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?

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].

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.

And this one is from March 1941: