When the Soviets cut off all roads and railways into West Berlin, the U.S. response was to fly in everything the city needed — 2.3 million tons over 15 months, one plane every 30 seconds.
After World War II, Germany was divided into four occupation zones controlled by the U.S., Britain, France, and the Soviet Union. Berlin, deep inside the Soviet zone, was also divided into four sectors. It was an awkward arrangement that Stalin hoped to resolve in the Soviet Union's favor — by waiting out the Western powers.
On June 24, 1948, the Soviets cut off all land routes into West Berlin, citing 'technical difficulties.' Two and a half million West Berliners were suddenly cut off from food, fuel, and supplies. The apparent Soviet logic: the Western powers would either abandon the city or accept Soviet terms. Stalin reportedly predicted the airlift would fail within weeks.
The Western response was unprecedented. Within days, American and British cargo planes began flying nonstop into Berlin's Tempelhof Airport. General William Tunner, brought in to run the operation, implemented assembly-line efficiency: planes flew in strict instrument conditions, landed on a straight-in approach every three minutes, turned around in 30 minutes, and flew back out. No stacking, no circling, no exceptions.
The operation scaled to astonishing proportions. By April 1949, Allied planes were delivering over 8,000 tons per day. During the 'Easter Parade' on April 15-16, they set a record: 12,941 tons in 1,383 flights in 24 hours — more than the Soviets had assumed the entire airlift could deliver. At peak operations, a plane landed in West Berlin every 30 seconds.
One pilot, Gail Halvorsen, began secretly dropping small bags of candy attached to handkerchief parachutes for children watching from the fence at Tempelhof. He would wiggle his plane's wings as a signal. When word got out, the Pentagon turned it into 'Operation Little Vittles.' Candy donations poured in from across America; over three tons of candy were eventually dropped. Berlin children called him the 'Candy Bomber' or 'Uncle Wiggly Wings.'
On May 12, 1949 — nearly a year after the blockade began — the Soviet Union quietly lifted it. The first train from West Germany rolled into Berlin at 5:32 in the morning. The blockade had failed completely; if anything, it had cemented West Berlin's loyalty to the Western powers and alarmed neutral nations into supporting NATO, which had been formally founded just weeks earlier.
Over 15 months, Allied aircraft made 278,228 flights and delivered 2.3 million tons of supplies. The airlift cost 101 lives — American, British, and German — in crashes and accidents. It became one of the defining symbols of Cold War resolve and proved that a modern city could be kept alive entirely by air.