Another serious problem was a shortage of mechanics. Nonfraternization with the Germans was still the rule, and they could be given only menial jobs with little responsibility. To solve this dilemma, Tunner received permission from Clay to find a former German Luftwaffe aircraft maintenance officer who could speak excellent English. He located Maj. Gen. Hans Detlev von Rohden, who translated aircraft maintenance manuals into German, recruited top German mechanics and started a mechanics school to train them on the C-54.

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Concurrently, an aircrew replacement center was opened at Great Falls Air Force Base in Montana, where 29 pilots were turned out weekly to replace those flying the lift. The air corridors, the approach to Tempelhof, the instrument letdown and GCA procedures were duplicated down to the last detail. The C-54s were loaded with sand to a gross weight of 64,000 pounds during practice flights, although at least three landings were required at 70,000 pounds gross weight before a pilot was considered qualified.

All of the C-47s were withdrawn by the end of September, and 225 C-54s were devoted to the lift. Five thousand tons a day were now being unloaded. An East German spy, stationed in an apartment house and noting the unloading of every plane at Tempelhof, was reportedly fired by his supervisor for reporting what the supervisor thought were exaggerated totals.

November and December 1948 proved to be the worst months of the airlift operation. One of the longest-lasting fogs ever experienced blanketed the entire Continent for weeks. Temperatures dropped below freezing, yet the planes flew whenever there was the slightest chance of getting through. Too often, however, they would make the entire flight and then be unable to land in Berlin. The weather seemed to put a death grip on the city as deliveries dropped off. On November 20, 42 planes departed for Berlin but only one landed there. At one point, the whole city had only a week’s supply of coal.

As if the weather was not enough to discourage the Allies, Soviet fighters continually harassed the unarmed cargo planes by making diving passes at them as they lumbered through the corridors. Barrage balloons were cut loose in their flight paths, and gunnery targets were towed in front of the airlift planes. A Soviet anti-aircraft artillery unit moved in front of the RAF field at Gatow and fired incendiary bullets between planes as they flew their traffic patterns just inside the border of the British zone.

Soviet-built Yakovlev fighters loosed rockets near one C-54, narrowly missing it. Three Soviet bombers dropped a string of bombs and almost hit an airlift plane flying in the corridor below. One Soviet fighter buzzed a British passenger plane too closely, and both planes crashed to earth in flames, with a loss of 35 lives.

A statistical summary revealed a total of 733 recorded harassment incidents, including air-to-air and ground-to-air fire, radio interference, flares, ground explosions, use of chemicals, flak, and strong searchlights aimed at the cockpits.

In spite of the hazards, the Luftbrucke (air bridge) continued. The weather improved with the turn of the year, and the rate of deliveries resumed an upward trend. But success led to another problem. Neither Tempelhof nor Gatow airfields could be expanded, and they were being saturated with air traffic. A third Berlin airport was needed at Tegel in the French zone, where construction had already begun on a large tract of land where Hermann Göring’s anti-aircraft artillery had trained. But there was a 200-foot radio tower sticking up at the edge of the field that was actually owned by the Soviets. Tunner asked the Germans to take it down, but possibly fearing retaliation, they did nothing. General Jean Ganeval, the commandant of the French contingent, solved the problem. There was a “mysterious” explosion one day, and the tower disappeared.

“Tonnage for Tunner” became the watchword. More than 171,000 tons were delivered in January, but the figure fell to 152,000 tons in February. In March, the tonnage leaped to 196,223 and in April rose to 234,476.

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