As soon as the lift got underway, a call went out for cargo planes from all over the world. In the American case, aircraft arrived from bases as far away as Guam, Alaska, Hawaü, and Panama to make up what was at first labeled the “LeMay Goal and Feed Delivery Service” and later rechristened “Operation Vittles.” Although the buildup was impressive, the operation at this point was still definitely seat-of-the-pants. “It was a cowboy operation when I got there in July,” recalled an American pilot. “It was a joke if you could take off after your buddy and get back to Rhein-Main before he did. It did not matter how you beat him, just so long as you beat him.” Loading operations were also chaotic, with trucks sometimes driving into spinning propellers. In the early days, pilots experimented with low-level drops over Berlin’s Olympic Stadium to avoid time-consuming landings, but the food ended up as puree, while coal became coal dust. Worse, although the deliveries increased each week, they were not nearly enough to meet Berlin’s needs, even in summer. Observing this painful reality, Robert Murphy speculated on July 9 that “within a week or so we may find ourselves faced with a desperate population demanding our withdrawal to relieve the distress.”
Clearly, a great leap forward in terms of organizational sophistication was required if West Berlin was to be adequately supplied. Fortunately, even as Murphy was issuing his grim prognostication, measures were being taken to make the operation more viable. Dozens of American C-54s, along with newly arrived British Yorks and Sunderland Flying Boats, which landed on the Havel River, were integrated into the system. The larger aircraft were able to carry bulky items like generators and power plant machinery. As for food, it was now delivered almost exclusively in dehydrated form, which made for less weight and more efficient packaging. So many items arrived as powder that a cartoon showed a stork flying into Berlin with a diapered bundle in its beak—the bundle labeled “Powdered Baby.”
The most crucial advances were key technical and logistical innovations introduced by General William H. Tunner, a veteran of the Himalayan “Hump” of World War II, who arrived in July to become commander of the Combined Airlift Task Force. He quickly imposed a rigid routine whereby planes were dispatched according to type, air speed, and cargo loads, which avoided bunching up en route or on the ground. Preestablished flight plans put an end to races through the corridors. Improvements in air-traffic control around Berlin made it possible to bring in planes at very short intervals. A special training facility at Great Falls, Montana, famous for its hostile environment, prepared air and ground crews to work efficiently together in the toughest conditions.
Among the inhabitants of the western sectors, improvements in the airlift did not immediately dispel widespread fears that they would be starved into submission. The first months of the blockade brought significant reductions in daily food rations, which had been meager enough to begin with. Yet by late fall 1948 Tunner’s innovations were starting to pay off: Berliners were not starving to death, and the local economy had not ground to a halt. The children of Berlin could take delight in occasional drops of candy attached to tiny parachutes; the kids called the planes
There was another danger as well. Irritated by the airlift’s successes, the Russians were starting to send signals that they might not continue to tolerate this Allied experiment. Soviet planes began staging mock air battles over Berlin, while ground batteries practiced antiaircraft drills in the northern corridor. Red fighters buzzed Allied cargo and passenger planes. In one instance, a Soviet fighter even caused a British transport plane to crash. If these sorties escalated from harassment to actual shooting, the airlift might lead to war after all. As it turned out, however, the Soviet interference, while very dangerous and provocative, did not become more extensive; indeed, it abated somewhat with the onset of winter. As so often in the past, the Russians seemed to be counting on nasty weather to come to their aid.
