How Montana pilots learned to slam C-54s onto a runway shaped like Berlin
On June 24, 1948, Soviet forces blockaded all road, rail, and river access to West Berlin. Two million people in the American, British, and French sectors were cut off from food, coal, and electricity. President Truman ruled out fighting; he ordered an airlift instead. The Allies controlled three 20-mile-wide air corridors into the city, and the only airfields available inside the perimeter were Tempelhof in the U.S. sector (a 5,500-foot runway with seven-story apartments at the approach end) and RAF Gatow. The first 30 days were chaos. By August, General William Tunner — who had run the WWII "Hump" supply route over the Himalayas to China — was running the airlift. Tunner imposed precision: an aircraft landing or taking off at Tempelhof every 90 seconds, ground-controlled-approach radar, no second attempts (if you missed your slot, you took your cargo home). It worked. By winter, the airlift was delivering 5,500 tons of food, medicine, and coal a day. The U.S. Air Force needed C-54 Skymaster pilots, and in 1948 the entire C-54 inventory was about 400 airplanes. The Air Force selected Great Falls Air Force Base in Montana — today's Malmstrom AFB next to KGTF — as the SOLE replacement-aircrew training site. Engineers built radio-beacon mock-ups at Great Falls to simulate Tempelhof's landing pattern, complete with the trees and buildings the pilots would have to duck under. Pilots — many recalled from WWII reserve — practiced dive-and-flare landings hundreds of times over the Montana plains until they could put a 70,000-pound airplane on the numbers and stop short. Lt Gail Halvorsen, who trained at Great Falls, started dropping handkerchief-parachuted candy to Berlin children on his off-time approaches and became known worldwide as "Uncle Wiggly Wings" or "the Candy Bomber" — schools across America sent him chocolate. The airlift ran for 15 months, until Stalin lifted the blockade on May 12, 1949. By the time it ended in September 1949, the Allies had flown 277,000 missions and delivered 2.3 million tons of supplies. Berlin survived. The Cold War didn't turn hot. And today the Malmstrom Air Park outside the gate at KGTF still has the C-54 that did it parked on display.