Remember the Airlift!    
        Sunday, May 12, Berlin celebrated the 70th anniversary of the day the Soviets lifted their blockade. For readers too young to remember, the Allied powers separated defeated Germany into four quadrants.

   England, France and the U.S. each occupied a quadrant, West Germany, and Russia the fourth, East Germany, that being swallowed into the Soviet Union. Soviets built a wall to keep their Germans from escaping to the free West. Berlin, the capital, in the Soviet quadrant, also was split into four sections, as above.

   In 1948, Soviets cut off all land transportation into the Western quadrants of Berlin, expecting the Allies to concede. Beginning June 26, an ambitious airlift began to supply West Berlin (in East Germany). By its end in May 1949, pilots had flown 278,000 flights, with about 2.3 million tons of food, coal, medicine and other supplies into Berlin. (Around 840 flights/day.)  

   The busiest day was April 16, 1949, when some 1,400 planes delivered nearly 13,000 tons over 24 hours - an average of about one plane touching down every minute. Pilots unable to land for any reason had to abort - and good luck with that. There was no way to circle and try again.  

   Ex-Luftwaffe mechanics helped maintain aircraft, and about 19,000 Berliners, almost half of them women, worked around the clock to build a third airport, providing relief to British Gatow and American Tempelhof. On May 12, the Soviets gave it up. 

   A guest of honor Sunday was 98-year-old pilot Gail Halvorsen, who had shared two sticks of gum with starving Berlin children. Other kids sniffed the wrappers. 

   The next day and beyond, Halvorsen dropped candy using handkerchiefs as parachutes. Other pilots and crew joined in. 

   The airlift still shapes the views many Germans have of the Western allies.

       Jimmy