Airlift Plan

If the Communists block ground-supply routes into West Berlin, would another massive airlift work? The most experienced airlift expert of them all, retired Air Force Lieut. General William H. Tunner, is certain that it would. He even has a plan detailing just how it could be done.

Tall, white-haired Tunner, 55, now a Virginia gentleman farmer, ran the Allied airlift over the hump between India and China in World War II, went on to mesh U.S., French and British aircraft into the effective lift that broke the Red blockade of Berlin, and after that to direct the Korean war air supply shuttle between Japan and Korea.

In 1948, Tunner's airlift required eight airfields in West Germany and three in Berlin, including famed Tempelhof, which was ringed by buildings. Tunner would use just three fields this time: at the West German end, the two closest to Berlin in the central air corridor, and in Berlin, unobstructed Tegel Airport in the French sector. Using these three fields would avoid the 5,000-ft. climb to clear mountains, cut the average distance nearly in half, permit the planes to flow toward Tegel at a mere 500 ft., returning in a wide northern loop to approach their home fields from the West.

This time Tunner would rely mainly on one aircraft, the 270-m.p.h.. propeller-driven C-124, which can carry 25 tons. He would pass up some of the Air Force's faster, bigger, new turboprops on the theory that their higher speed would only complicate the job of maintaining a steady traffic flow on the short run. A steady flow in '48 was complicated by the mixture of C-475, C-545 and C-825, planes with varying speeds.

To those who argue that new Soviet jamming techniques would cause today's electronic-laden aircraft to lose their way in Berlin's frequent mists, Tunner suggests an old-fashioned remedy: complete radio silence and conventional, though strictly controlled, blind flying. By sticking tightly to proper headings, noting elapsed time and speed, the pilots should have no trouble hitting West Berlin. Once there, haze-piercing, coded ground lights could direct them into Tegel with no complex letdown pattern. Tunner's key to a successful lift in bad weather: discipline must be rigid; the pilot can have almost no discretion.

Tunner's plan would use only 50 C-124s in the lift. Each would make at least four runs daily. Thus a minimum of 5,000 tons of supplies each day would wing into the city. That is 3,000 tons less than at the peak of the '48 lift. But in the old lift, 65% of the cargo was coal--and now West Berlin has stockpiled enough coal to last more than a year.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.