The Western Allies began secretly mapping steps to create an independent, democratic West German republic tied to the West. The Allies refused. The Soviet representative stormed out. Kremlin forces immediately began intermittent interference with Allied railroad traffic into Berlin, stopping and searching trains ferrying supplies and coal into the former Nazi capital.
Moscow had hit the most sensitive nerve. The Western Allies had no guarantee of land access to Berlin in postwar agreements, other than a verbal promise from Soviet Marshal Georgi K. Zhukov to US Army Gen. Lucius D. Launius and Coy F. Cross II. The Western Allies did have an ironclad guarantee of air access to Berlin, however, stemming from the Allied Control Council agreement.
It laid out three mile-wide air corridors linking Berlin with the occupied western sectors of Germany. The Allies could fly into Berlin at any altitude below 10, feet without advance notice.
Curtis E. William F. Shimonkevitz, of Denver, was a base photo officer at Rhein-Main when he was summoned for the emergency relief operation. Hooten, a retired Air Force lieutenant colonel who lives in San Diego.
Howard M. Fish, a veteran of the airlift who retired from the Air Force in as vice chief of staff and now resides in Shreveport, La. The Western Allies moved ahead with their five-part plan to revive the failing German economy. Clay called LeMay. Could cargo aircraft ferry coal into Berlin to heat and power the city, Clay asked in a historic telephone call to the gruff USAFE commander.
How much coal do you want us to haul? The independent Air Force, not even a year old, launched the full-scale airlift on June 26, , using C Skytrains to ferry 80 tons of supplies from Wiesbaden to Tempelhof Airport in Berlin, requiring a total of 32 missions.
The lumbering two-engine airplane carried three tons of cargo at a cruising speed of miles per hour over a range of 1, miles. Many of the aircraft were war-weary, still emblazoned with the three horizontal stripes used to designate friendly aircraft during the D-Day landings at Normandy four years earlier, but they did the job.
Deliveries on Day 2 jumped up to tons. By Day 3, deliveries had soared to tons. Harris and his American colleagues turned control of inbound American cargo airplanes over to Tempelhof tower for the final 12 miles of the inbound flight. Russian controllers remained amiable despite the tensions that had provoked the crisis. They were as friendly as always, recalls Harris, a retired Air Force lieutenant colonel. He says the Americans would always offer them cigarettes; otherwise, the Russians would smoke their own.
Joseph Smith, first US commander of the operation, grabbed the first code name that came to mind. Young Air Force personnel across Europe saw their plans, orders, and schedules scrapped overnight. Charlie T. William A. The fighter pilot became a maintenance control officer at airlift headquarters, scheduling upkeep and tracking the burgeoning fleet of airlift aircraft.
Paul A. Jarrett, of Warner Robins, Ga. Smith, the commander of the post at Wiesbaden, made one crucial decision after another, shaping an operation that would frustrate Moscow for 15 months. Drawing upon his experience as a mail pilot for the Army Air Corps in , Smith established a duty and maintenance schedule designed to keep 65 percent of his aircraft airborne each day.
The elaborate schedule enabled each C in the expanding aircraft fleet to complete three flights a day into Berlin. Smith had airlift pilots fly under the most rigid system of air traffic control to be instituted up to that point. He established the pattern of one-way operations through the three corridors—two corridors devoted to Berlin-bound aircraft and the central East-West corridor reserved for outbound traffic.
Aircraft flew at five different altitudes, later cut to three. Aircraft at the same altitude were separated by minute intervals. Pilots flew their routes at predetermined speeds, checking in one after the other at successive beacons, then landing in Berlin in close succession. As the operation got under way, some members of President Harry S. One who disagreed with the view was Gen. Hoyt S. He was Maj. William H. Tunner, who became provisional commander on July 29, , saw the Berlin crisis as a golden opportunity to demonstrate the concept of airlift as a strategic force.
He ordered pilots to rely on instrument procedures at all times to avoid variations due to weather or darkness. He had ground operations reassessed repeatedly to shave turnaround times. His motion study experts developed a procedure for a member ground crew to load 10 tons of coal packed into pound burlap bags into the cargo bay of a C in six minutes. Aircraft unloading times in Berlin were cut from 17 minutes to five; turnaround times in Berlin were cut from 60 minutes to 30; refueling times at bases in West Germany were slashed from 33 to eight minutes.
Marcus C. West remembers coal-bearing trucks rolling toward his returning airplane at Fassberg even before he cut the engines. Ten workers ran an oval racetrack pattern from the truck to the front of the cargo bay with bags of coal. By: Bob van der Linden Aeronautics Department.
On June 24, , the Soviet Union closed all surface routes into the western zone of Berlin. Citing "technical difficulties," the Soviets blockaded the city, hoping to force the United States, Great Britain, and France to abandon Berlin and thus sabotage currency reforms and the unification of the western zone of Germany.
The Allied response was neither retreat nor war, but a unique reply made possible only by aviation - an airlift. Two days after West Berlin was sealed off, the first transport plane of "Operation Vittles" landed with vital supplies. For 18 months, American and British aircrews literally flew around-the-clock bringing coal, food, medicine, and all of the other necessities of life to the 2 million inhabitants of war-ravaged West Berlin.
Despite impossible odds, the Berlin Airlift succeeded in winning this, the first battle of the Cold War. By prior arrangement before the blockade, the US, Britain, and France had secured air rights to three narrow mile-wide corridors over east Germany into Berlin. The shortest was miles long. Aircraft were flown into Berlin along the northern and southern corridors. All planes leaving the city used the central corridor.
With the total support of President Harry S. Truman, the military governor of the American zone in Germany, Gen. Lucius D. Clay, organized the airlift.
President Bush's visit to Berlin marks 60 years of the Berlin airlift. Visit the new DW website Take a look at the beta version of dw. Go to the new dw. More info OK.
Wrong language? Change it here DW. American aircrews made more than , flights, totaling nearly , flying hours and exceeding 92 million miles. While that crisis ended peacefully, the ideological division of Europe had just begun. By the end of the blockade, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization had been established, partially in response to Soviet aggression. A few weeks later, East and West Berlin officially separated, with each becoming a symbol of their respective political views — democracy and freedom in the West versus communism in the East.
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