Launching the Berlin Airlift

Within minutes of Lucius Clay’s green-lighting the full-scale airlift, urgent messages began clattering out of Teletype machines at air bases across the globe. Capt. Clifford “Ted” Harris was based on Johnston Atoll, a speck of steaming lushness in the Pacific Ocean. It was midnight when he saw a Jeep’s carbide headlights cutting through the darkness. “Ted,” came the voice of his navigator, “you’ve got to get yourself all together in 30 minutes. We’re going to Berlin!”

Six hundred miles to the east, on Honolulu, Pvt. William “Greek” Glatiotis was sitting in a bar sluicing ice-cold beer. He choked with surprise when a sergeant greeted him with the words, “Hey, Greek, you’re shipping out in two hours’ time.” It was the very last thing he was expecting.

British airmen received similarly curt summonses. Flight Lt. Dick Arscott was about to set off on a weekend’s leave with his wife when his trip was abruptly canceled. “I’ve got news for you,” his squadron commander said. “You’re going to Germany.”

Within hours, Arscott and his comrades were heading for Berlin. They were to work a 16-hour day, seven days a week, with as many as three return trips to Berlin each day. They worked in revolving shifts: breakfast was served at 8 a.m. on day one, 4 a.m. on day two, and midnight on day three. This played havoc with Arscott’s body clock, for there were days when he would eat breakfast in the evening and lunch in the middle of the night.

Pilots faced the additional menace of Soviet harassment, with Yak fighters swooping down on the lumbering allied cargo planes in 370-mph dives.  “Like a swarm of wasps,” thought Ens. Bernald Smith as he counted 22 Yaks performing acrobatics in the sky around him. When flight engineer Albert Carotenuto made his final approach into Berlin, the Yaks came so close that their piston-driven engines sent his plane into a violent shudder. “One micro-second on either side and it would be mincemeat.”

At Gatow, General Kotikov encouraged Soviet artillery to fire incendiary bullets between incoming planes; he also had powerful searchlights carefully positioned so as to blind incoming flights at night. Airman Gerry Munn was about to land when the sky seemed to explode into a million fragments of light. “A blinding, blinding flash of bright white light.” Munn’s eyes went into a spin. “I couldn’t see from here to the windshield, let alone 10 miles ahead.” It was a miracle the control tower was able to talk him down to the ground.

Once on the ground, pilots had just seconds to get their planes off the landing strip before the next plane came in to land...

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