I'm going to start this story with a brief bit of back story. I'm the scion of a family of traditional Southerners. We have worked the land and fought for our land for quite some time. My Great Grand Mother lived Reconstruction. My Grand Mother was raised to be bitter towards the Yankees. My Mother casually remarked that she was glad Big Mama wasn't alive for commissioning. A reference to the Army Service Uniform some dumbass thought would be a good day to day dress uniform. I would not say I'm Unreconstructed, but pretty damn close. That shapes my world view to some extent. And it shaped the world few of one Lucius D. Clay, GEN, USA, hailing from Marietta, GA. General Clay, in my opinion, was the man who won the Cold War. Or at least set up our eventual victory against the Evil Empire.
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| GEN Clay in the very sharp Pink and Greens |
As we all know, the victorious Allied powers divided up Germany among themselves, to include a zone for France. Berlin, deep in the Soviet sector was also divided. General Clay, a man whom grew up in a household where the evils of Reconstruction were a very real thing, was the senior American officer in occupied Germany. A man reared in a household where the scars of a hostile military occupation ran deep, he was determined to prevent it from happening again, even to a vanquished foe.
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| GEN LeMay in USAF blue with Army ribbons |
GEN LeMay bombed the Japanese back to the stone age. And was ready to do the same to the Russians/East Germans/ChiComms/Norks/anybody else his B-29s and B-36s would reach. But when General Clay held firm in West Berlin, General LeMay's Air Force rose to the occasion. I have postulated that the finest hours of the USAF was when a C-54 touched down at Tempelhof Airport every ten minutes.
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| The cargo plane that won the Cold War |
General LeMay did what all great leaders do when asked to preform a nigh impossible task. He found a trusted subordinate who was smarter than he was about the matter at hand. General William Tunner had flew the Hump is WWII and was driving a desk at MATS as the Airlift began. But he was the man most responsible for the success of the airlift.
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"Tonnage" Tunner in very practical khakis
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These men orchestrated the greatest airlift the world has ever seen. General Clay would go on to steer West Germany through the Berlin crisis in 1951. General LeMay stayed on with the Air Force, ensuring that SAC would become a force of global destruction that brought peace. And General Tunner went on to fight for better jet transports for the Air Force. The American Army Air Force had brought Germany to it's knees. The American Army had taken a large portion of it. And when Soviet aggression threatened the rebuilding of a stable, democratic free nation, American Soldiers and Airmen held the line. And did it without firing a shot. A fitting tribute to the man who grew up hating a military government of occupation.
Hey Mack;
ReplyDeleteThank you for the story, I have an affinity for Berlin, I was attached to Field Station Berlin during the Cold war and walked around East Berlin. You are spot on, General Clay kept the Soviets from pushing him out of Berlin. I recall reading all the stuff the soviets were pulling. They wanted the whole city as a stick in the eye at the West to prove the superiority of the Soviet system. West Germany was going through a lot of drama from 1945 to 1954. The "Chocolate Bombers" did save the city.
Like I said, I truly think it was the finest hour of the USAF. And the Berlin Brigade staring down a Soviet Front did pretty well, too.
DeleteCertainly agree ref "the finest hour" and glad to see Tunner get the credit he so richly deserves. Several great reads on the airlift (and some great actual footage in the Montgomery Clift movie) as well as recent books on the SF in Berlin.
ReplyDeleteRaised to be a Yankee sympathizer; my reading has cured that.
Boat Guy
I watched that in college! Had a European History professor WHOM I first realized the magnitude of the airlift from.
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