Early morning airlift operations at Tempelhof, 22 August 1948. Note the trio of aircraft parked beneath the overhang of the airport structure.

General Curtis LeMay

General Albert Wedemeyer

A pilot's eyeview of Tempelhof shortly before the blockade. Many of the large buildings surrounding the airport were destroyed by Allied bombing during the war. Unfortunately for the air crew who later ran the blockade, the leveled buildings were not on the flight paths to the runways.

Pierced steel planking for a new runway at Tempelhof arrives aboard a C-47.

A light dusting of snow covers surplus US Army vehicles of all types at Wurttemberg in the winter of 1946. The soldiers who operated them had long since returned to the United States.

US air traffic controllers at the Berlin air Safety Center check and post flight progress strips indicating movement of American aircraft in and out of Tempelho. The Soviet panel for their airfield at Schonefeld is at right and a corner of the British panel for Gatow airfield can be seen at left.

Berlin children scramble for Halvorsen's tiny presents.

A minature city is used to instruct military police in Germany on the situations likely to arise in various parts of a city, September 1946. After the war, Western forces were geared toward support and civil control

The limited load capacity of the C-47 aircraft necessitated that the much larger C-54s be added to the airlift as quickly as possible. A single C-54 was capable of carrying as much cargo as four of its older cousins.