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 got my bearings now…it’s looking NNW over the Western end of the Colnbrook bypass (and the aircraft is roughly following the GWR Staines-Uxbridge branch-line northwards i.e close to T5 now). Langley airfield is hidden behind the aircraft’s engine. The building cluster by the engine is the Brands Hill Hostel (what was that for?). The road off to bottom left is the windy road from Colnbrook to Horton and Wraysbury. The original western end of Heathrow’s runway 10L (now 09L) is ‘off-piste’ about 1-1.5 miles from the bottom right of the photo, zoom in on http://maps.nls.uk/geo/explore/side-by-side/#zoom=14&lat=51.4962&lon=-0.5277&layers=11&right=12

George , Its in Wingspan #48 Oct1988 http://www.aeroflight.co.uk/mags/contents/planes-contents-listing.htm
And the Air Britain secondhand magazine shop/archive appear to have recently got it
https://www.air-britain.com/pdfs/AB_Aeromart.pdf

The American designations for aluminium alloys now seem dominant so this chart offering British equivalents might be useful. 2024 was the commonest aluminium/copper alloy from the time of the DC-3…higher strength 7075 (aluminium/zinc alloy) was introduced from the end of WWII (e.g used to re-engineer the B-29 wing for the B-50) (Al/Zn alloys invented in Japan, I learn)

https://www.aircraftmaterials.com/data/aluminium/alalu.html

and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aluminium_alloy explains what the various 1000, 2000, 3000 etc series mean, with applications