Groggy
Hm!
So...So to make up for the lack of history between tow truck drama and unsolvable physics homework, please feel free to enjoy this following essay (or gloss over it, do what you want, I'm not a cop), which I wrote for reasons entirely not related to me finding the notes from the time I took German films studies for a free credit.
Tonight in aviation history, we're going to look at Berlin post WWII. Now for those who need to catch up, Germany lost.
There. All caught up.
Now as a result of not winning. Germany became occupied by the Allied forces and also Russia, dividing the country into East and West Germany. American and British forces occupied the West, and the Soviets occupied the East, as they bickered amongst themselves about who owned which Germany. Which couldn't possibly go wrong, so long as a Cold War didn't happen or something.
Oh.
So as the powers that were bickered over custody of Germany like some extremely bitter divorcees, people in Germany were caught in the inevitable fallout, such as the Berlin Blockade in 1948. Britain and the US wanted a divided Germany. Stalin wanted a unified Soviet Germany. With talks disintegrating, the Soviets took advantage of the lack of agreement over road, rail, and water traffic to beseige the city of Berlin, stopping freight shipments from the West and starving the city. Because Berlin was in the heart of the eventual GDR, the only way in or out was three Soviet controlled air routes. Retaliating blockades stopped resource shipments to the East, further starving the other half of the country. Allied troops stationed in Berlin would provide little resistance to a Soviet attack, much less so as their supplies dwindled. As the two sides went back and forth with the one-upping, Berlin was slowly dying. At the time of the airlift, it was estimated that Berlin had less than 36 days worth of food.
So yeah, that's what it was called. The Berlin Airlift. Now while land and sea routes were blockaded with no negotiated restrictions, three 23-mile wide unrestricted air corridors to and from the city were negotiated when WWII came to a close. And if the Allies used exclusively cargo aircraft, the Soviets couldn't claim that they were being threatened. But remember, this was the city of Berlin, and they were on the verge of starvation. If they were to bring in supplies, they needed to do so on the largest possible scale. The first problem was that the USAF Air Transport Command determined that over 1,500 tons per day of food alone needed to be brought in by air. Which brings us to problem number 2; the US had on hand 96 aircraft (Douglas C-47 Skytrains), capable of 3.5 tons apiece. Acting at capacity of 100 takeoffs and landings a day, the US could deliver little more than 350 tons of supplies, vs the 1,500+ the city needed. And this is before we factor in non-consumable goods, like coal and steel. In total, nearly 5,000 tons of materials needed to be moved per day.
Knowing this wouldn't fly (pun intended), the British prepared as many cargo aircraft they could find, both civilian and military, along with France. There was a slight challenge as Berlin's partially bombed airports couldn't accommodate the largest aircraft any of the Allies could offer. Eventually, the RAF decided to add another 150 C-47s (Dakotas, as the RAF called them), and massive Avro Yorks, with a comparably massive 10 ton cargo capacity. In the background, the USAF also scrambled for C-54 Skymasters from elsewhere (and bringing some USN examples along for the ride), putting on hold over 400 Skymasters for the operation.
On 26 June, 1948, the first 30 Skytrains headed for Berlin, with the British launching operations on the 28th. The Americans took Berlin Tempelhof, while the Brits decided that when they wren't showing off by landing flying boats in the rivers, they would just send it and airdropped most of their cargo. By the second week, over 1,000 tons were being airlifted daily. To accommodate the fact that so many dissimilar aircraft were descending on a single point, a special landing procedure was enacted; arriving aircraft were to maintain 1,000 feet above the aircraft ahead, with stacks of 5 on approach at a time. Shift blocks were also enacted, designating specific blocks for C-47s and C-52s to depart. At its height, aircraft were landing and departing Tempelhof every four minutes.
Then came Black Friday. Up to this point, none of the management running the airlift had actually, y'know, run an airlift before. Crews were idling, transports weren't being operated at capacity, and a host of other issues that would make the modern FAA and OSHA collectively vomit. The US offered up Major General William Tunner, who had actually done this before, to run the operation. His arrival in Berlin was less than spectacular. A C-47 crashed on arrival during a visit by Tunner, followed by one that lost control avoiding the wreckage, and another behind that one that landed on a closed runway, losing control and ground looping. Embarrassed by the circus unfolding before him, he ordered all aircraft to be denied landing for the day, hence Black Friday.
To get some semblance of control and order going, Tunner instituted mandatory IFR for all approaches. Additionally, if you couldn't make your landing, you went home. No go-arounds. Stacking was eliminated in favour of straight-ins, reducing congestion and minimizing the amount of time it took to land and unload each plane. He also ditched the C-47s due to their uneven load floor, which prevented quick offloading of supplies, and brought in larger C-74 Globemasters, each capable of 20 tons capacity. He even instituted snack bar Jeeps, so that pilots weren't leaving their aircraft for refreshments. This man was determined to make use of every second, dammit. By August, the airlift was bringing in over 4,500 tons per day, which was enough to keep Berlin fed. With additional tweaking and reinforcements, they made their 5,000 ton target by January.
One aspect of this in particular that I want to talk about is "Uncle Wiggly Wings." A pilot named Gail Halvorson (whose name was not in my notes) was on the ground sometime before Tunner took over, and found himself talking to a group of children who had come to watch the aircraft in awe. After answering their questions, he gave the children some gum as a parting gift, who proceeded to divide it amongst themselves. Taking note of their selflessness as they split it up, he vowed to bring more back when he returned. When the children asked how they would recognize him amongst the slew of aircraft, he said "I'll wiggle my wings." He would go on to drop candy from his plane as he was on final approach, rocking his wings every time. When his CO caught wind of a subordinate being nice to children, he tried to shut that shit down pronto. But when it was brought up to Tunner, he launched Operation Little Vittles (Op Vittles being the airlift itself), and had pilots drop candy from their planes in a similar fashion. An estimated 23 tons of candy was dropped during the course of the airlift.
Many...
FACTS
(this should take me a while to read, hang on
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