By T.Q. Jones
(Editor’s note: this is a review of the book, “Daring Young Men: The Heroism and Triumph of the Berlin Airlift, June 1948-May 1949” by Richard Reeves and published by Simon & Schuster.)
I was six years old when the Berlin airlift began, seven when it ended. I knew about it, but it didn’t mean much to me then. Ten years or so later, I had heard a lot about it. The Soviets blockaded Berlin, blocking all train, canal and highway traffic between Berlin and the rest of Germany, trying to force the Allies (the U. S., Great Britain and France) to give up territory the Soviets had agreed would be shared.
The Allied response, really President Harry Truman’s response, was to try to supply everything the two million residents of Berlin needed from food to coal, by air, during what turned out to be the worst European winter on record.
Author Richard Reeves was eleven when the airlift began, and 50 years on was surprised that his generation wasn’t really familiar with what he noted Tom Brokaw might have called, “the last act of the Greatest Generation.” Instead, those he talked to about it thought it happened in the 1960s and had something to do with John F. Kennedy and the Berlin wall.
Instead, the airlift was one of Truman’s best calls. Though it seemed an impossible task at the time, it led not only to the Soviets abandoning their attempt to steal Berlin and half of Germany, but to advances in the way aircraft could be used and moved. Ultimately, it led to the reunification of Germany. By the end, an ironically almost endless stream of transport aircraft was landing or taking off every minute, pausing to disgorge cargo and then taking to the air again.
One thing might touch a chord with the newer generations is the contribution of a brilliant Air Force mathematician named George Danzig, who developed “linear programming,” which he used to create a giant flight plan that maximized supply while minimizing the number of planes and people needed.
Reeves adds in a footnote, “As a graduate student at the University of California, Berkeley, Danzig saw two statistical problems on a blackboard and solved both, thinking they were a homework assignment. In fact, they were examples of unproved theorems. That 1939 incident was the basis for the 1997 film Good Will Hunting.”
That the Allies would even go to the lengths they did just three years after the end of World War II is surprising. That they succeeded is miraculous, and began with a scramble to move enough suitable transport planes to Europe. The U. S. had 400 C-54s, the military version of the DC-4, but only two were in Europe in the spring of 1948. Most were in the Pacific.
Not enough mechanics? Hire Germans. But what about sabotage? During the entire airlift, there were only 27 cases of suspected sabotage, and only four were proved.
Out of it came the friendship of the German people and a trained cadre of pilots who had flown in some of the worst weather imaginable. They pioneered new ways of loading and unloading airplanes as well as new methods of handling instrument approaches in bad weather.
And they fed, sheltered and warmed two million people for eleven months… those who don’t know the story need to read this.