One Berlin Airlift reminisence

Former Battle of Britain and Bomber Command pilot Wing Commander Charles Warren MBE DFC was the Air Accident Officer for the lift and took part in operations as well.
As a result his family recently applied for the General Service Medal with a Bar Berlin Airlift. He now has a unique combinations of medals and bars to add to his MBE DFC:- 1939/45 Star,bar Battle of Britain– bar Bomber Command, the Pacific Medal (having taken the surrender of Hong Kong from the Japanese), a MiD ( personal pilot to AVM Bouchier deputy to McArthur)and the General Service Medal bar Berlin Airlift.[ATTACH=CONFIG]261538[/ATTACH]

I do not have the “Operation Pelican” book but believe that the RAAF provided 10 crews who remained on the airlift for something like 14 months. If that is indeed correct, the RAAF would have had a similar number to the SAAF at any one point in time.

The RAAF also had airmen assigned to 24 Squadron (2 crews, I think) who participated from the early stages but then resumed duties in the U.K..

I also understand that RCAF airmen were assigned to 24 Squadron and participated, though the Canadian government turned down requests to participate in the way that the governments of Australia, New Zealand and South Africa responded.

The above were all part of the RAF contribution, of course, but the ‘Civil Lift’, which involved around 100 aircraft over the whole period, was not. Some of those civilian aircraft participated for very short periods and some for quite extended periods. One academic has calculated that there was an average of 42 civil aircraft involved each month for the duration. Again, I do not know the basis of that calculation but if it is correct, and if one assumes a crew of two or three per aircraft, then the number of civilian airmen involved exceeded the contribution of any of the three Commonwealth countries.

[As I’ve indicated before, I’d be happy to consider counter-assertions]

I, too, have the Miller book. As to when it was published or who by, I did later find it listed in an academic paper as: “Washington DC, U.S. Government, 1998”. I do not know the source of, nor the basis for, that attribution.

Berlin Airlift reminiscence

I have “To save a city – The Berlin Airlift 1948-1949” by Roger G Miller – an 132 page A5 size book, very comprehensive – subtitled inside “AIR FORCE History AND Museums PROGRAM” No ISBN number (too early), nor price displayed – nor any printing and publishing data.

Allan

I look forward to reading more about the part played by SAAF personnel (I assume you meant over 80 SAAF personnel rather than “over 80 crews”) in the Berlin Airlift.

My reading of Pearcy is that the two contingents you mention each comprised about 30 or 31 personnel and that the first contingent flew on the airlift until April 1949 when the second contingent took over and remained until August 1949. Do those figures accord with your own researches?

And, how many aircrew were assigned to the SAAF Dak based in Berlin and how many SAAF personnel were attached to the RAF, in addition to those in the two contingents?

Arthur Pearcy’s book devotes a complete chapter to “Commonwealth Aircrew”.

A good book on the subject is “The Air Force Can Deliver Anything” – a history of the Berlin Airlift by Daniel F. Harrington (The USAFE Office of History Ramstein Air Base, Germany May 2008) which gives a nice balanced view.

For detailed “behind the scenes” logistics in Germany, Europe and the USA the best is “A Special Study of Operation Vittles” by Aviation Operations (April 1949)

I also enjoyed “Bridge Across the Sky” by Richard Collier for background information before I started my research.

I am doing extensive research on the Airlift – this time from the viewpoint of South Africa.

Most publications cover largely the American and secondly the British participation – all to often the contingents from Australia, New Zealand and South Africa are ignored, for various Canada stayed out of it.
A good book “Operation Pelican” covers the RAAF and I intend addressing the absence of anything meaningful covering the SAAF participation – few realize that the SAAF was the fourth largest force involved; after the USAF, RAF and US Navy with over 80 crews from two contingents, members on attachment to Transport Command and the crews of the SAAF Dakota assigned to the SA Military Mission in Berlin.

Regarding dates – from what I can gather:

Operation “Knicker” – 25 June to 29 June 1948

Operation “Carter-Patterson” – 30 June to 02 July 1948

Operation “Plainfare” – 03 July 1948 to 06 October 1949 (the dates 25 June 1948 to 06 October 1949 being the inclusive dates for the award of the General Service Medal with “Berlin Airlift” clasp (6th October was the date operations from RAF Schleswigland ceased with the departure of the last Hastings)

Operation “Vittles” – 26 June 1948 to 30 September 1948 (the dates being the inclusive qualifying period for the award of American medals for the Airlift)

I don’t know the answer, longshot, but Arthur Pearcy, after mentioning the inspections and checks up to the fourth 200-hour inspection (that is, after the 800th operational hour), wrote that , “the aircraft was flown back to the USA to contractor facilities located in New York, Texas or California for a complete 1,000-hr inspection known as IRAN (Inspection Repair As Necessary). This was the cycle for regular scheduled maintenance, not taking into account engine failures, accidents and other unscheduled field maintenance and repairs. It soon became apparent why it took 354 aircraft to keep an average of 128 C-54s in daily operations”. He makes no reference to any change in the ‘normal’ schedule.

The Roger Miller book devotes 7 pages to maintenance, almost all about the C-54s. He says that “USAFE Letter 65-60, published on August 19, 1948, established basic supply and maintenance procedures for the Airlift Task Force (Provisional)”. He goes on to say, a little later, that, “Maintenance on the C-54s required checks, or inspections, at carefully determined intervals – daily and at 50 hours, 200 hours and 1,000 hours – to ensure the integrity of the aircraft and its safe performance”. It isn’t clear whether those intervals had been set earlier or were established by the aforementioned USAFE Letter. In other words, did the USAFE Letter in question simply confirm the existing maintenance schedule or did it establish a new routine?

Given that the C-54s were racking up roughly a year’s-worth of flying hours in a month and that they had typically been used previously for long-haul flights, with many fewer take-offs and landings for those flying hours, it would reasonable to suggest that the normal maintenance schedule would to be adjusted. However, while I am no expert whatsoever on such things, logic suggests that any adjustment to the ‘service intervals’ would be to reduce them rather than increase them. [I’m quite prepared to be wrong on this and would welcome comments].

Ian…I suppose the date of the beginning of the Berlin Airlift is a bit difficult to pin down as it took a long time to crank up (the RAF had run a mini-airlift before all the C-54s started arriving)…maybe the peak effort around Easter 1949 will be celebrated more. I’ve got ‘Bridge in the Sky’ by Frank Donovan, plenty of detail, General Tunnell ex- C.B.I Hump Airlift was the genius who applied industrial planning to up the efficiency of the Berlin Airlift.
I’ve got a specific question about the C-54s on the Lift…they were put through an overhaul every 200 hours, initially in Germany but as the Airlift progressed at Burtonwood in the UK . A heavier overhaul every 1000 flying hours was done at bases back in the U.S. and by civilian contractors like Transocean. My question is was the overhaul at 1000 hours done every 800 hours in 1944/1945 and the interval increased with experience?

I think my disappointment about the lack of current coverage about the start of the Berlin Airlift is because it fits so well with the narrative of several current news stories.

[1] It was the Berlin blockade that, in large part, prompted the formation of NATO, the future of which is in the news right now.

[2] One writer referred to the blockade being “graphic evidence of Soviet ruthlessness and inhumanity” and “Soviet cynicism and brutality” and this is a time when a British civilian has been killed in Wiltshire by a substance developed in Russia.

[3] The eyes of much of the world, mine too, are focused on Russia, because of the World Cup.

Surely it is not beyond the wit of today’s journalists to draw these strands together into a coherent news story (asking perhaps whether a leopard can ever lose its spots).

The Berlin Airlift, with all its complexity and occasional disasters, showed the skills, grit and courage of the aircrew and the supporting ground crews directly involved and the organisational and logistical achievements of ‘managers’ in the backrooms and ‘upstairs’ – civil and military, both in Germany and elsewhere – not to mention the vision, ambition and determination of that generation of politicians. And all this at a time when much of the world was still recovering from a world war.

OK, I’ll step down off my soapbox now.

For J Boyle:

There are so many books on the subject but I still have a fondness for the Robert Rodrigo’s “Berlin Airlift”, published in 1960, which I got for “2/11d” second-hand a year or so afterwards (one seventh of the original price). However, according to the index, “Great Falls” is only mentioned in the appendices. The most relevant part says that, on 25 October 1948, “M.A.T.S. directed to establish a Replacement Training Unit at Great Falls A.F.B. Montana to train C-54 aircrew”. The other reference says that 13 aircraft were assigned to the Aircrew Training Pool.

If your father has any photographs from his time at Great Falls, I’m sure others would be pleased to see them.

“To Save a City : The Berlin Airlift 1948-1949” , published as part of the (American) “Air Force History and Museums Program”, has two pages on “Replacement Training”, including a photograph of a C-54 coming into land at Great Falls AFB.

Please PM me your e-mail address, J Boyle and I’ll scan those two pages for you.

Anyone know of a good book on the airlift?
I’m especially interested in the organization and logistics end of it.
It must have been a huge undertaking considering the cuts to the services after the war. Like other services, the USAF was a pretty threadbare outfit then.

As a wartime B-17 pilot who was then flying transports, my father was involved in training for the airlift…IIRC, the USAF set up a special trading center in Montana.

Thanks, Stratosphere. I went to see the flypast itself, recorded the RAF 100 programme in full but, on my return home, fast-forwarded it to the end part. I didn’t delete it, so I’ll make a point of viewing it more fully.

Thanks for sharing.
On the BBC TV coverage of the RAF 100 flypast they did mention the Airlift with brief film footage.
Another poster expressed dismay at what they saw as The ATA being overlooked but they mentioned them and spoke with a Lady ATA pilot.

I don’t think you have missed anything as of yet. There are plans for a 70th anniversary next year, in Berlin, on the back of the 75yrs “Daks over Normandy” event. For me, the greatest humanitarian achievement to date, and not without significant human cost (something like 100 fatalities I think). Unbelievable to think that at its height, an aircraft landed at Berlin every 30 seconds. The organisation and logistics, both in the air and on the ground are unimaginable.

I think there may be a Facebook page somewhere in the ether…