Home Delivery | Newsletters | RSS Feed | Podcasts

From the S&S archives: Photo gallery: Coal for Berlin, 1948

Photos by Henry Compton, ©Stars and Stripes
European edition, July, 1948

Scenes from Rhein-Main Air Base in Germany during the Berlin Airlift, the response to a Soviet blockade of motor vehicles in and out of the former German capital. The airlift, which started in late June, 1948, and lasted through September, 1949, featured 278,228 flights that brought in over 2.3 million tons of food and supplies and 1.5 million tons of coal.

Transport pilots at Rhein-Main — one of the two airlift hubs, along with Wiesbaden — receive their final orders before taking off from Berlin. On the blackboard behind them are strict instructions against unauthorized radio traffic, a necessity with flights taking off every three minutes.

In the tower at Rhein-Main.

Trucks filled with coal for Berlin await unloading at Rhein-Main.

Keeping tabs on the loading of coal at Rhein-Main.

Coal is unloaded from a truck onto a Berlin-bound transport plane.