A little flight relief
The Iron Curtain meant people in West Berlin were facing starvation in 1948. MARION McMULLEN looks at the audacious Allied relief operation that saved more than two million lives
SOME 7,000 tons of food supplies and petrol were airlifted into West Berlin by British and American aircraft in a single day 70 years ago on September 18.
It was part of a massive crisis response in defiance of a threemonth Russian blockade and provided much-needed aid to the stricken city.
West Berlin Mayor Ernst Reuter had pleaded earlier in September: “People of this world look upon this city and see that you should not and cannot abandon this city and this people.”
British Prime Minister Winston Churchill had warned two years earlier of an “Iron curtain” descending across Europe and splitting east from west.
By April, 1948, his sombre prophecy appeared to have become reality. A monetary crisis in East Germany led to a Russian blockade of traffic into West Berlin.
Russia, angry at what they believed was a Western plot to take control of Germany, decided to make the first move and isolated West Berlin from the outside world.
Goods and food were not allowed to enter the city... not even from Soviet controlled East Berlin.
The Red Army also took control of road and rail links and a major international crisis began to develop. Telephone lines were cut and water supplies blocked.
The three powers in official control of Berlin, America, France and the UK, decided the only way forward was to airlift food and medical supplies into the isolated city and the Allied airlift was codenamed Operation Vittles.
American Air Force General Curtis LeMay oversaw the operation and declared: “We can haul anything” when asked about the feasibility of an airlift and if the planes could haul coal.
The airlift was even nicknamed The LeMay Coal and Feed Delivery Service in the early days.
Around 2,500 tons had to be dropped daily just to provide the minimum amount of food necessary and hundreds of planes began taking off from airbases in West Germany, such as Hanover, to help the besieged city and circumvent the Russian blockade.
The rate at which the aircraft were reloaded and prepared ready for their next sortie was incredible taking only a matter of minutes.
The Allied powers’ response to the Russian blockade was in essence simple yet in practice extremely complicated and involved hundreds of aircraft from the RAF and the USAF.
Their cargo was largely food but also included medical supplies, candles, blankets and coal.
In fact, anything and everything necessary to keep West Berlin from collapsing. At its height, it was estimated a cargo plane was landing in Berlin every minute and being unloaded in under six minutes and pilots from Australia, Canada, South Africa and New Zealand flew alongside the British and Americans.
The Russians had blockaded the roads and rail lines but could not stop the aircraft. To do so involved too great a risk of blundering into war. So the planes got through and West Berlin was kept from starvation.
The Russian press mocked the airlift saying it would quickly fail – instead a total of 277,804 Allied flights carrying more than two million tonnes of supplies made it through.
Some of the more unusual cargo items included two million seedlings to replace city trees lost during the war and giant rolls of newsprint for the local papers.
The blockade lasted until May 12, 1949, when routes into West Berlin were finally re-opened by Russian leader Joseph Stalin, but the Allied airlift continued until September 30 to make sure more than two million people in the city continued to receive sufficient supplies.
At its busiest, 1,440 planes a day landed in Berlin. The planes and their pilots became affectionately known by West Berliners as “candy bombers” as they delivered their vital supplies.
The Berlin Airlift itself cost Britain £17m and America $350m.
General LeMay, the youngest general to be awarded a fourth military star, later said: “I don’t mind being called tough, since I find in this racket it’s the tough guys who lead the survivors.”