Artifact Friday - Air Force Pilot Wings

Although we are late to celebrate the United States Air Force’s birthday, September 18th, we are just in time to celebrate September 30th. The 30th marks the end of the Berlin Airlift as a successful operation and among the first major operations conducted by the USAF.

It is worth noting that the Air Force did not prove itself in combat as the Army, Marines, or Navy. Instead, the USAF rose to face the Soviet Union in the single greatest act of logistics ever conducted.

Come the end of World War II and the beginning of the Cold War, Germany was split in half, with the western powers managing the west half while the Soviet Union managed the east half. Unfortunately, the capital city of Berlin was within the Soviet Union’s half of Germany, yet was still split in half in the same way the rest of the nation had been. This caused West Berlin, a bastion of democracy, to be surrounded by communist influence.

To try and pressure the Western powers out of Berlin and the rest of Germany, the Soviet Union stopped permitting supplies to cross through East Germany to West Berlin in 1948. France, the UK, and the US came together to conduct Operation Vittles, better known as the Berlin Airlift.

Spearheaded by the fledgling Air Force’s Major General William Henry Tunner, World War II veteran pilots landed cargo planes packed to the brim with supplies every thirty seconds every day for 15 months. The entirety of West Berlin not only survived off supplies shipped in by aircraft but thrived in a sea of communism. Finally, on September 30th, 1949, the Soviet Union realized that the Berlin Airlift was doing more to empower the West than deter them, and the USSR lifted the blockade. This incredible feat set the tone for the Cold War and proved to the entire world that the United States Air Force would never waver in the face of adversity.