In this screenshot from video, U.S. Army Air Force veteran Emedie “John” Mazzella talks about his experience as a weather observer during the Berlin Airlift. (YouTube)
(Tribune News Service) — Emedie "John" Mazzella remembers the moment, more than 75 years ago, when duty to country catalyzed into a personal calling.
World War II had officially ended. It was the eve of the Berlin Blockade and he was 20 years old, a newly trained weather observer for the Army Air Corps posted to Tempelhof air base in what was then the American-occupied sector of Berlin.
On that fateful day, Mazzella was heading out to the temperature shed to take a reading when he looked up to see a P-51 Mustang, the iconic warbird, charging through the sky.
"If you've ever had that moment of enlightenment, you know. It (the plane) came over me, and it (the feeling) came over me," said Mazzella. "I thought, 'My God, I've got to support those guys, the pilots and the airplanes, for the rest of my life.'"
And he did, through the next three decades, before retiring in 1975 as a chief master sergeant and settling with his German-born wife, Jenny, and their daughter, Carmen, in Colorado Springs, Colo.
He's humble about the role he played in the Berlin Airlift, as a weather observer who helped create weather maps for the planes at the forefront of the massive relief operation that marked the opening salvo and first international crisis of the Cold War.
"We were right in it, but we were a hidden group in a way," said Mazzella, now 97.
He also knows the success of that critical salvation operation, transporting food and supplies to people marooned in Soviet-controlled West Berlin, depended on the skills and success of everyone involved.
"Americans did 189,963 individual flights, delivered 1,783,666 tons of food, coal and everything else," Mazzella said. "We, the Americans, saved 2 1/2 million people from starvation."
The son of Italian immigrants, Mazzella grew up outside Charleston, W.Va., and was the second in his family to be drafted into the Army during World War II.
He had barely begun his service, though, when the war officially ended, on Sept. 2, 1945. Unlike his brother, Mazzella chose to reenlist for another 18 months. His military career probably would have ended with that, had he not pleaded his case with a flexible superior, earning a spot that led to the epiphany that would end up guiding his career and life.
"They had shut down infantry basic early and said, 'The Army Air Force needs 250 of you guys to become weather observers,' " Mazzella said. "They were desperate for weather observers."
The catch? Weather observers had to have an IQ of at least 110. Mazzella's was 108.
Those who didn't qualify for, or weren't interested in, such a path would be heading to Allied-occupied Japan.
"I said, 'Sergeant, my IQ is only 108 … but I want very very much to get into the Army Air Force,' " Mazzella said. "The sergeant said, 'Well, they do need you …"
Your IQ is 108? Close enough.
"Had I not gotten into the Army Air Force, had I gone to Japan as an occupation troop, I would never have stayed in the military," Mazzella said.
He trained for weather observation at Bolling Field in Washington, D.C., then volunteered to go to Berlin.
During the Soviet blockade of the city, which officially lasted from September 1948 to May 1949 — and unofficially, Mazzella says, for four more months — he did his job with a team based on the seventh floor of the IG Farben building in Frankfurt.
There, they collated and interpreted reports from weather stations and detachments around the region to create forecasts and weather maps that would allow pilots to plan and safely navigate relief trips via the only access modes allowed — by a narrow corridor of air, bisecting the divided nation.
By treaty, three main air routes to Berlin remained open to cargo flights by Allied relief troops, most of whom flew four-engine C-54s and two-engine C-47s, which formed the "backbone of the Berlin Airlift," Mazzella said.
"The Soviet Union had control over the waterways and the roadway, and the airways were the only thing authorized and open," Mazzella said. "But even in the corridors, like the one from Frankfurt to Berlin, occasionally the Soviet fighters would come up and fly parallel to our aircraft.
"It was a very serious time. We didn't know if the Soviet Union was going to start shooting."
Enemies weren't the only threat from above, however. A weather forecaster's job was, literally, life and death.
"Icing creates a very unstable flying situation, and our airplanes were propellers. Even though we had deicing capabilities on the wings, sometimes the icing was so fast that the deicing couldn't keep up with it, which means they're going to crash," Mazzella said.
When weather made relief trips too risky, forecasters sometimes were forced to make the most difficult of live-saving decisions.
"There were many cases where our forecasters, during the wintertime especially, grounded the airlift because the weather at either Frankfurt, or on the way to Berlin, had a risk of icing," Mazzella said. "It was deadly."
Pressure systems known as "Siberian highs" could sweep in from the northeast to cover Germany, bringing a dangerous mix of bitterly cold temperatures, freezing rain and "visibility down to nil," Mazzella said.
"When the weather was bad, we plotted these maps every three hours," he said. "On occasion, we did one-hour charts. It was very difficult. Very difficult. And we didn't have near the information we have today."
After the Berlin Airlift, Mazzella chose to stay in Germany for the better part of the next three decades, eventually working as a weather forecaster who contributed reports to armed forces broadcasts.
In 1958, he and his wife moved to Colorado Springs after he was stationed at NORAD, part of Ent Air Force Base, which was located on the site that is now the Olympic Training Center.
He subsequently left for another tour in Germany, but when it came time to retire, the family knew where they wanted to plant their roots.
"We knew Colorado Springs very well, and it was very easy for me to put in from Germany to come to Colorado Springs to retire," said Mazzella, who officially retired five months after moving to the home where he still lives, in 1975.
He was a marathon runner, and climber of Pikes Peak, until an injury forced him to scale back his extreme exercise routines, when he was in his mid-50s.
Next month, it will have been 10 years since he lost Jenny, the German bride he met during the Berlin Airlift.
Like the day he saw the fighter plane when he was 20 years old and suddenly knew his future, their love felt like fate.
"I'm an optimistic individual, in spite of losing my wife after 63 years of marriage. I'm still positive about life. Optimistic and positive," Mazzella said. "I'm going for 100 like it wasn't even there. I'm going for 110."
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Boxes of supplies for Berlin are secured aboard a plane at Rhein-Main Air Base as the airlift to relieve Soviet-blockaded Berlin gets under way in June 1948. By the time the Berlin Airlift ended in September 1949, a total of 278,228 U.S., British and French flights carried 2,326,406 short tons of material into the city. There were 39 British and 31 American airlift-related deaths during the difficult flights. (Stars and Stripes)
