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More than six decades separate two massive humanitarian operations supported by American Airmen. Each had different levels of devastation, obstacles and reasons for the plight of the people in need. But both efforts shared the goal of helping another nation's citizens survive and the only route open for deliverance was through the air.
Airmen recently helped in the humanitarian relief effort in earthquake-ravaged Haiti. About sixty years ago, there was another operation nicknamed, "The LeMay Coal and Feed Delivery System" in Germany. It was more widely known as the Berlin Airlift. The Air Force wasn't even a year old when the Cold War began three years after the end of World War II. The Soviet Union blocked the Allies' railway and road access to Berlin on June 24, 1948 to force acceptance for its plans for the future of Germany. The Berlin Airlift began two days later with U.S. Air Force C-47 Skytrains delivering milk, flour and medicine to West Berlin.
U.S. and British aircraft delivered more than 5,500 tons of supplies and 750,000 tons by the end of the year. Like Haiti 62 years later, the Berlin Airlift gave the young Air Force an opportunity to show how airpower can deliver more than bombs and missiles when needed. But unlike Haiti, the airlift called Operation Vittles by the Americans also had an important military objective - to prevent communism from spreading further in Western Europe, said a National Museum of the United States Air Force historian.
"It's tough to compare the two although both were humanitarian efforts," said Dr. Jeffery S. Underwood. "The Berlin Airlift had not only humanitarian, but also geopolitical implications. Besides the humanitarian mission, it also showed the superiority of democracy over communism. We knew we had to win because if Berlin went down, the entire policy of containing communism would've been in jeopardy, from the end of World War II all the way to the dissolution of communism across Europe."
Underwood earned a doctorate in American history from Louisiana State University and is the author of a book about World War II-era airpower called "The Wings of Democracy: The Influence of Air Power on the Roosevelt Administration, 1933-41." The museum at Wright-Patterson...