Veterans commemorate 60th anniversary of rescue operation
Veterans from Britain joined German leaders yesterday to remember the massive operation that rescued the Western half of the Berlin from a Russian blockade intended to starve it into submission.
Allied planes mounted an around-the-clock marathon into the German capital in 1948 in order to deliver vital supplies to the German people. In total, some 2.3 million tonnes of food and supplies were supplied to the city.
"The Airlift turned foes into friends, and occupiers became helpers," Franz Josef Jung, the German Defence Minister, said yesterday at a wreath-laying ceremony at Frankfurt international airport, where many of the aid flights took off.
Gary Lamb, 85, a former officer in the Royal Air Force, thanked the German civilians who helped the effort: "I think the fact that Germany was eventually unified and Berlin became the capital of this prosperous and thriving country was due to the fact that the people in the Western zones insisted that 'we would do nothing which will encourage the Russians and everything which will encourage the Western powers'. "
Thirty-nine British pilots died before the operation came to an end in May, 1949, when the Russians called off the blockade.
