Following the end of the second world war, the German capital of Berlin was divided into allied controlled regions, with the British, the Americans and the French dividing West Berlin between them and the Soviets controlling East Berlin. As time progressed relations between the east and west began to deteoriate as the cold war got into full swing. In the 1960’s the Soviets cut off access to east berlin via the construction of a large wall dividing the capital with a non mans zone police by the military. The wall came up overnight on 13th August 1961 and left thousands cut off from friends and family for decades. However tensions had been building before that and this wasn’t the first conflict between east and west Berlin. On 24th June 1948, the Berlin Blockage began. This blockade was caused by the Soviets who blocked the western allies trade route access, meaning the west were unable to send goods to their people by rail, road or canal. The soviets demanded that the west remove the newly introduced deutsche mark, in favour of the eastern deutsch mark which was known as the Ostmark.
The Berlin blockage was one of the very first crises of the cold war. Rail, Road and Canal routes into the city were blocked and this left only one solution. Air. A coaltion of airforces incuding the US Air Fairce, Britains Royal Air Force, The French Air Fiorce, The Canadian Air Force, The Royal Australian Air Force, the Royal New Zealand Air Force and the South African Air Force combined to drop care packages to the people of Berlin. These packages contained everything they would need to survive. Food and Fuel. The soviets did not intervene or attempt to shoot down any of the allied plans for fear of causing war between both sides. The day the soviets began the blockade, west Germany had enough food to feed their population for 36 days and enough coal to last them 45 days. It was clear that the allies would need to act fast.
US commander General Clay approached the British air force commander Sir Brian Robertson to begin an airlift, only to find out that the British had already set one up and were airlifting aid to British troops stuck inside Berlin. The Royal Air Force had already been dropping a sizeable chunk of goods before the joint expedition but those numbers would have to increase drastically. The US calculated that to support the city with a daily ration of 1,990 kilocalories it’d need to deliver daily supplies of 646 tons of flour and wheat, 125 tons of cereal, 64 tons of fat, 109 tons of meat and fish, 180 tons of dehydrated potatoes, 180 tons of sugar, 11 tons of coffee, 19 tons of powdered milk, 5 tons of whole milk for children, 3 tons of fresh yeast for baking, 144 tons of dehydrated vegetables, 38 tons of salt and 10 tons of cheese. In all, 1,534 tons were required each day to sustain the over two million people of Berlin. Also for heat and power, 3,475 tons of coal, diesel and petrol were also required daily. Due to the postwar shrinkage of the militaries, both sides scrambled to get enough aircraft to deliver the massive number of goods needed by the people of Berlin.
On 25 June 1948 General Clay gave the order to launch Operation Vittles, the name the airlift was known by. The following day 32 C-47s lifted off for Berlin hauling 80 tons of cargo, including milk, flour, and medicine. The first British aircraft flew on 28 June. At that time, the airlift was expected to last three weeks, it would last almost a year.
Hundreds of planes were arriving in Berlin from neighbouring airports. The US flights would come in from Rhein-Main Air base and Wisebaden, while the British airports flew in from Hamburg. This caused a logistical nightmare to avoid crashes and a complex system was created known as the block system was put in place. It involved three 8 hour shifts of C-54’s flying into Berlin followed by a shift of C-47’s. The airstrip was scheduled to see a plane take off every four minutes and planes were expected to fly 1,000 feet higher than the flight in front.
The airlift started off slow, delivering only 90 tonnes a day during its first week, but this would rise tenfold to 1,000 tonnes by the second week. 6 weeks into the operation, a new commander from the US camp would be sent in to take over the airlift. Major General William H Tunner was embarassed by the inadequacy of the setup of the airlift and began making major changes. This became known as Black Friday and Tunner noted that it was from this date that the airlift became a success.
By the end of August 1948, a month after Tunners Black Friday changes, the airlift saw more than 1,500 flights a day and 4,500 tonnes of cargo delivered, which was enough to keep west Berlin supplied. By January of the following year this improved to 5,000 tonnes a day. The allies had refused to bow to the Soviets demands and were keeping their people alive at all costs.
One of the most notable stories to come from the Berlin Airlift is that of the Candy Bomber.
A US Air Force pilot named Gail Halvorsen decided to use his off time from work to fly into Berlin and try to make movies using his hand held camera. On the 17th July 1948 he arrived at Berlin airport and was greeted by a large group of children. They were curious about the aircraft and Gail took the time to answer all of their questions. He gave the children two packs of his Wrigleys Doublemint gum and was so moved by the childrends generosity and graittude as they divided the gum into the smallest pieces they could to provide everyone a piece, that he promised he’d return to drop off more. Before take off one of the children asked him how they would know it was him. He replied that he’d wiggle his wings.
The next day on his approach to Berlin, he wiggled the aircraft and dropped some chocolate bars attached to a handkerchief parachute to the children waiting below. Each day the crowd of awaiting children grew larger and larger. The US Air Force base began recieving stacks of thank you mail addressed to “Uncle Wiggly Wings”, “The Chocolate Uncle” and “The Chocolate Flier”.
Halvorsens commanding officer was upset when the story appeared in the newspaper, but when Major General Tunner heard about it, he approved of the gesture and immediately expanded it into “Operation Little Vittles”. Other pilots joined in and began to drop their own care packages to the children of Berlin, and when news reached the US shores, children all over the country sent in their own candy to help out. Soon, major candy manufacturers joined in the effort and over twenty three tons of candy were dropped on Berlin.
Things carried on this way until the 15th of April 1949 when the Soviet news agency Tass announced a willingness for the end of the blockade. The four powers immediately began negotiations and by 1 minute to midnight on 12th of May 1949 the blockade was lifted. The first truck carrying supplies entered the city seconds later and the first cargo train arrived at 5:32am. The airlift didn’t stop as it was essential for the city to build up a comfortable surplus, should something similar happen again in the future. By the end of the airlift on the 30th of September 1949, a total of 2,326,406 tonnes of goods have been delivered by the airlift. 101 fatalities were recorded as a result of the operation, including 40 Brits and 31 Americans, mostly as a result of non flying accidents. One Australian air force member was killed in an aircraft crash as well as seventeen Americans and eight Brits that also lost their lives in crashes.
The cost of the airlift split between the US, the UK and Germany was estimated to have been between $224 million and $500 million, which equates to $2.6 billion and $5.27 billion adjusted for inflation. However the saviour of two million lives as well as an early defeat for the soviets in the cold war was well worth the cost to the taxpayer.
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