Humble Heroes of the Berlin Airlift : C-74 Globemaster

 The largest cargo aircraft to fly the Berlin Airlift was the USAF C-74. Yet while this impressive cargo carrier made some spectacular attention-grabbing flights, it was not routinely employed on the humanitarian effort to keep Berlin free.

 

In early 1942, just after the US military laid claim to all DC-4s in production, Douglas Aircraft Corporation started work on the design of a larger more capable cargo plane to meet the exploding transport needs of the army. Top of the list of requirements was the ability to transport light tanks, howitzers and bulldozers. A prototype was finished by 1945, but the end of the war caused the military to reduce their order from 50 to 14. Of these, only 11 saw service, and one lost a wing during a test flight, causing Douglas to undertake major modifications that resulted in a new aircraft, the C-124, which proved to be more successful. The C-124, however, did not take flight until 1950, making the C-74 the largest aircraft available to the Western Allies during the Berlin Airlift.

The C-74 had a passenger capacity of 125 fully equipped troops, 115 stretchers with patients, or 25 tons of cargo. It had crew of five consisting of two pilots, a flight engineer, navigator and radio operator. Its flying characteristics were comparable to the C-54 with a cruising speed of 212 mph (slightly slower than the DC-4) but a maximum speed of 328, or almost fifty miles an hour faster. Its operational ceiling was markedly lower than the C-54 at 21,300 feet and the range of 3,400 miles was almost identical to the C-54's 3,300 mile range.

Despite its dramatically greater cargo capacity (11 tons more than the C-54) it was not the ideal aircraft for the Berlin Airlift. Since there were only eleven of them, they could not carry the full burden of the US contribution to the Airlift alone, and their deployment would have undermined Tunner's drive for standardization of equipment, parts, and procedures. An even greater problem was that the substantially greater weight of the C-74 made it impossible to land on anything except concrete, but for roughly the first half of the Airlift, Gatow was the only airfield in Berlin with a concrete runway. 

Nevertheless, in mid-August 1948 a lone Globemaster arrived in Germany and on August 14 flew into Gatow with 20 tons of flour in what was largely a publicity stunt to show off US capabilities. During the next six weeks, this C-74 made a total of 24 sorties into Berlin-Gatow, contributing 617 tons to the Airlift. On Air Force Day, September 18, the USAF made a special effort and maximized tonnage by taking a homogeneous cargo, namely coal. The C-74 Globemaster contributed 6 round trips to Berlin a the 24 hour period delivering 125 tons of coal to Berlin. 

However, at the end of September, at the same time the C-47s were withdrawn, the C-74 was likewise taken off the Airlift. Tunner wanted a homogeneous fleet of C-54s. The Globemaster was instead assigned to the task of flying bulky and heavy objects too large for the C-54s across the Atlantic. Particularly, valuable was the C-74s ability to fly replacement engines for the C-54s and construction equipment used to build Tegel airfield and a power plant in the Western Sectors of Berlin. In this way the C-74 Globemaster made a substantial, if indirect, contribution to the Berlin Airlift. 

The Berlin Airlift is the subject of Bridge to Tomorrow, a trilogy of novels starting with Cold Peace and continuing with Cold War.

Watch a video teaser here: Winning a War with Milk, Coal and Chocolate

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