Arguably, Air Traffic Control was even more important to the success of the Airlift than either flying or maintenance. At a minimum it can be said that given the confined airspace over Berlin and the fact that three airfields in close proximity had to handle continuous streams of incoming traffic, the absence of centralized, precise and professional Air Traffic Control would have doomed many individuals - if not the Airlift itself. Not only was the Air Traffic Control required on the Airlift unlike anything that had been done before, the innovations made during the Airlift laid the groundwork for all modern Air Traffic Control. Fundamentally, aircraft had to be guided in over long distances and then threaded through one another to different airfields, all without space for “holding patterns” since aircraft that strayed into Soviet airspace were at risk of being shot down.   Berlin, consequently, had centralized area control at the “Berlin Air Safety Centre” housed in th...

  "People who were keen on flying...were almost by definition slightly mad. It is my experience that the nicest people are all slightly mad, so it was pretty well inevitable that the ATA was full of the nicest people." -- Hugh Bergel, ATA Pilot   Just who were the men and women who flew with the ATA? The key characteristic defining the ATA flying staff was, in fact, it's diversity. This applied to practically all demographic criteria from sex and age to nationality and race. It also applied to 'hidden' factors such as background, wealth and health.  Starting with the most obvious, ATA employed both men and women pilots in an age where this was not normal. The Americans kept their women pilots in a separate (but not equal) institution. The Germans did not allow women to fly in any capacity. To my knowledge, the Soviet Union was the only country that allowed women to fly in WWII as fully integrated members of their armed forces. Furthermore, the Soviet Union allowed...

  Aircraft maintenance is the forgotten step-child of all great aviation achievements. The huge amount of labour, time and dedication that goes into keeping aircraft serviceable so that they can fullfill whatever role is assigned to them is largely forgotten, overlooked or ignored in most accounts of great aviation deeds. The Berlin Airlift is no exception and far too little attention has been paid to the astonishing achievements of ground crews in the most important airlift in aviation history.   RAF groundcrew servicing an aircraft. Note the mechanic on the right is a woman. At the start of the Berlin Airlift, in an incomprehensible example of neglect and under-appreciation, the USAF made no provision for ground crews when it deployed squadrons from around the world. The ground crews were expected to “follow” – by sea. This meant that at the start of the Airlift, the USAF’s cargo fleet had to be serviced by the mechanics already in Europe and they had been trained on c...