Unsung Heroes of the Berlin Airlift - Support Services
Aircraft do not fly themselves, they have crews, and crews unlike machines need to sleep and eat. Keeping the Airlift crews properly cared for was essential to success -- and in the beginning it was almost an afterthought. No where was the support infrastructure adequate for the explosion in aircrew sent to Germany on Airlift duties. The build-up took place too rapidly with the result that early on living conditions resembled those of a combat-type operation -- and sometimes they were worse.
The situation is well illustrated by the contrast between the housing provided the respective commanders of the U.S. Air Forces of Occupation and the senior commander on the Airlift – both Generals. General Tunner described the situation in his memoirs as follows:
I had arrived after office hours, I’d found LeMay at his quarters, a fifty-five-room mansion run by a staff of fifteen servants. It was a beautiful home, exquisitely furnished with fine oriental rungs and the best of European antiques and paintings. It belonged to the Heinkel family, makers of champagne, but had been requisitioned along with eight hundred other houses for the use of Air Force families. From this palatial residence I went to my quarters, a third-floor walk-up in the Schwartzer Bock Hotel, overlooking a block of burned out buildings. The door to my single room was opened for me, and I found myself looking into the bathroom. That was the only way you could get into the one-room quarters of the commander of the Berlin Airlift – between the tub and the commode. [i]
If those were the conditions for the commander, it is not surprising that ordinary American airmen on the Airlift could expect no luxury. One pilot says his crew, arriving in Frankfurt after flying non-stop from Alabama, was told on arrival that they had a choice between tents and tar-paper shacks. They were further told:
The tar-paper shacks [were] in a barbed-wire compound at Zeppelinheim, across the autobahn. There [was] a nearby building with showers. [However,] there [would] be a few minutes delay in moving in [because] the shacks were…occupied by displaced persons.
His description of his accommodations continues:
We pulled into a compound through a barbed wire gate to witness a scene that could have been shot from the liberation of a prisoner of war camp. There were already several two-ton trucks in the compound loading non-descript belongings in a variety of bags and battered suitcases. The owners, by their haggard looks and dishevelled mixed dress, had seen happier times. We were adding to their misery. The displaced persons were once more being displaced.
Four walls were all there was there besides a black potbelly stove and metal cots covered with what had once been reasonably good G.I. issue mattresses. There was obviously no washing or toilet facilities inside the buildings. [ii]
In addition to the tents and the tar-paper shacks in the Displaced Person Camp Airlift personnel were also housed in the attics of the existing barracks at Rhein-Main and in Nissen huts at Wiesbaden. With respect to the attic housing a veteran remembers: “The building had suffered war damage, and holes in the roof had been simply covered over with canvas – in late November!”[iii] As for the Nissen huts another American Airlift veteran remembers them as follows:
We slept in old Nissen steel-fabricated huts heated by three pot-bellied stoves that had to be stacked nightly to keep out the blowing snow and cold…A plane was taking off every three minutes during our hours of access to the assigned corridor into Berlin…The crew got very little sleep except while waiting our base’s turn to access….[iv]
There was nothing anyone could do to stop the aircraft noise – without suspending the entire operation – so the best that Tunner could do was to “pass the word down to housing officers to do their best to put crews working on the same schedules together, so that they could all sleep at the same time.”[v]
Compared to what the Americans had to put up with, RAF accommodations were reasonably good. Despite crowding, the basic substance was of a high standard. Thus even other ranks remember being housed in the universally admired pre-war Luftwaffe quarters.”
These had reinforced concrete roofs and triple glazing on the windows against the cold. Crowding meant that initially airmen were housed in the attic in metal bed frames “so close together that access could only be gained over the foot of each bed” and there were no mattresses." [vi] Worse, as with the U.S. crews, initially there was insufficient care about scheduling and so men working different shifts were constantly waking their sleeping colleagues. However, the RAF (unlike the USAF) did move the Occupation forces out. As the occupation personnel moved out, RAF Airlift other ranks were allotted smaller rooms on the first and second floor – presumably with better matched schedules. An AC2 remembered his Airlift accommodations as followed:
Accommodations for ground crews were sturdy, brick buildings with large, double entrance doors to keep out the cold. Rooms contained only four beds with very efficient central heating. This was the epitome of luxury for RAF ground crews accustomed to Nissen-type huts, containing thirty beds and two coke stoves.[vi]
Aircrew, not surprisingly, describe even better accommodations, although in the early days they were very crowed. Again the basic housing was pre-war Luftwaffe quarters built to give each officer a bed-sitter to himself. Airlift requirements meant that at Wunstorf no less than four RAF officers were housed in each bed-sitter initially, while others were “stuffed” into the attic. The attic was particularly unpleasant, as one of the pilots describes it:
We slept in
dormitories in the attic and were called out at all hours of the day and night
for duty creating a continual disturbance to others sleeping after their shift
of 16 or so hours. One morning I discovered I had flown all night to Berlin and
back several times wearing one black shoe and one brown, such was the state of
disarray in the attic billet. [vii]
Later, as the additional airfields were build and airlift personnel in the British Sector spread out, however, it became possible to clear out the attics and reduce room occupancy, and even to provide chambermaid service.
There was also an effort on the part of the British to provide “off duty” accommodation. As one RAF Airlift participant remembers:
The powers that be decided that we should have a few days rest every three weeks or so and made Hotel Bad Neindorf [sic] some miles away a convalescence centre. However, it did not last long as it became a hive of high-living and late nights and did not provide the rest for which it was intended.[viii]
If British
housing during the Airlift was, thanks to the Luftwaffe and the greater
dispersion in the British Sector, on the whole better than the American
equivalent, the same cannot be said about the food. According to some accounts,
RAF personnel received the same rations as civilians in England – who were also rationed at this time. Other
accounts say that they received no better rations than the Germans. At all
events, they were fed far less and far less well than the Americans. (Below an American staple: donuts!)
It is telling that while Americans all but rioted against the British food at Fassberg, RAF personnel remember Airlift kitchens with affection, one airman claiming:
The amenities at Wunstorf were quite good. The food was better than anything we were given in England. The chefs were the unsung heroes of the Operation. For its duration they provided first class food twenty-four hours a day. Catering for [Airlift] personnel required work shift patterns around the clock.[xi]
The pressure of feeding air and ground crews not just in shifts but continuously seems truly a forgotten achievement of the Airlift. Here too the “block system” meant that work would come in sudden frantic spurts followed by lulls – yet no one could predict when those spurts would occur since weather and technical difficulties rapidly disrupted schedules. Airfields and their kitchens, therefore, had to be ready to respond flexibly and rapidly to ensure that whenever the crews arrived, tired and hungry, they could get a hot meal. At least some of the men they served remember their services with affection. For one American, the fact that the mess was open 24 hours a day was vitally important to morale and “the food was great.”[xii]
Feeding the multitude was not a job for the military messes alone. Both the USAF and the RAF recognised the need for “snacks” and “refreshments” during duty hours for aircrew and places to unwind for both air and ground crews after duty. The British Commandant of Berlin felt that the poorer rations of British troops/airmen in Berlin when compared to both the Americans and French had – or could have – a negative impact on morale. He therefore ordered that the NAAFI be stocked with more “luxury” goods – at the cost of goods for Berlin. His calculation was that in the total reckoning, morale could be significantly boosted for the price of a single Dakota load per day. In other words, at the price of just three tons out of the thousands being flown into Berlin day after day, he could keep his men from feeling neglected and forgotten. Most veterans of the Airlift agreed with him.
Not only did the food now come to the airmen, but Tunner
…approached the German Red Cross and asked for their cooperation….They picked out some of the most beautiful girls in Berlin to ride along in the mobile snack bar and dish out the goodies along with enticing smiles. There were no more moans from the crews about staying by the plane. You couldn’t chase them away.[xiv]
One of those girls remembers it as follows:
With my mobile snack bar, I drove to the waiting aircraft and supplied the three-man crews with hot chocolate and sandwiches. Sometimes I worked straight through for 24 hours. The boys needed a little refreshment. Out of gratefulness one of them gave me a fur coat. I cried from joy. We had nothing back then.[xv]
The British response to this need was characteristically less regimented and more individualistic. Aircrews were not ordered to stay near their aircraft and the services were not organised by senior command but rather “out-sourced,” as we would say today. Namely, there was a Salvation Army canteen, a NAAFI, a WMCA, an American PX and a Malcolm Club at Gatow.
The Malcolm Club was particularly popular – and here too there were girls, but British rather than German. The Malcolm Club at Gatow had been designed to serve the needs of the small occupation garrison at Gatow, but abruptly it was confronted with hundreds of aircrews passing through the Station as part of the Airlift. In response, the Club called in help.
Mrs. Bell was tall, dark, light-hearted and a little light-headed hence her nickname [Dizzy]. She was given half a day’s notice to get to Gatow, and she threw a few items of personal kit into a hold-all then filled it with tea, sugar and powdered milk, which she was sure would come in handy in Berlin. She decked herself out in her smart air-force-blue uniform and tried to reach Berlin by road. Naturally she couldn’t. There was a blockade on, they told her. ‘Silly of me,’ grinned Dizzy, and hitched a lift to Bückeburg. She was devoted to the Air Force…and the Air Force reciprocated by being extremely fond of Mrs. Bell. So she had little difficulty persuading the ground staff to look the other way while, quite without authority, she climbed aboard an aircraft that happened to be bound for Gatow.
Quite quickly, a few more of the trim Malcolm Club girls arrived to work under Mrs. Bell’s direction. They took on a staff of sixty-five Germans to do the manual work and some of the specialized jobs. Three of them were barbers and for the next year they worked for from twelve to fourteen hours a day.
Meanwhile, in the hut on the edge of the airfield, Mrs. Bell and her girls served tea and coffee and doughnuts. The crews ate and drank while their aircraft were being unloaded and sometimes reloaded with manufactured goods or people bound for Western Germany. If the crews were delayed by bad weather or unserviceability, they could go to the main club-house and get a more substantial meal at any hour of the day or night.[xvi]
And so the
men of both air forces were provided for in their own way and on the whole to
their satisfaction by the dedication of women and other civilians whose role in
the Airlift is far too often overlooked.
[i] William Tunner, Over the Hump, U.S. Government Printing Office, 1964, p. 166.
[ii] Gail Halvorsen, The Berlin Candy Bomber, Horizon Publisher, 1997, p. 42.
[iii] Tech Sgt. William Michaels, quoted in Edwin Gere, The Unheralded, Trafford, 2003, p. 111.
[iv] Joe Trent, Berlin Airlift Veteran Association (BAVA) Website.
[v] Tunner, p. 176.
[vi] John B. Kite, quoted in Gere, p. 137.
[vii] Norman Hurst, letter to the author, Dec. 5, 2005.
[viii] Neville Parker, letter to the author, Jan. 2006.
[ix] Sgt. Robert Van Devort, quoted in Gere, p. 96.
[x] Richard Collier, Bridge Across the Sky, McGraw Hill, 1978, p. 122.
[xi] Hurst, letter to the author, Dec. 5, 2005.
[xii] Sgt. Thomas Talty, quoted in Gere, p. 103.
[xiii] Tunner, p. 171.
[xvi] Ibid
[xvii] Inge Hochgeschwender quoted in a letter to the author from Hans Gunther, Jan. 2006.
[xviii] Robert Rodrigo, Berlin Airlift, Cassels, 1960,p. 27.
NOTE: The content of this blog post is based on Helena P. Schrader. The Blockade Breakers. Pen & Sword, 2008
The Berlin Airlift is the subject of Bridge to Tomorrow, a trilogy of novels starting with Cold Peace, winner of Silver in the 2023 Readers' Favorites Book Awards.
Berlin 1948.
In the ruins of Hitler’s capital, former RAF officers, a woman pilot, and the victim of Russian brutality form an air ambulance company. But the West is on a collision course with Stalin’s aggression and Berlin is about to become a flashpoint. World War Three is only a misstep away.
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My novels about the RAF in WWII are intended as tributes to the men in the air and on the ground that made a victory against fascism in Europe possible.
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Their chances of survival were less than fifty percent.
Their average age was 21.
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MORAL FIBRE is the WINNER OF A HEMINGWAY AWARD 2022 and was a FINALIST for the BOOK EXCELLENCE AWARD IN HISTORICAL FICTION.
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