Sharing Memories of Airlift to Berlin

Lewis C. Huston can still remember the face of the Soviet pilot tailing him while he ferried a supply-laden Douglas C-54 into the Western zone during the Berlin blockade of 1948.

Huston, 77, had managed to survive his World War II years as a bombardier, despite being shot down in aerial combat.

Then he enjoyed two years of civilian life until 1948, when he was recalled to active duty for one of the highest-tension incidents of the Cold War--the face-off between the Soviet Union and the Western Allies over Berlin access.

The era seemed as grainy as the black-and-white footage of West Berlin to the 63 honor students in Newport Harbor High School’s da Vinci program. So Rochelle O’Donnell, the mother of a freshman in the program, arranged for her Uncle Lewis to put some flesh and blood on history at a special school presentation Tuesday.

“Our government--a great government despite its flaws--did a wonderful thing with the Berlin airlift,” Huston said to a group of students.

That is one reason Huston, a retired U.S. Air Force major, and groups such as the Berlin Airlift Veterans Assn. are eager to preserve anecdotes of the dramatic event and have veterans tell their tales in person.

Huston clearly relished talking about the period from March 1948 to May 1949 in which the Soviets tried to cut the Western Allies off from access to their sector of Berlin, which had been partitioned after the war. Because the city was situated deep inside East German territory, which the Soviets controlled, its truck, rail and water routes were easily blockaded.

That left only the skies.

The Allies gathered four-engine planes from around the world to haul 2 million tons of food, coal and other necessities to citizens of West Berlin in what was called Operation Vittles, Huston said. He remembered the winter as being terrible for landing.

Huston had some close calls during the airlift, in which 70 pilots died. “Flying through a violent thunderstorm one day, I thought my days were over,” he said. “We had a lot of accidents on the airlift. In spite of the weather, we’d go. We did that for a year, one year. . . . It was quite the experience.”