Berlin airlift what was

After going through training in the States, Halvorsen arrived in West Germany and found his accommodations to be in the upper loft of a barn. These barracks filled with the quick influx of pilots and personnel, literally leaving people to sleep wherever they could find room. Stationed at Wiesbaden Air Base, Childs slept in a building that had open showers and toilets with screens set up around each cot for privacy.

Comfort and sleeping were not priorities during this mission. The pilots flew constantly, between one to two and sometimes even three missions a day, making for hour days. Planes were landing at Tempelhof every three minutes around the clock for 18 months delivering tons of food and coal.

The planes weighed up to 70, pounds and would hit the runway hard sometimes breaking up pieces of it. The Germans would run between each plane landing and try to fix what they could. Once he landed, Childs would have about 10 to 15 minutes of rest while the groups of Germans would quickly unload the pound sacks of coal.

On Easter Sunday the pilots stretched themselves and landed every minute for 24 hours just to stick it to Stalin. Despite the Soviet ploys at distracting the planes through intimidation techniques with fighter planes in the area, spotlights, or their assumption that the cold and foggy winter weather would deter the mission, these airmen prevailed.

Halvorsen, who had to overlook the loss of his best buddy in the war that was shot down by the Germans; felt his disdain melt away when he delivered his first load of flour and witnessed the gratitude in those German faces. Walking around Tempelhof, Halvorsen had an interaction with Berlin children that deeply affected him. He found them gathered at the gate of the airport and offered them a couple sticks of gum; amazed as the children were overcome with joy at just the smell of the bubble gum wrapper.

The United States and United Kingdom had few immediate options if hostilities broke out. Because of the draw down in U. On June 13, , the administrator of U. We are convinced that our remaining in Berlin is essential to our prestige in Germany and in Europe. Whether for good or bad, it has become a symbol of the American intent. Based upon written agreements with the Soviet Union in , the only connections to Berlin left to the Western Allies were air corridors from West Germany used to supply Berlin by air.

The administration calculated that if the Soviets opposed the airlift with force, it would be an act of aggression against an unarmed humanitarian mission and the violation of an explicit agreement. Thus, the onus of igniting a conflict between the former allies would be on the aggressor. The beginning of the airlift proved difficult and Western diplomats asked the Soviets to seek a diplomatic solution to the impasse.

Fearing that the Western Allies might halt the airlift and cede West Berlin to the Soviets, , West Berliners gathered at the Reichstag to show their opposition to Soviet domination. The turnout convinced the West to keep the airlift and the Deutschmark. The Russians were also concerned about a unified West Berlin: a capitalist city located right in the middle of their occupation zone that would likely be powerfully and aggressively anti-Soviet.

They decided that something needed to be done to stop this creeping unificationism. They withdrew from the Kommandatura and began a blockade of West Berlin, a maneuver that they hoped would effectively starve the western powers out of Berlin.

If West Germany was to become its own country, they argued, then Berlin, located more than miles from its border, could no longer be its capital. Thus began the blockade of Berlin. As far as the western Allies were concerned, withdrawal from the city was not an option. Finding another way to re-provision the city seemed to the Allies to be the only reasonable response.

It was quickly settled: The Allies would supply their sectors of Berlin from the air. Allied cargo planes would use open air corridors over the Soviet occupation zone to deliver food, fuel and other goods to the people who lived in the western part of the city. The Berlin airlift was supposed to be a short-term measure, but it settled in for the long haul as the Soviets refused to lift the blockade. For more than a year, hundreds of American, British and French cargo planes ferried provisions from Western Europe to the Tempelhof in the American sector , Gatow in the British sector and Tegel in the French sector airfields in West Berlin.

At the beginning of the operation, the planes delivered about 5, tons of supplies to West Berlin every day; by the end, those loads had increased to about 8, tons of supplies per day. The Allies carried about 2. Continue reading from The Encyclopedia Britannica.

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