the berlin airlift

when i was sixteen, my aunt took my brother and i on a holiday to holland and germany. among the many amazing experiences we had was that of flying from cologne to berlin. at that time berlin was divided between east and west and so the flight path followed a prescribed route across east german airspace and into tempelhof airport.

i had no knowledge of the history of tempelhof at the time but later came to know it as the centre of an incredible story in which a city, held hostage by politics was kept alive - literally - through an incredible airlift involving

known as the berlin blockade and resulting in the berlin airlift, the events were precipitated by the soviet union which, simply expressed, was unhappy with the post-war partition of lands and so began the cold war.

at the time the airlift was begun, berlin had thirty-five days' worth of food and forty-five days' worth of coal and so began the massive and extraordinary relief operation. in terms of food it was calculated that they would need to supply seventeen hundred calories per person per day, consisting 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 total, 1,534 tons were needed daily to keep the over 2 million people alive.

at one point over one thousand five hundred flights per day were delivering materials into berlin! seventy airmen lost their lives in the course of the airlift. in total, the u.s. delivered 1,783,573 tons of materials, while 541,937 tons were delivered by the raf, totaling 2,326,406 tons of food and supplies on 278,228 total flights to berlin. The c-47s and c-54s together flew over 92 million miles in the process, nearly the same distance as the earth is from the sun!

here’s a photograph taken in august of 1948  of planes involved in the airlift at tempelhof.

here’s another image of planes lined up waiting to fly into tempelhof. a massive library of documents related to the berlin airlift has been made available through the harry s. truman library and museum.

here is a newsreel from the time of the berlin airlift: