Word: airlifters
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...Joseph Stalin willing to horse-trade with the West (see above), when he apparently had his enemy pinned down to a costly airlift which at best could not sustain West Berlin at normal levels? Much of the answer lay in the almost total collapse of Communist prestige and support in Berlin and in all Germany-partly and ironically as a result of the airlift itself, partly as a result of stupid Communist mistakes. On the surface, last week's Red-staged "riots" in Berlin seemed to have paralyzed the bravely anti-Communist city assembly; underneath, they bore evidence that...
Early in the week, portly, rosy-cheeked Veteran Communist Wilhelm Pieck called the signals for the Reds at a meeting of party functionaries in the Russian sector's Friedrichsstadt Palace. He confessed that the airlift was hurting the Red cause. Said Pieck: "There is no doubt that it has had a certain effect on the needy masses." Pieck cried for direct action against the uncompromisingly anti-Communist city government: "Fellow workers! You must frustrate a reactionary plot. Urgently we call on the people of Berlin to settle their score with . . . parties in the city government . . . We are sure...
...feet, 18 miles away, Search Scope picked up a moving white dot. It was a C-47 from the U.S. Air Force's Berlin airlift. Carefully watching the calibrations which told him the plane's altitude, speed and distance, the G.I. at Search Scope called over his microphone to the pilot: "Calling Easy Charlie three nine ... You will descend 500 feet a minute ... Fly two five seven degrees...
Blind Landings. The plane came out of the night, set wheels to concrete. The Army's GCA (ground-controlled approach) had brought another airlift plane safely home...
...months since it began, the U.S. airlift-now the world's biggest and busiest airline-had piled up some impressive records. Between June 26 and Aug. 26 it had made 15,853 flights, hauled 100,398 tons of food and other vital supplies to blockaded Berlin. Even more impressive, the planes had shuttled back & forth during the worst summer Germany had seen in years. Despite all the rain, fog and even sleet, GCA had brought the planes in for 850 blind landings without an accident...