“I thought things were going too well at this time,” Tunner confided, “so I decided the command should have a little shaking up. They needed some kind of all-out goal that was attainable, yet still required the utmost effort from every man.”

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Tunner and his staff decided to shoot for a one-day grand total of 10,000 tons–3,000 more than had been hauled previously. The cargo would be coal, which was stockpiled in advance at the airports. Maintenance schedules were arranged so the maximum number of aircraft would be on hand, plus spares. The day decided upon was Easter Sunday, April 16, 1949.

“I flew back and forth to Berlin several times that day,” Tunner said, “so I was able to touch down at all of our bases to see what was going on. I could see that the spirit of competition was running high but I thought it could be raised even more. At Fassberg, the base commander Colonel Jack Coulter told me that he was 10 percent ahead of his quota. I said, ‘That’s nice, but the guys at Celle are running 12 percent above theirs.’ Coulter quickly disappeared to spread the word to his units.”

On the appointed day, a record 1,398 flights carrying 12,940 tons were made by the U.S. Air Force and RAF combined. That was the equivalent of 600 cars of coal delivered on an average of one round trip for each of the 1,440 minutes in the 24-hour period. And the record was set without a single accident or incident. “The worldwide headlines the next day made me the happiest commander that ever wore a uniform,” Tunner said.

Perhaps that day made the Soviet authorities realize that the Allies weredetermined to stay in Berlin and that a further blockade was useless. The four powers began serious negotiations, and a settlement was made on Allied terms. On May 12, 1949, at one minute past midnight, the barricades were lifted. An American military train left for Berlin, the first truck departed Berlin for Hannover, a private automobile headed for Berlin from Helmstedt, and soon the first freighter arrived in Berlin’s West Harbor.

The airlift didn’t stop until September 30, as supplies continued to be stockpiled just in case. The last airlift flight–the 276,926th–was made by Captain Perry Immel. The tallies for 321 days of operation were a total of 227,655 passengers flown either in or out of Berlin; 2,323,067 tons of mostly food and coal delivered at a cost of $345 million to Americans, 17 million pounds to the English, and 150 million Deutschmarks to the Germans. There was a greater price, however. Seventy-five American and British lives were lost in the operation.

The Berlin Airlift was costly, but valuable lessons were learned. It was a proving ground for air transport, showing the feasibility of sustained, round-the-clock mass movement of cargo by air. It gave aircrews and ground personnel invaluable experience in bad weather flying, air traffic control, aircraft maintenance, overhaul methods and operational techniques. It also showed that the United States and the rest of the Free World had a potent enemy to face in the years ahead. Only nine months later, hundreds of miles east of Berlin, Korea would become another battleground. Again, America’s airlift capability would be tested.

Contributing editor C.V. Glines served with the 36th Fighter Group at Furstenfeldbruck during the Berlin Airlift and flew several support missions in C-47s. For further reading, he recommends: Over the Hump, by William H. Tunner; and Bridge in the Sky: The Story of the Berlin Airlift, by Frank Donovan.

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