Turning the Airlift Around: Organizational and Infrastructure Improvements
At the start of 1949, the Airlift was patently failing, but key changes took place. The General Tunner's contribution and the transformation of the British civilian fleet have been discussed in earlier posts. This article looks at the organisational and infrastructure improvements that -- although not individually decisive -- combined to make the success of the Airlift.
Arguably, the most important of these measures were the infrastructure improvements at both departure and receiving airfields that in early 1949 increased the efficiency for loading and off-loading liquid fuel. First and foremost, electric pumps were installed at all airfields, cutting loading times almost in half from 20-25 minutes to just 12-14 minutes. At Gatow, 18 off-loading bays feeding into five underground tanks were constructed around a circular island. In addition, flood-lights were installed to enable night operations. At Tegel four underground tanks with 160 cubic meters of storage capacity and the facilities to off-load 10 aircraft simultaneously were built within 15 days. Two pipelines fed from the airfield underground tanks to a central storage tank two and half kilometres away at Plötzensee. Together, these measures led to a significant increase in tanker utilization rates and so to deliveries. The last week in February 1949 marked the turning point for liquid fuels. On that day the daily average of liquid fuel delivered to Berlin exceeded plan, allowing for the building up of reserves to commence. Thereafter, liquid fuel was not a problem.
Other changes were made to improve efficiency of the Airlift as a whole included the conversion of a squadron of USAF Flying Fortresses into weather observation aircraft based at Burtonwood in the UK. The weather flight flew over the Atlantic reporting to Wiesbaden on weather conditions; as a result long-rang weather forecasting improved. Nevertheless, pilots were also issued handbooks with the instrument approach charts for 26 different airfields in Europe in case they had to divert due to weather. The RAF made a very unique contribution to safety in the corridors; they deployed a team of trained RAF falcons at Gatow. They preyed in a natural way upon the local bird population – and kept them out of aircraft engines.
Once Tunner had control of the facilities at Burtonwood, he instituted what he termed “production line maintenance” or PLM. What this entailed was dividing all the tasks required for maintenance into discrete steps and having maintenance crews specialize. In short the same men preformed the same task over and over again on each aircraft while the aircraft moved from station to station – like a product moving down an assembly line. Using this system, Burtonwood operated twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, stopping only if they ran out of aircraft to service. The latter only happened with weather conditions prevented the aircraft due for maintenance from flying in at the expected rate.
The RAF by contrast not only maintained the principle of a specific crew doing all the maintenance on an aircraft, they rotated the ground crews through various jobs to keep them from getting bored and to ensure their ability to perform a variety of tasks. This meant that any of the crew could jump in and perform any routine servicing, if a colleague was absent for some reason. Given the high praise RAF ground crews earned around the world and including from the Americans, it is fair to say that what Tunner’s system gained in short term efficiency it lost in terms of well-trained, thinking crews capable of dealing with unexpected or unusual problems.
Another RAF innovation was “the plumber flight.” A little fleet of six Dakotas, including air and ground crews, was dedicated to flying in spare-parts and tools for the maintenance of the RAF’s Airlift aircraft. “Plumber flight” ensured that the RAF’s mechanics were never reduced to the extremes of Tunner’s – buying inadequate tools on the local market. It flew between 400 and 500 tons of parts monthly and it made its vitally important contribution to the airlift without fanfare.
On the other hand, Tunner’s use the 1,000 hour inspections at Burtonwood to strip unnecessary equipment off the C-54s was highly effective. Roughly 2,200 pounds of “excess” equipment was removed from the Airlift C-54s increasing their payload by a comparable amount. The reduction in equipment had the added benefit of reducing maintenance times since the excess equipment no longer needed to be serviced.
Meanwhile improvements continued to be made on the airfields as well. The most important of which was the second 6,500 foot runway at Tegel. This runway was laid down with an additional 1,500 foot base to allow for future expansion. The USAF was already envisaging the day when the C-54s would be replaced by larger transport aircraft requiring longer runways. Also notable was that enough heavy construction equipment had been flown in by the method of dissection and re-construction described earlier that this second runway could be built by just 400 labourers and supervisory technicians compared to the 19,000 Berliners and 165 U.S. Army Corps of Engineers personnel required to build the first runway. At Tempelhof, too, two parallel runways at last came into use; one for landing and one for take-off.
Improvements in cargo handling efficiency were fairly steady and incremental as they did not entail massive infrastructure projects. The construction of better roads, more warehousing capacity and better organisation all contributed. Simple things like painting the number of the aircraft in large black letters on the tail-fin for easy identification and assigning numbers to the off-loading ramps helped both ground crews and pilots get where they belonged rapidly. At all events, by early 1949 the Airlift systems for handling cargo had been continuously improved and refined until they reached a very high standard of efficiency.
At Gatow, cargo handling started at the “Load Control Centre,” a motley collection of Nissen huts a few hundred yards away from the Operations building and directly overlooking the airfield. Here all personnel responsible for seeing that cargoes were properly configured and loaded were collected under one roof. RAF Engineer Officers, RAF Movement Control (for marshalling aircraft) and Royal Army Service Corp Load Control and Motor Transport Officers worked together to ensure loading and offloading went smoothly. When roughly twenty miles away from Berlin, arriving aircraft radioed in what cargoes they were carrying, particularly if they had awkward cargoes or one requiring special handling. The Load Control Officer estimated off-loading time and then assigned a “load crew” to the aircraft and the RAF Movement Control Officer assigned the hardstanding.
When returning to their home bases, again the aircraft radioed in to report whether they were empty or carrying return cargoes. The RAF Engineering Officers were then responsible for assigning re-fueling and servicing crews to meet the aircraft, while RASC Load Control handled the allocation and positions of stevedores. One veteran claimed they knew exactly how many aircraft were available, how much and what kind of cargo had to go into each aircraft and exactly when they had to start-up and take off.
By the start of 1949, load crews handled 24% more cargo with 24% fewer trucks and 22% less workers than at the start of the Airlift. Load-crews were standardized at 12 men and there were on average 30 load crews per shift at each airfield. The shifts lasted from 7am to 3pm, from 3pm to 11pm, and from 11pm to 7am. No one worked overtime as this would have disrupted the shift system. Each load-crew usually unloaded between five and six aircraft during a shift or – on record days – ten aircraft. According to one loader, “the night shift was the least busy, but one used the free time to, for example, bundle the empty cargo sacks and prepare them to send back to West Germany.”[i] Day times were generally hectic. Between jobs, the men waited in tents where they could warm up, relax and rest, but when their next assigned aircraft arrived they went to work.
When we rushed out of the tent onto the airport apron to the approaching C-54 – another group was just returning for a rest – tired and sweaty from the strenuous exercise. While the propellers of the aircraft were still turning, the wheels slowly grinding to a standstill, an empty truck drew up to the plane, and within seconds a ramp was placed across the plane’s cargo door. Then six of our men jumped into the aircraft, the rest distributed themselves on the truck, forming a working cordon to save as much time as possible. The first man picked up a sack of coal, flour or food and threw it to the next man and so on until it was all stacked onto the truck. Within a few minutes the guys from the interior of the plane had moved to the outside with the last sack and all men were back in the truck.[ii]
These methods reduced the average time needed to off load a C-54 full of coal from 20-25 minutes down to an average of 7 to 10 minutes, and then again down to an average of 6 minutes. As the Airlift was winding down after the lifting of the Blockade itself, the Station Commanders of the three Airfields in Berlin held a contest for the fastest unloading crew. A reward of $ 50 and three extra days off work was offered, but most crews were by now motivated by pride. Hans Günther’s load crew won with a record time for 180 sacks of coal from a C-54 of 4 minutes and 30 seconds.
Competition was not just between load-crews. Tunner consciously and consistently tried to foster competition between the various units under his command and between the different airfields. He set goals for each base and recorded the results daily on huge “Howgozit” boards where everyone could see – and compare. Tunner claims that:
The chief topic of conversation on every base was the daily tonnage records. Visitors to the Airlift were amazed by the spirit of competition…. The intense rivalry even spread to the loading and unloading groups… We encouraged enthusiasm with prizes – usually cigarettes, worth their weight in gold – for outstanding performances. [iii]
And if one was going to keep track of progress and set goals, then obviously one had to go through the motions of celebrating the achievement of goals and the passing of milestones. In fact, these ceremonies became so common that when a York captain found a large reception committee waiting for him on landing he thought he must have done something special – the millionth ton or thousand-something sortie. He asked the reception committee, ‘What’s all this about?’ To which he received the answer: ‘Don’t you realise you’ve lost your control tail fin?’ It wasn’t a reception committee at all but the accident crew come to clean him up off the runway. [iv]
On an
eight hour shift I would talk down three blocks of 28 C-54s, roughly one a
minute. The weather was zero/zero and after landing a cleat truck would have to
tow the aircraft to the loading zone because the pilot couldn’t see the lights
on the taxi strips.[v]
Pilots on GCA approach were instructed not to reply to the instructions as was standard procedure in civil aviation. Instead pilots were told to simply obey instructions instantly. If they received no instruction for longer than five seconds, they were to climb to 800 feet and return to the last navigation beacon. In theory, enough time was allowed between aircraft to permit adequate separation in the event of a missed approach. Aircraft missing their approach might be diverted to one of the other two airfields in Berlin if there was a break in the traffic – or they might be sent back to their home base.
Modern readers should note that although Airlift pilots almost uniformly report feeling very safe, in fact by today’s standards the equipment was very primitive. Another problem was the sheer dependency on voice communications; these were limited by the channels available and were subject to interference due to intentional jamming and weather conditions. Still, at the time of operation, these were the most sophisticated means of air traffic control in operation any where in the world – and they worked.
[i] Hans Günther, letter to the author, Dec. 21, 2005
[ii] Ibid
[iii] William Tunner, Over the Hump, 180-181.
[iv] John Dowling, Royal Air Force Historical Society Proceedings No. 6, Sept. 1989
[v]Joseph Haluska, published personal account on the BAVA Website.
The Berlin Airlift is the subject of Bridge to Tomorrow, a trilogy of novels starting with Cold Peace.
Watch a video teaser here: Winning a War with Milk, Coal and Chocolate
The first battle of the Cold War is about to begin....
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. Buy Now
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. Buy now!
Based on historical events, award-winning and best-selling 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.
Comments
Post a Comment