Turning the Airlift Around: The Civilian Charter Companies

 At the start of 1949, the Airlift was patently failing. That it ultimately succeeded was due to three factors: General Tunner getting full command of US resources, the British getting full control of the civilian component of their contribution, and organizational and infrastructure improvements. This essay looks at the British civilian component and its role in the near failure but ultimate success of the Airlift.

Key to improving British performance was improving the quality and efficiency of the civilian component because the RAF was pretty much performing at peak efficiency already given its resources; the civilian fleet was not. As a BAFO memo put it:

[Civilian] serviceability varies from day to day, the number of sorties which they are ready and able to undertake also varies, and their total daily is unpredictable for planning purposes. [i]

The RAF viewed the situation as so critical that consideration was given to requisitioning the civilian aircraft and putting service crews into them – or re-activating the crews and putting them back under military discipline.

The situation was most acute with respect to the transport of liquid fuel that was entirely in the hands of British civilian companies. The conversion of the aircraft to fuel carriers and the out-fitting of those aircraft with the navigational equipment required for Airlift operations had taken far longer than planned. As a result, instead of the planned fleet of 31 tankers, only 11 tanker aircraft were available to carry liquid fuel into Berlin as of 1 January 1949.

In response to the crisis, the various government departments involved in the civil airlift formed a committee that hammered out new policies. These included placing all civilian companies under a unified command and, above all, putting the civilian lift on the same long-term basis as the RAF lift. This entailed several adjustments.

First, it was decided to restrict the types of aircraft flying the Airlift to make it easier for blocks to maintain timing and spacing. Secondly, the civil air fleet, already concentrated at two departure airfields, Fühlsbüttel and Schleswigland, was now sent to Tegel (rather than Gatow) reducing the need to thread them through USAF air traffic bound for Tempelhof and RAF air traffic heading for Gatow.

Furthermore, new contracts stipulated a minimum standard of two crews per aircraft and also set measurable minimum servicing standards. To improve morale, housing was provided in hotels in Hamburg while construction began on accommodation blocks at the airfields that would give pilots single rooms and ground crews double rooms. Last but not least, BA’s Senior Representative, who had long been nominally in charge, was not only freed of all other duties, he was also given the means to control his wayward sheep: the power to terminate contracts.

The need to weed out companies that couldn’t or wouldn’t pull their weight was critical to the success of the civil airlift. At last, poorly performing companies were sacked and a number of smaller operators disappeared from the Airlift. Other companies were given the ultimatum to convert their operations to tankers or lose their contracts. Meanwhile, the better companies got contracts with three-month notice periods and bonuses for better performance. This encouraged both investment and better management.

The results were felt almost at once. Companies like Flight Refuelling and Lancashire Aircraft Corporation restructured their operations and ramped up their maintenance organisation. Flight Refuelling, for example, hired a new executive for Germany, W/C Johnson, who set about throwing out the bad crews and the drunks, establishing strict rules – and enforcing them. He also engaged between 8 wireless fitters and ensured that ground staff worked 12-hour shifts with one day off each week and one week off every month. Trips home to the UK were paid at company expense. The ground crews, like the aircrews, were almost all ex-RAF, and they responded well to the new routine. Lancashire Aircraft Corporation was also able to do all the maintenance, installation of navigational equipment and conversion to tankers at its own workshops in England. Now that the contract allowed for long-term planning, the company could engage 16 fully trained aircrews and roughly 100 ground engineers, all based in Germany, to keep its fleet of 13 tankers operating. And it did.

By the end of January, the tanker fleet had increased to 27 aircraft, and by March the overall number of sorties flown by civilian aircraft on the Airlift increased from 54 to 70 per day. After that, the number of flights continued to increase until June 1949 when, after the lifting of the Blockade, the Airlift peaked and started to wind down.

In the period between January and June 1949, the civil airlift was extremely well-run and efficient. Leonard Vincent Knowles, a wireless fitter, who worked on the Airlift with the RAF until December 1948 and thereafter with Flight Refuelling, claims that by April 1949 there were clear schedules in four-hour cycles that enabled every aircraft to make six flights to Berlin in every 24 hours. There were workshops “purpose-built” for the Lift. Accommodations in hotels in Hamburg were first-rate. Last but not least, due to the discipline introduced by W/C Johnson, anyone responsible for a flight getting cancelled – whether it was a drunken pilot or a careless fitter - was subject to instant dismissal. Knowles noted that although he didn’t hear of anyone actually getting the sack, a new pride in accomplishment - even competition - for punctuality and the best serviceability records ensued. Clearly, the civil airlift had been turned around.

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