(long but worth it)

June 26, 2023, was the 75th anniversary of the Berlin Airlift, and our local paper ran a 2-page feature on it. I will admit that even though I am a retired Air Force officer, and I certainly “knew” about the Berlin Airlift, I had no idea of its magnitude. Here’s how the story starts:

Alarmed by the efforts of their former allies — the United States, Great Britain and France — to support the development of a free economy in a democratic West Germany, on June 24, 1948, the Soviet Union blockaded all road, rail and canal traffic of essential food, medicine and coal supplies to the free people of West Berlin and cut off electricity.

“The situation was extremely dangerous,” wrote historian David McCullough. “Clearly Stalin was attempting to force the Western allies to withdraw from the city. Except by air, the Allied sectors were entirely cut off. Nothing could come in or out. Two-and-a-half-million people faced starvation. As it was, stocks of food would last no more than a month. Coal supplies would be gone in six weeks.”

President Harry Truman had limited options. With Allied forces vastly outnumbered by Soviet combat forces near Berlin, confronting the blockade with an armed convoy didn’t look promising. Yet the thought of capitulation — giving up Berlin and allowing the Soviets to dominate Western Europe — was a nonstarter. “We stay in Berlin, period,” Truman told his key advisers.

That left one audacious option. By agreement with the Soviets, the Allies maintained three, 20-mile-wide air corridors into Berlin. This provided the opportunity to mount an aerial supply effort. Yet the odds were high. “It hardly seemed realistic to expect a major city to be supplied entirely by air for any but a very limited time,” McCullough wrote. Indeed, many of Truman’s aides considered an airlift a stopgap measure to buy time for diplomacy. The Air Force’s first chief of staff, Gen. Hoyt S. Vandenberg, however, insisted the Air Force “go in wholeheartedly.” He added, “If we do, Berlin can be supplied.”

Two days after the blockade began, on June 26, 1948, the U.S. chose the airlift option. What followed was the infant U.S. Air Force’s first great triumph, the greatest humanitarian airlift in history. It not only kept the citizens of West Berlin from starving, it gave them hope.

I could have told you there was a Berlin Airlift in 1948 in response to a Soviet blockade and that it was a success. That’s about all I knew. Here’s what I didn’t know:

• The airlift lasted from June 26, 1948 – September 30, 1949, 15 months.
• They flew around the clock in difficult flying conditions: weather, Soviet interference.
• The US Air Force delivered 1.8 million tons of supplies (The British Royal Air Force added 0.5 million more.)
• There were 278,228 flights, a plane landing every three minutes. Under the direction of Brigadier General William Tunner, they
  • Cut unloading times from 17 minutes to 5 minutes
  • Cut turnaround times from 60 minutes to 30 minutes
  • Cut refueling times from 33 minutes to 8 minutes

The story goes on, highlighting a few individuals including the Air Force pilot who started dropping candy out of his plane for the children. I strongly recommend the piece in its entirety along with a sidebar article on a local Colorado Springs, man, 97 years old, who was a weather observer. It ends with the recollections of a 13-year-old German boy who eventually came to the US. He captures the story’s significance:

“In those days, I didn’t have any heroes,” Samuel said. “But when a C-54 crashed near our camp, a couple days later I went out there. It was a sad experience. I didn’t understand these Americans. Three years earlier in 1945 they bombed me when I was in Berlin, and now they were dying to save the city of Berlin. I very much understood what was being done in terms of delivering food and coal to the people of Berlin. And so, these Berlin airlift flyers really became my heroes. I wanted to be like them. Of course, I was a refugee. I knew that would never happen. Well, you can never anticipate what fate has in store for you. I ended up in the United States at age 16 (after his mother married an American Airman and immigrated). I couldn’t speak a word of English and had maybe an eighth-grade education. Eleven years later I was conducting spying flights against the Soviet Union. Only in America!”

Indeed, Samuel enlisted in the U.S. Air Force, and over a 30-year career, helped support U-2 reconnaissance flights during the Cuban Missile crisis, conducted intelligence gathering missions against the Soviets over the Barents and Baltic seas and received three Distinguished Flying Crosses for his gallantry in an EB-66 electronic warfare aircraft escorting strike forces over North Vietnam. “I was obviously an immigrant,” Samuel said. “I wanted to do more than just make money. I wanted to serve my country which had been very good to me. So those 30 years of service, including four years of enlisted service, I gladly gave.”

In reflecting on the airlift’s legacy, Samuel states, “I think it’s a very understated event, when in fact it was probably the most important confrontation between East and West. As a result of the Berlin Airlift, these flyers didn’t just save the city of Berlin; their actions resulted in the formation of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and put a stop to further Soviet expansion. Too few Americans know about this, but that’s the legacy of those flyers.”

“Too few Americans know about this,” including me, so here’s my contribution to turn that around. It’s a stirring story, much more important than a fleeting sports championship, and it illustrates the importance of leadership, courage, “everyone on the wall” participation, persistence, selflessness, and a host of other qualities worth studying and emulating.

Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight, and sin which clings so closely, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God. (Hebrews 12.1, 2, ESV)