The Berlin Airlift

In June 1948, the Soviet Union closed the roads, railways and waterways linking the Western occupation zones to West Berlin. More than two million people were left inside a divided and damaged city with shrinking supplies of food, fuel and medicine. Withdrawal could have surrendered Berlin to Soviet pressure. An armed breakthrough could have ignited another European war. The Western Allies chose a third course: they would supply an entire city from the sky. The Berlin Airlift: Blockade, Coal, Candy, Weather and the Aircraft That Kept a City Alive tells the complete story of one of history’s greatest logistical achievements. It follows the crisis from the political confrontation that produced the blockade to the first improvised flights, the creation of Operations Vittles and Plainfare, the rebuilding of Tempelhof and Gatow, and the extraordinary construction of Tegel Airport. At its heart are the aircraft and people who transformed a desperate experiment into a relentless aerial conveyor belt. American C-54 Skymasters, British Yorks, Hastings transports, Dakotas and Sunderland flying boats carried flour, dried food, medicine, machinery and more than a million tons of coal through narrow air corridors in fog, ice and darkness. Pilots, controllers, mechanics, railway workers and Berlin labourers worked without pause, while families below endured rationing, electricity cuts and freezing homes. The book also explores the human stories that gave the airlift its enduring meaning: Gail Halvorsen’s candy parachutes, Ernst Reuter’s appeal to the world, the workers who built a major runway from rubble, and the aircrew and civilians who lost their lives keeping Berlin supplied. Clear, detailed and entirely grounded in documented history, this is the story of how disciplined logistics, political restraint and human endurance overcame a blockade without beginning a war.