The Commander of the Berlin Airlift: General William Tunner
Although his influence was felt only in stages, as Commander of the Combined Airlift Taskforce, General Tunner had overall command of the Berlin Airift. He vigorously imprinted his own character upon it. His innovations and his forceful personality saved the Airlift from chaos and collapse at a critical juncture.
Tunner had been one of the first officers in the entire Air Force to specialise in air transport. He had helped establish the Ferrying Division and nurtured it from a handful of men to an organisation 50,000 strong and delivering 11,000 planes a month to domestic and overseas destinations. In fact, he can be credited with creating not only an organisation but an entire ethos and standard for air transport pilots.
Tunner passionately believed that transport pilots had a different mission and required different qualities than combat pilots. He was proud to claim that he had “proved that air transport was a science in itself; to be carried out at its maximum efficiency air transport must be run by ... professionals.” [Tunner, Over the Hump, Office of Air Force History, 1964, p. 41] In August 1944, he assumed command of the highly risky supply operation across the Himalayas – which had already defeated several previous commanders – and turned it into a spectacular success.
Tunner also had a reputation as a hard driver. His nickname was “Willy the Whip” and he claimed he didn’t lose any sleep over it. The official air force history of Air Transport Command described him as “arrogant, brilliant, competent. He was the kind of officer whom a junior officer is well advised to salute when approaching his desk.” In short, he was both the consummate professional air transport commander and the kind of commander who could be expected to get the job done – even if it was a job that the officers appointing him did not believe could be done.
After his arrival in Berlin late July 1948, Tunner set to work putting things “right” immediately. As he reports, “by the way the crews were lounging around in the Operations room and the snack bar, I wondered how in the world they’d get their planes off in time. A look at the records showed they were not getting them off in time. There were frequent delays. The schedule was ragged.”[i] On his third day on the job, Tunner put an end to the “lounging” and instituted the procedures by which the operations officer, weather officer and snack bar all went to the pilot rather than the other way around.
Another immediate change came about when the aircraft in which he was flying to Berlin got stacked up over Templehof in bad weather. He resolved immediately that it would never happen again. He eliminated circuits altogether. Henceforth aircraft not only took off three minutes apart, they landed three minutes apart. If the weather closed in unexpectedly and landing became impossible, the aircraft were sent home by the central corridor. If an individual aircraft missed the approach for whatever reason it too had to return to its home base fully loaded using the central corridor and got slotted into a new position in the continual flow of flights. The calculation was simple: in the same time it took to land nine aircraft stacked in a circuit, thirty aircraft could land using the straight-in approach.
Likewise, if an aircraft developed technical difficulties that would complicate the landing, it was told to land elsewhere, not in Berlin, where the air traffic controllers did not have the time and space to deal with a difficult landing. Tunner did not want any “pranged” machines cluttering Berlin’s airfields.
Tunner required the pilots to fly not when and as they wanted, but according to a very rigid plan. They took off at a specific time, flew a specific speed (C-47s flew at 180 mph and C-54s at 245 mph) to a specific altitude and maintained that speed. They therefore were due over each beacon along the route at an exact, calculable point of time. If they were late they had to speed up and if they were ahead of schedule slow down. Soon planes were less like autos on a highway and more like products moving down an assembly line. Last but not least, Tunner started requiring all pilots to fly by instrument flight rules regardless of weather, i.e. even in good visibility.
Tunner also instituted changes in the maintenance of aircraft. Typically, aircraft maintenance was done by crews assigned to a particular aircraft doing a variety of jobs. Tunner wanted maintenance to be like an assembly line. Each stage of a particular check was to be done at a different station. The aircraft moved down the maintenance line from one station to another, while the ground crews did the same job on each aircraft that passed through.
Tunner made these changes and others because he was a professional and knew what he wanted from the start, but Berlin during the Blockade presented a unique challenge even for him. Tunner was not the kind of General who thought he knew everything already. The first thing he had done on arriving in the China/India theatre was to fly “the Hump” himself – with his own hands on the controls and his own feet on the ruder pedals. In Berlin his method was what is now called by expensive management consultants “managing by walking around” – and listening. He was constantly “prowling around” because he felt he learned more by seeing things himself than from reading reports.
The added benefit was that, because he wore an old flight jacket that was as filthy as everyone else’s, ordinary airmen took him for just another Airlift pilot and didn’t realise who they were talking to when they complained to him. Another tactic was coming upon men in the dark of night when not only they did not expect or recognise him but they were also tired, less alert, and more candid. “Aircrews met him as they climbed from their aircraft; maintenance personnel saw him studying repair work at midnight; control tower operators found him looking over their shoulders at three in the morning…Visits, discussions, and casual talk often led to immediate changes.”[ii]
Even with regard to his own innovations, Tunner retained an open mind. After instituting the changes itemized above, Tunner invited roughly 30 pilots – not squadron or group commanders – to his hotel meeting room. He provided a keg of German beer and cold cuts and he asked for complaints. It took the pilots a couple of beers to find the courage to talk openly to “Willy the Whip” but once they started, the flood gates opened. The meeting ended up lasting from 10 am until 7pm. The pilots had plenty of complaints, and Tunner found most of them justified. His staff was tasked with finding solutions. As Tunner reports it:
Finally a young lieutenant made what many considered the most intelligent suggestion of the day. ‘How about getting the Red Cross or somebody to send over a couple of hundred beautiful American girls?’
‘We don’t have enough housing as it is,’ Kenny Swallwell, my engineering officer, said seriously. ‘Where would they sleep?’
They all answered at once, and that was the end of the meeting.[iii]
He had two other important management techniques which he employed well and consciously. First, he institutionalised an outlet for bitching in the form of the Task Force Times. This paper was uncensored and Tunner expected and accepted considerable humour at his own expense. He likewise made no effort whatever to inhibit the chatter on the airwaves that so characterised the Airlift although this was strictly forbidden in other circumstances and incurred stiff fines in civil aviation. Tunner’s entire approach was to set very high standards, but to give his men sufficient outlets for bitching and joking to keep tension and resentment from building up.
His other tactic was to spur competition. He had “Howgozit” boards, on which the latest statistics could be noted, placed in prominent places, and he published statistics in the Task Force Times by unit, by base etc. The idea was to get participants fired up by the prospect of being the best unit -- or at least better than a particular rival, whether it was the other squadrons on the same base, another base, the Brits or the Navy. In short, his tactic was to harness the instinctive competitiveness of healthy, young males for the purposes of the Airlift.
But never at the cost of safety. Tunner was a pioneer in the establishment of accident reporting and investigating. He was also very proud of his safety record, and reducing accidents was always as much of a goal as increasing tonnage. Perhaps the best summary of General Tunner comes from Lt. Gail Halvorsen, another “hero” of the Airlift -- if for very different reasons. Halvorson described Tunner as follows:
General Tunner…came across as a man with a mission, in
a hurry to be somewhere. On the surface he was tough as nails, but underneath
he had great compassion for those he served. We knew immediately that he was
primarily interested in the safety of flight and ground crews.[iv]
Tunner himself would have agreed with this assessment. He was certainly a man with a mission: that of getting Air Transport recognized as military speciality equal in value to strategic bombing and fighter operations. Tunner was determined to see Air Transport professionalized, and to this end he devoted considerable time training, leading and reorganising forces that had been neglected and scorned by others. He also evolved and articulated very clear theories about all aspects of Air Transport. He summarised his philosophy about airlifts in his memoirs eloquently:
The actual operation of a successful airlift is about as glamorous as drops of water on stone. There’s no frenzy, no flap, just the inexorable process of getting the job done. In a successful airlift you don’t see planes parked all over the place; they’re either in the air, on loading or unloading ramps, or being worked on. You don’t see personnel milling around; flying crews are either flying, or resting up so they can fly again tomorrow. Ground crews are either working on their assigned planes, or resting up so they can work on them tomorrow…The real excitement from running a successful airlift comes from seeing a dozen lines climbing steadily on a dozen charts – tonnage delivered, utilization of aircraft, and so on – and the lines representing accidents and injuries going sharply down. That’s where the glamour lies in air transport.[v]
[i] William Tunner, Over the Hump, USG Press, 1964, p. 171.
[ii] Roger Miller, To Save a City, University Press of the Pacific, 2002, p. 48.
[iii] Tunner, p. 176.
[iv] Gail Halvorsen, The Berlin Candy Bomber, Horizon Publishers, 1990, p. 64-65.
[v] Tunner, 162.
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.
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
Buy Now!
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.
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