On the scene in Germany, General Clay also appeared steadfast, at least outwardly. Interpreting the Russian move as a bluff designed to frighten the West out of Berlin, he publicly promised that the Americans would not leave. “If Berlin falls,” he said, “Germany will be next. If we intend to defend Europe against Communism, we should not budge.” In private, however, he worried that if Berlin could not be fed, a starving populace would force the Western powers out in order to get the blockade lifted.
None of the Allied officials contemplated a fight by the tiny Western garrison in Berlin, which in total comprised about 15,000 troops. A possibly more viable option involved breaking the blockade by dispatching an armed convoy from western Germany. Clay was an avid proponent of this gambit, going so far as to lay plans for a 6,000-man task force to storm 110 miles down the autobahn from Helmstedt to Berlin. Clay asked General Curtis LeMay, commander of the U.S. Air Force in Europe, to provide air support in case the Russians started shooting—an eventuality that the fiery LeMay welcomed as a fine opportunity for a preemptive strike on all Russian airfields in Germany. “Naturally we knew where they were,” LeMay said. “We had observed the Russian fighters lined up in a nice smooth line on the aprons at every place. If it had happened, I think we could have cleaned them up pretty well, in no time at all.”
But of course “it” didn’t happen. The State Department considered the convoy option far too risky, while the Pentagon dismissed it as unworkable. As General Omar Bradley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, wrote later: “The Russians could stop an armed convoy without opening fire on it. Roads could be closed for repair or a bridge could go up just ahead of you and then another bridge behind you and you’d be in a hell of a fix.”
If the Western powers were determined to stay in Berlin, they had to find a way to keep the city better supplied, pending a still hoped for diplomatic solution. In the given circumstances an airlift of some kind seemed the best answer, but at first only Bevin pressed it with any vigor. He argued forcefully that an airlift would at once reinforce the morale of the West Berliners and show Moscow that “we are not powerless but on the contrary possess a wealth of technical ability and spectacular air strength.” Clay, having reluctantly given up his convoy idea, soon came around to Bevin’s view. But the State Department and Pentagon still dithered, worried that this gambit, too, posed the risk of war. Finally, on June 26, President Harry Truman put an end to all the equivocation by ordering that an airlift to Berlin be made operational as soon as possible. To Secretary of the Army Kenneth Royall’s objection that this might mean war, he replied that America would “have to deal with the situation as it developed.”
Even if an airlift did not lead to war, there were reasons to worry that it might not be effective with the equipment available in the immediate area. The U.S. Air Force in Europe had only two C-54 Douglas Skymasters, which could ferry about ten tons, and 102 battered C-47’s, known as Gooney Birds, each with a three-ton capacity. The British air command in Germany could deploy a total of fourteen Dakotas, their version of the C-47. The French had six Junkers and one Dakota, all derelict. Existing loading and landing facilities were also inadequate. America’s primary air base in western Germany, Rhein-Main, had a runway of good length, but its surface was not designed for heavy transport use. The RAF’s Wunstorf base in the British zone had little hardstand for parking and loading. At the Berlin end, Tempelhof in the American sector, expanded by the Nazis in the 1930s, had an adequate administrative complex, but its single runway (another was soon added) was surfaced with tire-busting steel planks, and the approach to it from the west required coming in between high apartment buildings and a 400-foot-tall brewery chimney. A cemetery near the field reminded pilots of what would probably happen to them if they miscalculated the approach. Gatow in the British sector was much easier to fly into but lacked a good offloading area. There were no airfields at all in the French sector, though Paris allowed the Americans to start building a new one at Tegel in July 1948. Because access to Tegel was impeded by transmitting towers belonging to the Soviet-controlled Berliner Rundfunk, France’s Berlin commandant asked the Russians to dismantle them. When he refused, the Frenchman ordered them blown up.
As soon as the lift got underway, a call went out for cargo planes from all over the world. In the American case, aircraft arrived from bases as far away as Guam, Alaska, Hawaü, and Panama to make up what was at first labeled the “LeMay Goal and Feed Delivery Service” and later rechristened “Operation Vittles.” Although the buildup was impressive, the operation at this point was still definitely seat-of-the-pants. “It was a cowboy operation when I got there in July,” recalled an American pilot. “It was a joke if you could take off after your buddy and get back to Rhein-Main before he did. It did not matter how you beat him, just so long as you beat him.” Loading operations were also chaotic, with trucks sometimes driving into spinning propellers. In the early days, pilots experimented with low-level drops over Berlin’s Olympic Stadium to avoid time-consuming landings, but the food ended up as puree, while coal became coal dust. Worse, although the deliveries increased each week, they were not nearly enough to meet Berlin’s needs, even in summer. Observing this painful reality, Robert Murphy speculated on July 9 that “within a week or so we may find ourselves faced with a desperate population demanding our withdrawal to relieve the distress.”
Berlin children observe approach of an American transport plane during the airlift
Clearly, a great leap forward in terms of organizational sophistication was required if West Berlin was to be adequately supplied. Fortunately, even as Murphy was issuing his grim prognostication, measures were being taken to make the operation more viable. Dozens of American C-54s, along with newly arrived British Yorks and Sunderland Flying Boats, which landed on the Havel River, were integrated into the system. The larger aircraft were able to carry bulky items like generators and power plant machinery. As for food, it was now delivered almost exclusively in dehydrated form, which made for less weight and more efficient packaging. So many items arrived as powder that a cartoon showed a stork flying into Berlin with a diapered bundle in its beak—the bundle labeled “Powdered Baby.”
The most crucial advances were key technical and logistical innovations introduced by General William H. Tunner, a veteran of the Himalayan “Hump” of World War II, who arrived in July to become commander of the Combined Airlift Task Force. He quickly imposed a rigid routine whereby planes were dispatched according to type, air speed, and cargo loads, which avoided bunching up en route or on the ground. Preestablished flight plans put an end to races through the corridors. Improvements in air-traffic control around Berlin made it possible to bring in planes at very short intervals. A special training facility at Great Falls, Montana, famous for its hostile environment, prepared air and ground crews to work efficiently together in the toughest conditions.
Among the inhabitants of the western sectors, improvements in the airlift did not immediately dispel widespread fears that they would be starved into submission. The first months of the blockade brought significant reductions in daily food rations, which had been meager enough to begin with. Yet by late fall 1948 Tunner’s innovations were starting to pay off: Berliners were not starving to death, and the local economy had not ground to a halt. The children of Berlin could take delight in occasional drops of candy attached to tiny parachutes; the kids called the planes Rosinenbomber (raisin bombers). At the same time, people understandably worried that the coming winter months might be a very different story, for harsh weather conditions would both increase demand for supplies and make their delivery much more difficult. It was estimated that Berlin required a minimum of 5,650 tons of food and coal per day to survive during the winter months; in October the lift had managed 4,760 and in November 3,800 tons a day—not encouraging statistics.