Carrying the Coal

Last week the Air Force celebrated its first birthday as an independent arm of equal status with the Army & Navy. It flew bombers nonstop to the U.S. from Japan and Germany. It set a new speed record. And in Germany it demonstrated what the airlift could do when it really turned on the heat.

Lieut. General Curtis LeMay, Air Force chief in Europe, had called for a special 24-hour effort. The entire load was to be coal, to be distributed as an Air Force birthday present to families with two or more children in the Western sectors of Berlin.

Every 48 Seconds. The lift began in fog and high winds. For 18 of the 24 hours the big C-47 and bigger C-54 cargo planes had to be flown on instruments through the narrow 20-mile Soviet air corridors. But the operation went off like clockwork. Every 48 seconds, on the average, a plane was landing or taking off at one of Western Berlin's two airfields (Tempelhof and Gatow). On Air Force Day thousands of Germans gathered at the Berlin fields and at the loading bases at Frankfurt and Wiesbaden. Many kept tallies of the number of flights and tonnage of coal as husky Latvian and Esthonian D.P.s tossed 110-lb. bags into the planes.

At noon the loudspeakers at Frankfurt's field blared out the official score: 652 flights had carried 5,582.7 tons of coal. It was a new airlift record--by 154 flights and 1,652.4 tons.* Said Airman Second Class Reuel McCafferty, who did five shuttle trips: "If the Russkies ain't convinced by now, I guess they never will be."

A Boost in Prestige. The Berlin airlift had proved itself a magnificent technical achievement; it had also become an effective propaganda force for the U.S. One thing it had lifted in the 13 weeks of the Berlin blockade was U.S. prestige.

If not to the Russians, it had proved to many once-skeptical Germans, French, Swedes, that the U.S. meant business. From Germany TIME Correspondent Lawrence Laybourne cabled:

"All our airplanes in this formidable and exciting operation probably pack less coal into Berlin in one day than can be carried in one barge on the Rhine. It is painful to watch German workmen pour the small lumps into scales and weigh them out to the precise 110 pounds. To an American watching the airlift there is a sense of both degradation and satisfaction. But however momentary your anger at this unnatural and uneconomic thing, you get an abiding satisfaction that we are able to do it.

"With deep confidence in the Air Force's ability to keep the stuff moving in, General Lucius Clay and his people face the winter without evident qualms" (see INTERNATIONAL).

This week cigar-chomping Curtis LeMay was called back to Washington to take over the Strategic Air Command, succeeding General George C. Kenney. His successor in Wiesbaden: pugnacious Lieut. General John K. ("Uncle Joe") Cannon, 56, brilliant wartime commander of all Allied air forces in the Mediterranean.

*In the same period, British planes toted 1,405.3 tons of food and other supplies in 244 flights--a British airlift record.

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