The Berlin Airlift: Case Studyhees And Operation Vittles

On Jul 18th, 1948 a small group of children calmly waited outside of the Tempelhof airfield in the western district of Berlin, as a C-54 “Skymasters” cargo plane approached; gently rocking its wings the aircraft dropped small parachutes with candy attached for them to the waiting children, the Berlin Airlift is in full swing (Grathwol, 2013). For the next 15 months, Operation Vittles, succeeded in airlifting over 2.3 million tons of supplies to western Berlin, breaking the Soviet cordon of the city.

Following World War II, Allied forces divided Germany into in four separate zones, each one to be controlled by the Americans, British, French and Soviet forces, respectively (Historynet, 2006). The capital of Berlin, which remained well inside of the Soviet Zone, was also separated into four zones that each nation would control (Miller, 1998). The Soviets granted Allied Forces access to the Berlin by way of rail and roadways, but this was through an informal agreement. The only formal agreement was the use of three established air corridors that connected the western sectors to Berlin (Miller, 1998). These agreements

Gen Smith devised a plan to establish altitude blocks, code words, and time spacing to ensure that aircraft were safely separated from each other (Miller, 1998). This worked well at the onset, but as more aircraft were involved, the plan was added to by Lt Gen Tunner. Tunner understood that holding aircraft over the destination airport, in poor weather was a recipe for the disaster, which he witnessed on August 13, 1948, when three aircraft crashed at Tempelhof Airfield (History, 2003). Tunner mandated that if an aircraft was unable to land on its first attempt, it would return back to Rhein Mein and sequence back into the flow (Miller, 1998). This plan would remain throughout the remainder of Operation