift in a most unusual way.
British and American pilots had com-plained about a tall
transmission tower on the approach to the newly built Tegel
airstrip in West Berlin, which had be-come fully operational on
November 18, 1948. The tower belonged to the Berlin
radio station and 1.-vas in the French zone of the city The
station itself was in the British zone. but the Soviets had been
su-pervising its operation since their arrival in the city.
General Jean Ganeval, the French commander in West Berlin, had
t\vi.ce re-quested that the city council in the east-ern sector
remove the tower, but he had been ignored. On December 16, General
Ganeval called his American and British counterparts to a
mysterious meeting in his office. When the officers arrived, the
French general locked the door behind them and served the
bewildered men a round of drinks. Suddenly a loud explo-sion
rattled the \Vindows. The Allied offt-cers rushed to the windows
just in time to see the tower tumble to the ground. Ganeval smiled
and proposed a toast. "Gentlemen," he said, "you will have no more
problems with the tower."
THE BITTER v\1NTER months passed, bring-ing better weather. The
Western Allies now had 300 C-54s and 150 assorted British aircraft,
and it was becoming ap-parent that the airlift was beating the
blockade. The Americans were now fly-ing into Tegel airfield in the
French zone and Gatow in the British zone, as well as Tempelhof in
their own zone. By the end ofjanuary 1949, the airlift was bringing
almost 6,000 tons of supplies into West Berlin every day, and by
the first week of April the tonnage had increased to 7,000.
The airlift was now providing more than just the basic
necessities. Berliners could obtain a few luxury items and building
supplies that just a few months before could not have been found.
In April the airlift brought in 5,000 tons of machinery to get the
main power plant back into operation.
With the mission going well, Tunner decided that on Easter
Sunday his flyers would perform "an all-out effon of some kind-a
goal that was attainable yet would require the utmost of every
man." He determined that the air force would shoot for a one-day
total of 10,000 tons-3,000 more than had ever been hauled before.
The British joined in on this one-day special delivery of coal,
food, and machinery-American pilots delivered 10,904 tons of
supplies, while British pilots transponed 2,036 tons.
The Soviets finally admitted defeat. Several factors contributed
to their deci-
sion, including the April4, 1949, signing of the Nonh Atlantic
Treaty by the Unit-ed States, Canada, and 12 European na-tions,
which stated that an armed attack against one or more of the member
na-tions in Europe or Nonh America would be considered an attack
against them all; the Western Allies' counter-blockade, which
included depriving East Berlin of the one million tons of coal and
30,000 tons of steel that it had been receiving each month from the
Ruhr in western Germany prior to the blockade; the West-em embargo
placed on exports from the Eastern bloc; and General Tunners great
12,940-ton aerial "Easter parade."
At one minute after midnight on May 12, 1949, the autobahn was
reopened. Soon afterwards the first convoy of trucks loaded with
supplies rolled into West Berlin. It was met by delighted cit-izens
who danced in the streets. In the days that followed, residents
celebrated at home by eating non-rationed food and flicking
switches as they marveled at the sight of their lights flashing on
and off at any time of the day or night.
The airlift, however, didn't stop. The blockade had shown that
the Western powers couldn't trust the Soviets. Gen-eral Clay
continued the drops until he had built up a cushion of 300,000 tons
of supplies, just in case. May turned out to be the airlifts
biggest month.
On September 30, 1949, the Berlin Airlift officially ended.
During the airlifts 15 months, the Allies had flown 276,926 sanies
and carried 2,323,067 tons of supplies into the city. The cost to
the United States was $233,887,624. There was a human toll as
well-48 Allied fly-ers had died, and 17 American and 7 British
planes were lost. Lives were lost on the ground also, bringing the
total number of dead to 79-31 Americans, 39 Britons, and 9
Germans.
Many had thought it impossible, but the Berlin Airlift was an
undeniable suc-cess, and it taught the Allies valuable lessons
about the logistics of air power. Its greatest accomplishment,
however, was proving that the Western Allies would stand firm
against the Soviet Union and the spread of communism. *
Richard Hanis is a freelance \\'liter who spe-cializes in
militmy affairs and history His work has appeared in armed forces
joumals and popular magazines.