Templehof Airport in Berlin, Germany closed yesterday as many aged citizens shed tears of farewell to the airport that saved Berlin during the 1948-49 Berlin Airlift.
In 1948, the Soviets blockaded all vehicle, rail, and supply routes to Berlin in what many consider to be the first hostile Cold War confrontation with the Western democracies.
United States and British air crews assembled thousands of cargo aircraft (many had been World War II bombers) in West Germany and promptly began a massive, complicated, and dangerous round-the-clock airlift of staple supplies, food, medicine, fuel oil, coal, and equipment. Generous amounts of sweets and candy were released with small hand-made parachutes for the Berlin children who gathered to watch the flights. Waves of aircraft arrived and departed from Berlin's Templehof Airport sometimes only a few seconds apart.
The relatively short confrontation ended when the Soviet Communists withdrew the blockade after being overwhelmed, astonished, and humiliated by world opinion not to mention the dedication and stamina of the legendary air crews and the precision with which the operation was planned and executed. Many veterans of the operation are still with us though the events, like Templehof Airport, are being shelved as ancient history.
See Leon Uris', Armageddon, A Novel of Berlin, (1963) for compelling historical fiction on the operation.