On the Brink of Disaster: The Berlin Airlift Nearly Fails

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The spectacular success of the Berlin Airlift in 1949 has largely obscured the fact that it came very close to failing. In November and December of 1948 weather conditions combined to make flying nearly impossible on some days. The deliveries of essentials dropped dramatically, and Berlin's reserves dwindled. The Allies came close to a humiliating defeat. Below the details.

 

Winter in Berlin typically starts with foggy days  and November of 1948 was no exception. Visibility was so bad on so many days that Tunner reduced the minimums for flying from 400 feet visibility to 200 ft. But this wasn’t enough to overcome the problems. The meteorologists were predicting that the fog might persist for weeks, and on Sunday, November 28, it got substantially worse. A fog blanket spread across Europe from Finland to Italy that was so dense that it closed down practically every airport in all of Northern Europe – for the next 100 hours. On November 29, the Airlift came to a complete halt.

With Berlin’s coal reserves down to just two weeks, Tunner gave the order to fly “zero-zero” – i.e. zero ceiling and zero visibility. Never a man to order others to do what he would not do himself, on the evening of Nov. 29 in the dark and the dense fog Tunner took the controls of a heavily laden C-54 and flew it to Berlin.

…the Follow Me jeep guiding Tunners C-54 along the taxiway and out to the active runway had to be guided itself by two men walking ahead and carrying flashlights…Tunner’s flight was quickly cleared for departure. After all, the commanding general of the Combined Airlift Taskforce was at the controls of a coal-laden aircraft, and if he wanted to fly in weather that had even the birds walking, no one was going to deny him.[i]

Despite Tunner’s example, only ten aircraft reached Berlin on November 30. Of those ten aircraft, seven had been British, guided by their superior on-board navigation equipment and their professional navigators. On Dec. 1, with only marginally better conditions, 54 Airlift sorties were flown – a dramatic improvement over the day before but in fact bringing in a pittance - less than 500 tons of supplies. Again these flights came predominantly from Wunstorf  and flew to Gatow, where the better GCA was located. But at least the precedent had been set and henceforth much flying was done in such hair-raising conditions. This meant in practice that:

At Rhein-Main, C-54s took off on nights when the fog was so bad that even buses in nearby Frankfurt had stopped running….Truck convoys from the railheads to the airfields were guided by men walking ahead with flashlights and drivers stayed on the road by following the red taillights of the truck ahead of them.[ii]

[At take-off, the pilot] had first to position the nose above a white line, then taxi blindly into nothingness. Once the airspeed indicator showed 100 mph, the plane fought into the solid overcast to fly on instruments all the way to Berlin.[iii]

[On landing] the fog was so thick that pilots were unable to pick out the beams of the flashlights of the ground crew guiding them to their hardstands…[iv]

General Clay experienced the dismal conditions personally, describing them as follows:

When we arrived over Berlin, both Templehof and Gatow airports reported equally unfavourable conditions so our pilot decided to make a pass at Templehof. Thanks to the effectiveness of GCA and its well-trained operators, we landed without accident but with our brakes hot. When the tower directed us to the taxiway we found the visibility so poor that we did not dare move farther down the runway. We were unable to follow the jeep that was sent to guide us and finally reached the unloading ramp guided by an airman under each wing signalling with flashlights.[v]

At Wunstorf, exclusively RAF, the minimums were officially fixed at 200 foot ceiling and 400 yards visibility. But the professional pride of the RAF is demonstrated by the following incident. S/L Bevan-John of No. 51 Squadron was acting as tower control officer one night, intent on bringing all his planes safely in.

No runway lights were visible, yet to his astonishment every man joining the circuit reported as if by rote: ‘Two hundred feet – four hundred yards.’ As the last man touched down, Bevan-John summoned them to the bar for a drink, then challenged them. ‘You lied to me, didn’t you? How much could you see of the true conditions?’ It was New Zealander Les Gow, replying for all, who embodied the spirit that would see the airlift through: ‘We couldn’t even see the bleeding runway.’[vi]

And this was all before the temperatures dropped below zero.

In the damp, any drop in temperature resulted in icing. And ice on flights to Berlin started to become common. There were many, many close calls involving ice. At Celle ice sometimes formed so rapidly that between leaving the hardstanding and reaching the start of the runway, ice had formed so thickly that the aircraft could not take-off. Ice caused a C-54 on approach to Tempelhof to lose all four engines at once. The pilot landed short, in the stone-hard graveyard before the airfield, bounced over the perimeter fence – and landed on the runway without harm to man or machine.[vii] But at least nine of the fatal crashes during the airlift occurred in poor weather in winter, suggesting that ice may have been a contributing factor. Cockpit recording devices had not yet reached the level of sophistication we know today and nor had crash investigations – these were furthermore hampered by the fact that several aircraft went down in the Soviet zone and the Allies were never given access to them for investigative purposes.

Tunner’s example of flying in fog might have been inspiring, yet he did not want men to fly to their deaths either. That meant that a combination of fog and ice shut the Airlift down. In mid-December and again at Christmas these conditions caused flying to be suspended altogether. 

Several patterns emerged in all this. First, that there often – though not always – different weather conditions in the north than in the south. This justified the decision to keep Rhein-Main and Wiesbaden fully operational, despite the greater distance to Berlin, because it proved possible to fly into Berlin from these airports on some days when the airfields in the British Sector were closed. Second, Gatow was closed less frequently than Tempelhof or Tegel. This was both because of better GCA and because there was less risk to the civilian population. A mistake at Tempelhof might take hundreds of West Berlin civilians to their deaths; at Gatow an accident was more likely to take only Soviets or livestock as collateral casualties. Third, the Yorks were usually the last of the aircraft to stop flying due to weather. But even they had to reduce cargoes in favour of extra fuel in case they had to divert to the South of France. (One rather suspects the crews hoped for this!)  More likely, however, was simply getting socked in at Gatow and spending the night in Berlin, unable to return until the next day.

All these conditions combined to create a 23% drop in delivered tons and a 16% drop in flights in November compared to October – an already inadequate month. Just 3,786 tons were delivered on average per day in November, or more than 1,800 tons too little each day, for a total of 113,600 tons. This amounted to a shortfall of 54,000 tons of desperately needed goods. December saw a slight improvement to 141,500 tons, but this was still below the deliveries of October and more than 32,000 tons short of monthly requirements.

Although by the first of January, the situation seemed to have stabilized with regard to food (i.e. people were getting enough to live on and one month’s reserves could be maintained), coal stocks were still dwindling at an alarming rate. There was hardly more than a week of reserves left, and even more severe fuel rations were put into effect, reducing above all the hours of electricity available to retail consumers. Efforts to fly out “extra mouths” were increased, but there seemed little hope of sustaining the city through the remaining three months of dark and cold. The Airlift appeared to have done its best – and fallen short. 

[i] Edwin Gere, The Unheralded, Trafford, 2003, 67.

[ii] Michael Haydock, City Under Siege, Brasseys, 1999, 244.

[iii] Richard Collier, Bridge Across the Sky, MacMillan, 1978, 135.

[iv] Haydock, p. 244.

[v] Lucius Clay, Decision in Germany, Heinemann, 1950, 383.

[vi] Collier, p. 136.

[vii] Collier, p. 139.

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 and followed by Cold War and Cold Victory.


Standing up to dictators isn’t easy — but sometimes it’s necessary.

Berlin 1948. The economy is broken, the currency worthless, and the Russian bear is hungry. Next on the menu is Berlin. Here war heroes and war’s victims are struggling to come to terms with a world where unemployment is widespread and the wartime Allies are at each other’s throats. When a Russian fighter brings down a British passenger plane, and the world teeters on the brink of World War Three. The defenders of freedom must work together to save Berlin from Soviet tyranny. The first battle of the Cold War is about to begin.

Based on historical events, award-winning novelist Helena P. Schrader brings to life the backstory of the West's bloodless victory against Russian aggression via the Berlin Airlift in Cold Peace, the first book in the Bridge to Tomorrow Series.

Cold Peace is the winner of WINNER of an Independent Press Award 2025 in the category: Political Thriller, Runner-Up for BOOK OF THE YEAR 2023 from the Historical Fiction Company,  GOLD (1st Place) in the category Historical Fiction from the Feathered Quill Book Awards 2024, GOLD (1st Place) in the category Wartime Fiction from the Historical Fiction Company Book Awards 2023, SILVER (2nd Place) in the category Political Thriller from Readers' Favorites Book Awards 2023, a MAINCREST MEDIA Award and a BRAG Medallion. 

Buy Now!

Stopping Russian Aggression with milk, coal and candy bars….

Berlin is under siege. More than two million civilians must be supplied by air or surrender to Stalin’s oppression.

USAF Captain J.B. Baronowsky and RAF Flight Lieutenant Kit Moran once risked their lives to drop high explosives on Berlin. They are about to deliver milk, flour and children’s shoes instead. Meanwhile, two women pilots are flying an air ambulance that carries malnourished and abandoned children to freedom in the West. Until General Winter deploys on the side of Russia….

Based on historical events, award-winning novelist Helena P. Schrader delivers an insightful, exciting and moving tale about how former enemies became friends in the face of Russian aggression — and how close the Berlin Airlift came to failing. 

WINNER OF BRONZE for 20th Century Historical Fiction from the Global Book Awards 2024 

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You know you’re winning when the enemy turns to dirty tricks ….

With the Airlift gaining momentum, the Russians turn to more devious tactics to thwart the forces of democracy. Key players — or their loved ones — are targeted in unscrupulous attacks. Simultaneously, the policy of “collective guilt” has been replaced by “collective amnesty,” enabling former Nazis to worm their way back into positions of power. Yet throughout this dangerous dance with the henchmen of dictators, women are steadily rebuilding Berlin and Germany.

Award-winning novelist Helena P. Schrader takes the reader away from the limelight and into the shadow side of the Berlin Airlift to explore the social, psychological and long-term impact of this seminal event.

Based on historical events, Cold Victory reminds readers that standing up to tyrants isn’t easy — but sometimes it is necessary.

Buy Now!

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