From the S&S archives:
35 years after the Berlin airlift

"People complain about the noise around airports today, but during the airlift, Berliners loved to hear the sound of those planes landing," said John Hatch, who served as a U.S. Air Force air traffic controller in 1949. "It meant their city had a chance of making it. The noise meant we hadn't given up."

It was the Soviets who finally gave up on their blockade of the autobahns, rail lines and canals leading into Germany's former capital — 35 years ago this month.

The Soviets had captured all of Berlin in 1945, but grudgingly gave up sectors of the city to British, French and American forces as promised in a 1944 agreement. But the presence of Allied powers was always a problem, a "bone in the throat" of communism as Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev would later put it.

IN JUNE 1948, under the guise of protesting monetary reforms in the western zones, the Russians began the blockade. Roads, rails and waterways were sealed off; coal shipments and electrical power from the East were halted.

Perhaps because the United States still enjoyed the edge in the fledgling arms race, the Soviets did not try to close down the three air routes from West Germany to Berlin.

Moscow made a simple offer: West Berliners should move under the Soviet umbrella. Or starve.

The Soviet ultimatum didn't sit well with Gen. Lucius D. Clay, U.S commander and military governor of post-war Germany. Clay was viewed as something of a logistics wizard and had been toying with the idea of an airlift for several months. In April, a Soviet Yak fighter had been harrassing a British passenger liner flying in to Berlin. The fighter strayed too close and both planes crashed without survivors.

TWO DAYS AFTER the start of the blockade, Clay — backed up by the irascible Harry Truman in the White House — ordered the airlift to begin. That first day a lone flight of C-47 "Gooneybird" transports carried in 30 tons of supplies.

Hardly enough to feed the hungry millions of bombed-out Berlin.

A few days later the Air Force dubbed the lift Operation Vittles and ordered in four-engined C-54 aircraft from bases in the States and the Caribbean. Britain's Royal Air Force joined the lift the same week, calling their efforts Operation Plainfare. By the end of July, the airlift was delivering; more than 2,000 tons of supplies and planes were touching down at Berlin's Tempelhof airport as close as 90 seconds apart.

Coal for West Berlin's power plants was a major item transported during the lift, but the transports flew in everything from flour and butter to medicine and cigarettes. Industrial items also reached Berlin by air. Much of the power station Kraftwerk Reuter, whose three giant chimneys are still a prominent feature on Berlin's skyline, was flown in during the blockade.

AND THE AIRLIFT worked both ways — industrial products made in West Berlin were flown out for sale in the rest of free Germany. More than 20,000 tons of machine tools, light bulbs and finished textiles were flown out during the airlift. Even small locomotives for use in Ruhr coal mines were loaded aboard transports for the flight to West Germany.

The airlift meant double and sometimes triple shifts for members of the 1946th Airways and Air Comm Sq, the air traffic controllers, communications, radar and beacon personnel who ran Tempelhof and the other airstrips used in the lift.

"We'd work a swing shift in the afternoon, then a morning shift on the next day until noon and then you'd have to go back on at midnight until 7 a.m.," said Abe Foreman, a teletype operator for the 1946th during the airlift. "If they had enough personnel they'd give you two days off after working the midnight shift, but you'd still have to stand open locker inspections and formations. We kept pretty busy."

"AT THE START, only officers were air traffic controllers," added Hatch, now working for the Federal Aviation Administration in Bangor, Me. "We'd stand behind these big plastic boards and when the pilots would call in their positions and altitude, we'd write backwards so the controllers in front could read it."

The 1946th commander later convinced his higher ups that enlisted men were capable of handling air traffic control and Hatch and others took their turns working long shifts in the control tower.

Despite the hectic schedule, members of the unit found time to get into the kind of trouble that seems to lure members of the military. Jim Craig, now retired from the FAA, recalls buying a beer with a friend in a gasthaus in the city's British sector during off time in 1949.

"All the gasthauses were off-limits. These British MPs walked in and grabbed us and kept us for most of the day. We were put in one jail for a while and moved around a couple of times before they finally turned us over to the unit. Fourteen hours and three jails for one sip of beer."

But Hatch and Foreman remember Craig as the guy who was always borrowing money to buy candy for Berlin children. "I guess I'd get a little carried away," Craig said with a sheepish smile, "I was always a few dollars behind."

While the pilots of Operation Vittles spent as little as 20 minutes on the ground before returning to West Germany, members of the 1946th and ether units assigned in the city saw first hand the daily struggle of being a blockaded Berliner.

"They didn't have anything," said Foreman, who today owns a contracting firm and an auto racing teamin Florida. "If a soldier threw down a cigarette, there were two or three Germans there to get it."

CIGARETTES WERE OF immense value on the city's bustling black market. When Hatch's roommate spotted a shivering German boy near the airport's gate, the soldier took him to a clothing store and outfitted the boy with new pants, shirt and shoes topped off with an overcoat and hat.

The outfit cost the soldier a carton and a half of cigarettes.

"The Germans didn't have much, but they'd invite you over to eat with them," said Foreman. "They'd have some kind of stew or goulash with mostly vegetables in it. I remember I'd say I wasn't hungry because I didn't want to take any of the little they had, but they'd get insulted if you didn't eat."

When the runways at Tempelhof and Gatow, another Berlin airport, started to crumble under the constant pounding of aircraft takeoffs and landings, Clay ordered construction of a third landing strip near the Tegel section of the city.

Much of the first work on the strip was done by hand, using rubble from the bombed out city. Later on in the project, heavy road graders were cut in half with torches, stuffed into transport planes and flown to Berlin where the parts were welded together.

IN ONE MASTERFUL display of logistical perfection on April 16, 1949, 1,398 airplanes delivered a record 12,940 tons of food and supplies to Berlin. The Air Force named the feat the Easter Parade.

The Soviets gave up less than a month later, May 12, 1949, but the airlift continued through the end of September, building up a reserve of 200,000 tons of supplies in case the Soviets should try again. In the 16 months of the airlift, more than 277,000 sorties flew in almost 2.5 million tons of supplies — a feat no airlift operation has approached since.

"We were kids," Hatch said. "I don't think we were so much aware of the politics at the time. We just knew we were part of something special. Part of a very big and very important job.

"We were glad when we got it done."