William “Bill” Tunner—“Tonnage Tunner” to his comrades—had a track record unlike any other. From autumn 1944 until the winter of 1945, he had commanded one of the most exhilarating aerial operations of World War II. His task had been to fly in guns and explosives to Kunming, in China, where the beleaguered forces of Chiang Kai-shek were fighting a rearguard battle against the occupying Japanese.
The route necessitated flying over the eastern Himalayas, traversing some of the most desolate mountain ranges in the world. Now Tunner was to apply his talents to the German capital, accepting with alacrity the offer of running the Berlin Airlift. Shortly after, he headed directly to Wiesbaden, in the American zone of Germany.
Tunner was appalled by the amateurishness of the existing airlift, describing it as “a real cowboy operation.” There were no schedules, no discipline, no sense of purpose. “Everything was temporary,” he said. “Confusion everywhere.” This confusion reached a breaking point on Friday, August 13, 1948, “Black Friday,” when Tunner flew into Berlin in the company of Red Forman and Sterling Bettinger. It was the day on which the airlift would be forever transformed.
The weather was atrocious, with scudding black clouds and driving rain. Visibility over the Harz Mountains was down to zero. Tunner recalled the words of the comedian Bob Hope: “Soup I can take, but this stuff’s got noodles in it.”
The chaos on the ground forced the control tower to stack planes in the skies above Berlin, with scores of aircraft circling blindly in a 9,000-foot soup of cloud.
The chaos on the ground forced the control tower to stack planes in the skies above Berlin, with scores of aircraft circling blindly in a 9,000-foot soup of cloud. As they bucked and shuddered, the pilots could be heard on the airwaves in a state of high alarm.
The principal problem with the existing airlift was a lack of discipline. No sooner was Tunner on the ground in Berlin than he instigated two cardinal rules that were to govern the airlift from that point on. Rule one was a standard practice that governed all flights. Henceforth, all planes were to fly an unchanging flight pattern determined solely by instrument. Technology was to govern everything, a risky strategy at a time when radio compasses were often faulty.
Rule two was no less controversial. To avoid the hazard of stacking planes in the congested skies over Berlin, any pilot who missed his landing slot was to return immediately to base. “It caused a great deal of comment,” Tunner noted, “particularly among air traffic experts.” But his rigid application of Reginald Waite’...
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