In Berlin on Thursday, May 12, 1949
It was on this day 71 years ago – May 12, 1949 – that the Berlin Airlift, one of the largest humanitarian aid efforts in European history, came to an end.
Out of response to the Western Allies’ (United Kingdom, the United States, and France) introduction of the new Deutsche Mark into their occupied sectors of Berlin, which the Soviet Union saw as a clear violation (of the Potsdam Agreement of 1945) to treat Germany as a single economic unit, the Soviets responded by shutting down all rail and highway links across their zone of occupation, which stretched between the Western zones of Germany and the Western sectors of Berlin. Two and a half million Berliners living in the American, British, and French sectors now had enough food and coal to last for just a little over a month, since most of Berlin’s power had been coming from the Soviet’s sector and zone of occupation.
In a show of strength against the Soviets, President Harry S. Truman of the United States, and British Prime Minister Clement Attlee authorized a full-scale airlift to fly food and supplies to the beleaguered Berliners. At the height of the Airlift, as targets were being met and exceeded, 1500 flights from the USA and UK (including the British Commonwealth nations) flew into Berlin per day bringing in an around 4,500 tons of supplies.
In the end, after 10 months and 23 days, 594 supply aircrafts would land on average in Berlin per day, which totaled 277,804 flights that brought in nearly 2.5 million tons of supplies.
One of the heroes of the Airlift – and who will always be considered as one of the most beloved figures in Berlin’s Cold War history – was American Lieutenant Gail Halvorsen of Utah, who casually started out dropping candy that was wrapped in handkerchiefs to kids he saw watching his plane from the ground. To no surprise, he became an immediate sensation and started a trend for Allied pilots to drop candy and chocolate bars on their landing approaches. Despite the basic necessities that Halvorsen and the rest of the Allied pilots were flying in, he nonetheless would quickly and heroically become known as the “Berlin Candy Bomber.”
To commemorate last year’s 70th anniversary of the end of the Berlin Airlift, Gail was honored at the baseball fields on the grounds of the former Tempelhof Airport, where he and so many other Allied pilots risked their lives to supply and thus save the free people of Berlin from 1948-1949.
