Newsletter Subscribe
Enter your email address below and subscribe to our newsletter
The Berlin Airlift: Feeding a City by Air
Share your love
In 1948, the Soviet Union cut off every road, rail, and canal route into West Berlin, attempting to force the Western Allies out of the city by starving it.
Rather than abandon over two million Berliners, the United States and Britain chose an option almost no one thought was possible: supplying an entire city, indefinitely, purely by air.
A Plane Landing Every Few Minutes
At the operation’s peak, cargo planes landed in Berlin roughly every 90 seconds, delivering food, coal, and medicine around the clock for nearly a year. Pilots even began dropping small parachutes of candy for children below, an unofficial gesture that became its own piece of Cold War folklore.
After 11 months, the Soviets lifted the blockade. The airlift had proven that logistics alone could win a standoff without firing a shot.
What does it say that the most effective Cold War “weapon” here was candy and cargo planes, not tanks?
