Sunderland: Berlin Air Lift by Flying Boats from Elbe River in Hamburg Video

The Berlin Blockade (24 June 1948 12 May 1949) was one of the first major international crises of the Cold War and the first such crisis that resulted in casualties. During the multinational occupation of post-World War II Germany, the Soviet Union blocked the Western Allies' railway and road access to the sectors of Berlin under their control. Their aim was to force the western powers to allow the Soviet zone to start supplying Berlin with food and fuel, thereby giving the Soviets practical control over the entire city.

In response, the Western Allies organized the Berlin Airlift to carry supplies to the people in West Berlin. The over 4,000 tons per day required by Berlin during the airlift totaled, for example, over ten times the volume that the encircled German 6th Army required six years earlier at the Battle of Stalingrad. The United States Air Force, Royal Air Force, and other Commonwealth nations flew over 200,000 flights providing 13,000 tons of food daily to Berlin in an operation lasting almost a year.[1] By the spring of 1949, the effort was clearly succeeding, and by April the airlift was delivering more cargo than had previously flowed into the city by rail.

The success of the Airlift was humiliating to the Soviets, who had repeatedly claimed it could never work. When it became clear that it did work, the blockade was lifted in May. One lasting legacy of the Airlift is the three airports in the former western zones of the city, which served as the primary gateways to Berlin for another fifty years.