I Always Wanted to Fly Read online

  Joe Laufer, Berlin Airlift pilot

  Colonel Howard S. “Sam” Myers Jr.

  Sam became interested in flying early in life. His father was a World War I navy aviator who flew a twin-engine Curtis NC-4 seaplane on antisubmarine patrol out of Queenstown, Ireland. “They would see the submarine out there, pick up a bomb from the cockpit, and lean over the side,” said Sam, with pride in his voice as he spoke of his father’s experiences during World War I. “When they got to the release point, they dropped it.” His father’s stories fascinated Sam, and there was little doubt in his mind that once he grew up he would fly airplanes. “I was born in Boston, Massachusetts, in 1923, but I grew up in Virginia Beach, Virginia. In 1943, at age nineteen, I was called to active duty. I graduated from twin-engine school at Lubbock, Texas, the following year. Then I was sent to Tarrant Field, now Carswell Air Reserve Base, for B-24 transition training and then on to March Field, in Riverside, California, where I made my home after retiring from the air force. I was getting my crew ready to go to the Pacific. But in August of ’45 they dropped the A-bomb. The war ended, and everything came to a halt. I opted to stay in the air force and was transferred to Bremen, Germany. I arrived in Bremen in August 1946 and was assigned to EATS, the European Air Transport Service, flying C-47 and C-45 aircraft. EATS was formed to provide the European theater commander with airlift for his far-flung troops from the United Kingdom to Turkey. I flew embassy runs and diplomatic missions throughout Europe, northern Africa, and the Middle East and made ammunition runs for the Greek government forces in 1947 during the communist attempt at a takeover. EATS really started the Berlin Airlift. We were in place. Eventually, we were absorbed into the larger Berlin Airlift operation and provided a cadre of trained and experienced pilots. It was not just our flying skills which were important to the Berlin Airlift, but also our experience in the sometimes unpredictable, often treacherous European weather.

  “In April 1948 I was transferred from Bremen to Wiesbaden, still a first lieutenant, and assigned to the 71st Headquarters Command. My family lived in town on Galileo Strasse in requisitioned German housing. I remember July 1, 1948, when the Armed Forces Radio broadcast, ‘Attention all United States military personnel. You are to immediately report back to your duty stations. This is not a practice. All leaves have been canceled. Military pilots will report to their commanding officers without delay for further instructions.’ From then on I was a perpetual pilot. I flew from Rhein-Main Air Base in Frankfurt and nearby Wiesbaden Air Base. For the next twelve months I logged over two hundred airlift missions to and from Berlin in C-47 and C-54 aircraft.”

  Lieutenant Sam Myers in the cockpit of his EATS C-47 at Bremen, 1947. H. Myers.

  At the start of the airlift there existed a lot of goodwill but little real knowledge of what it would take to supply a city of more than two million people with its minimum daily needs. The first thing that had to be determined was exactly what was needed and how much. Then a determination could be made of what types and how many aircraft would be required to provide the minimum food and fuel to keep Berlin from going communist. According to A Special Study of Operation “Vittles” by Aviation Operations Magazine, the minimum food requirements for Berlin for one day were:

  646 tons flour and wheat

  125 tons cereals

  64 tons fats

  109 tons meat and fish

  180 tons dehydrated potatoes

  85 tons sugar

  11 tons coffee

  19 tons powdered milk

  5 tons whole milk for infants

  3 tons fresh baking yeast

  144 tons dehydrated vegetables

  38 tons salt

  10 tons cheese

  Strict rationing was implemented for various categories of people, ranging from 2,609 calories for heavy workers, such as those unloading the arriving aircraft, to 1,633 calories for six- to nine-year-olds. The nearly 1,500 ton daily requirement of food, when added together with coal and miscellaneous supplies, came to a total of 4,500 tons to be moved to Berlin every day. This led to the determination that 225 C-54 aircraft were needed to move the U.S. portion of the daily tonnage. Initially, 102 C-47s were used from two airfields—Rhein-Main, near Frankfurt, and Wiesbaden Air Base. Eventually, on the U.S. side, two additional bases were added in the British zone—RAF Celle and RAF Fassberg—to fly coal to Berlin. A total of 201 air force C-54s and 24 navy C-54s, drawn from squadrons throughout the world, were assembled at these four air bases by the end of December 1948. The C-47, with its limited capacity of 2.5 tons, was phased out by mid-September and was replaced by the 10-ton-carrying C-54. Having one type of aircraft simplified the scheduling and control problems that the mix of 150-mph C-47s and 170-mph C-54s had created. To keep 225 C-54s flying, an additional 100 aircraft were in the maintenance pipeline, either at Burtonwood in England, for 200-hour inspections, or back in the zone of interior (as the United States was referred to at the time), for major 1000-hour inspections and overhaul. Replacement crews were trained on other C-54s at Great Falls Air Base in Montana. Nearly the entire inventory of C-54 aircraft was committed to the support of the Berlin Airlift.

  The command and control arrangements, the fourth important leg for a successful airlift (the other three being aircraft, crews, and ground facilities) were soon in place. Since the United States provided the bulk of the aircraft, the British readily agreed to American leadership, and on October 15, 1948, the Combined Airlift Task Force, headed by U.S. Major General William H. Tunner, began to operate from Wiesbaden. Lieutenant General LeMay, then the commander in chief of U.S. Air Forces Europe (USAFE), first brought in Brigadier General Joseph Smith, who immediately set to work establishing procedures to fly the Berlin air corridors. Prior to his departure from Germany in October, LeMay arranged for Tunner to run the airlift operation. As LeMay wrote in Mission with LeMay, “Tunner was the transportation expert to end transportation experts. . . . It was rather like appointing John Ringling to get the circus on the road” (LeMay 416). Tunner had been responsible for the operation of the famed World War II China-Burma airlift from air bases in India, also known as “flying the hump” for the perilous crossing of the Himalayas.

  The first pilots to fly the Berlin Airlift were from EATS. Here, EATS pilots are lined up in front of one of their aging C-47 aircraft at Bremen, 1947. Lieutenants Hal Hendler and Sam Myers stand third and fourth from left. H. Myers.

  “Tragedy struck quickly,” Sam Myers recalled. “While making an instrument approach to Tempelhof, one of our EATS C-47s crashed in the Friedenau section of Berlin, killing both pilots. The accident served to bring forth an outpouring of sympathy and gratitude by Berliners for the American flyers. They erected a plaque to honor the dead pilots, and for months thereafter, flowers were placed at the spot where the two Americans died. It seemed this tragedy brought an end to the lingering animosity toward the American occupiers.

  “A typical flight for me began at 5:30 in the afternoon when I reported for duty for a scheduled 7 P.M. take-off from Rhein-Main. I met my copilot at the briefing. It was unusual to schedule the same crew members to fly together regularly. We were assigned tail number forty-two. Forty-two was its hardstand number painted in large black letters across both sides of the vertical stabilizer and the rudder. We would be tracked into and out of Berlin by air-traffic control using that number. Our cargo was eight hundred two-liter bottles of milk, intended for the infants of Berlin. The prior day we carried 5,500 pounds of macaroni and dehydrated potatoes. What a mess that turned out to be. I was at seven thousand feet when the carburetors iced up. Nothing much I could do about that. I couldn’t fly lower without endangering others flying below me. I was also falling behind, and the aircraft behind me was gaining on me. To maintain my altitude and airspeed, I had no choice but to turn to my copilot and ask him to jettison our cargo. Out went 5,500 pounds of macaroni and dehydrated potatoes, littering the Soviet zone below. I regained my assigned altitude and airspeed, continued on to Berlin, an
d flew straight back to Frankfurt without first landing in Berlin—I was empty already.

  “On the next flight I hoped to do better. I picked up our maps, letdown charts, radio frequencies, and other assorted information—and of course a thermos of hot coffee to stay awake. The weather at Rhein-Main was a two hundred–foot ceiling and light blowing snow. The temperature was thirty-three degrees, visibility half a mile, wind south-southwest at fifteen miles per hour. The minimum takeoff ceiling at Rhein-Main was one hundred feet, so we were OK to go. The en route weather had a cold front lying across the Fulda beacon, with occasional thunderstorms reported by other aircraft. It would be a bit bumpy, to be sure, so we had to make certain our glass milk bottles were tied down securely. My copilot and I grabbed a shuttle, and we went out to hardstand forty-two. After a walk around the aircraft to ensure that the milk bottles were properly secured, we cranked up the engines. Over the radio I received takeoff clearance from the tower: ‘Baker Easy Forty-two (Wiesbaden was Able Easy) proceed to Tempelhof Airport via standard Darmstadt departure as published. Climb to assigned cruising altitude of 7,500 feet with a departure brake release time of 1900 hours.’ I taxied out, following twelve other twin-engined C-47s, with as many behind me. We were scheduled to depart at three-minute intervals. The tower cleared us to take active runway twenty-five (the magnetic heading for that runway was 250 degrees) at 1858 hours after the aircraft ahead of us released his brakes for his takeoff roll. Fifteen seconds prior to 1900 hours, I released my brakes and accelerated down the runway. I started my climb to nine hundred feet and turned toward the Darmstadt beacon. As soon as the gear was up, the aircraft disappeared in the clouds, and we were flying on instruments. ‘Baker Easy Forty-two level at 7,500 feet,’ I called into Frankfurt control. My copilot tuned in the Fulda beacon, hard up against the border of the Soviet zone. I listened to the aircraft ahead of me. If he was too fast or too slow, I needed to speed up or slow down to maintain our three-minute interval. At Fulda, this critical spacing was reestablished for everyone flying the corridor.

  “Ice formed on the props and the leading edges of the wings. I actuated the wing boots, rubberized leading-edge devices to dislodge the ice, and I surged the engines to throw the ice off the props. The ice sounded like machine-gun bullets when it struck the fuselage. Then the carburetor of number two engine (the right engine) began to backfire. Again icing. Scenes of the previous day’s macaroni dump ran through my mind. I didn’t want that to happen again. I was able to maintain my altitude. I tracked steadily on a heading of fifty-seven degrees for the 211 miles to Berlin. About halfway down the corridor, I tuned in Tempelhof radio range. I heard a steady hum, meaning that I was flying down the centerline of the corridor. Had I been right, of course, I would have heard a strong N in Morse code; left, of course, an A of dots and dashes. The approach to Tempelhof Airfield was above a cemetery flanked by five-story apartment buildings. I initiated my approach at two thousand feet and was picked up by the Berlin area GCA controller: ‘Baker Forty-two, Tempelhof GCA, turn left to heading 337, maintain two thousand feet, landing on runway twenty-seven, altimeter 29.73, ceiling two hundred feet, visibility half a mile. Advise when passing Tempelhof Range and when over Wedding Beacon. Over.’ The GCA controller’s radio transmission was crisp and to the point. When I was over the Wedding Beacon, I called Jigsaw Control, which was the Tempelhof final GCA which took me down onto the runway. ‘Jigsaw Control, Baker Forty-two over Wedding Beacon at two thousand feet.’ From then on, GCA guided me down a narrow radar beam to the end of the runway. There are three runways at Tempelhof. I landed on the center runway. Upon landing, I taxied behind the follow-me jeep toward the terminal. In a line of many others, I cut the left engine while my copilot opened the cargo door on the left side of the airplane, and within minutes a German labor crew backed a truck against the open door and unloaded the milk. From the time I shut down the engine until I restarted, no more than fifteen minutes elapsed.

  “Once my copilot and I got back to Rhein-Main, we got ready for another flight. We frequently flew two to three times a day. Our greatest enemy was fatigue and boredom, flying day after day, night after night, often in grueling weather conditions. No pilot wanted to be known as a quitter. It really had to be an emergency before most pilots would consider aborting a mission. Many flew aircraft with malfunctioning or inoperative instrumentation, inoperable windshield wipers, or any other failed auxiliary equipment which they thought they could do without.”

  An example of this can-do spirit was provided by retired Lieutenant Colonel George H. Nelson, now living in Aberdeen, Washington, a C-54 pilot who flew coal from RAF Fassberg to Berlin. “When reviewing the aircraft maintenance log during my routine preflight inspection, I noticed a curious entry made by two pilots on the previous day. After their return from Berlin the pilots wrote, ‘Number four (right outboard engine) fire warning light burns in flight.’ The next pilot to accept the airplane for a flight to Berlin had cleared the write-up by entering in the log ‘Bulb removed.’”

  Although food and coal were the principal cargo of flights to Berlin, Lieutenant Harold Hendler, who like Sam Myers had been flying EATS C-47 aircraft from Bremen before transferring to Wiesbaden, flew some rather unusual cargo. On June 23, 1948, three days before the formal start of the Berlin Airlift, Hendler flew boxes of the new German currency into Berlin. The currency reform for the western sectors of Berlin was to occur two days later. Hal had an air policeman on board armed with a .45-caliber pistol. In addition, he was given three incendiary grenades to use in case he crashed his aircraft in the Soviet zone. “I was instructed to put one grenade on each wing over the fuel tanks and the third grenade on the boxes with the money. I was to make certain that none of the new money fell into Soviet hands. Fortunately, I didn’t have to go through that exercise. My second unusual cargo was dynamite. At the newly built Tegel Airport in the French sector of Berlin, the landing approach was over a radio tower used by the Russians. The tower represented a major impediment to flight safety. I recall hearing that the French Berlin garrison commander sent a memo to Marshal Sokolovsky requesting the removal of the tower. The answer was as expected—nyet. I flew the dynamite into Berlin and the French used it to blow up the tower. Marshal Sokolovsky is supposed to have asked his French counterpart, ‘How could you do such a thing?’ The French commander’s reply, ‘With dynamite.”’

  Lieutenant Hendler was another of the many children in the 1930s who became mesmerized by airplanes and the visions of adventure they brought forth. Born in New York on September 26, 1921, an only child, Hal used to go to nearby LaGuardia Airport every chance he got and stand for hours at the perimeter fence, watching airplanes take off and land. “I never got tired watching. In my spare time I carved balsa wood models from memory, replicas of the airplanes I longingly watched taking off and landing at LaGuardia. With the outbreak of World War II, I volunteered for pilot training, but it took until late in 1943 before I was given a slot in the aviation cadet program. By the time I graduated in 1945, the war was over. To be a pilot was a dream come true. In 1946 I was posted to Bremen, Germany. Of the nearly two hundred missions I flew into Berlin during the airlift, I remember one most vividly. It was a sunny day in July 1948 when I landed at Tempelhof. A RIAS (Radio in the American Sector of Berlin) announcer accompanied by a German woman and her two-year-old daughter met me at the aircraft. The woman wanted to say thank you to an American pilot for saving her city from the Russians. She presented me with several gifts she had made from the few materials available to her—handmade writing paper embossed with the seal of the city of Berlin, a stationery folder to go along with the paper, and a small unicorn toy for my children. I found it very touching.” Hal Hendler, like his friend Sam Myers, settled in Riverside, California, after he retired from the air force.

  First Lieutenant Leonard W. Sweet

  Bronze Star, Air Medal (2)

  Len Sweet is a New Hampshire farm boy to whom flying was something birds did. He had no intere
st or inclination in that particular direction, or so he thought. In 1940, a year after graduating from high school, Len joined the Massachusetts National Guard at the urging of a school friend. A few months later his unit was federalized, and Len found himself on active duty in the 104th Infantry Regiment at Camp Edwards. In the summer of 1941 the 104th participated in what Len recalled as “very strenuous maneuvers in the field.” Upon his return that August, he and five others “went to the air corps recruiter at division headquarters and applied for transfers to the air corps to get out of the infantry. We were approved. At Scott Field, Illinois, where I was going through radio school, word got around that the air corps was accepting enlisted men without a college education for pilot training. Upon graduation pilots would be promoted to the rank of staff sergeant. I applied. In November 1942 I received my pilot wings and, as promised, I was promoted to the rank of staff sergeant. In early 1943 I was promoted to the newly created rank of flight officer. By November 1943 I was given a reserve commission as second lieutenant in the Army Air Force.

  “Upon graduation from pilot training I was assigned to the 479th Antisubmarine Group at Mitchell Field on Long Island. We flew patrols up and down the East Coast, first in twin-engine B-18 bombers, later in four-engine B-24s. In the spring of 1943 we were sent to England. Our mission was to catch German submarines going in and out of the Bay of Biscay to and from their pens along the coast of France. We sank one submarine. In November 1943 my group was disbanded, and we returned to the States for training in the new B-29 bomber. I checked out in the B-29 and remained behind as an instructor pilot at a base in Kansas until the war ended. At the end of the war I was discharged, but I stayed in the inactive reserve.