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Show MUCH VALUE Berlin Lift Is Plan Aid BERLIN. The men who fly the airlift to Berlin are weary from the constant grind but the men who direct it privately are thanking Russia for giving them a chance to perfect a new weapon. That weapon is the airlift itself. In all its incredible complexity, it represents one of the few times that any nation has been able to develop fully in peacetime a major war asset. Here and at the American and 3ritish airports in Western Germany this great aerial supply effort falls into a pattern that might one day win a military campaign. Feeds Millions The airlift is feeding and supplying sup-plying 2.5 million persons in the Western sector of Berlin. Why could not a similar operation maintain main-tain an army in the field? A high officer said: "This thing was pretty much like the atom bomb before Hiroshima. We had the know-how, but we weren't quite certain how to apply it. Now we know, and all we've had to pay for learning Is the usual mathematical hazard of flying thousands of sorties. "No one is shooting at us. We've been able to learn on our own terms how to establish, maintain and protect pro-tect such elaborate lines of air communication com-munication and supply as this air lift Involves. May Be Favor "Stalin surely didn't plan it this way but if war ever comes it may turn out that he did us a favor by blockading Berlin." Some things the Air Force has learned are Immediately apparent. The , traditional circling of the field before landing has been eliminated. elim-inated. Radar ground control brings the planes in on the first pass, thus saving an average of 10 minutes a flight. As a plane touches down a maintenance main-tenance expert races to it in a Jeep. In just two minutes he determines whether it needs a further check. By such short cuts, the Anglo-American Anglo-American authorities have a split-second split-second combination able to move a peak load of close to 7,000 tons of food end essential supplies to Berlin each day. |