Email This Message
Topic 
E-Mail AddressesSeparate multiple addresses with commas 
CommentsAdd your own comments (if any)
  • From: Outlooker
  •   To: All
  • 33 of 33
  • 11/5/05
For American Tourists in foreign countries you first have to get the proper permissions to enter that country. The second consideration it that you have to have a place to land and take off. I love the C-141 Starlifter, even though we now have bigger planes in our inventory. The C-141 is relatively small and light weight, when compared to other cargo planes, and it's landing gear was designed tough enough to land in rougher terrain. It also be refueled in flight. Each Starlifter (C-141) can carry about 200 people or 100 patients in litters or about 70000 Lbs of cargo. A C-141 can be loaded with supplies in the states for the area affected and then haul passengers out of the area. Many people today might not know or remember but after WWII Germany was divided up into East and West Germany. The City of Berlin, located with-in East Germany, was also a divided city. Half of Berlin belonged to the East and half belonged to the west. In June of 1948 The USSR made the attempt to take control of all of Berlin by blockading the city. They cut off all roads into the western half of the city. By doing this the Soviets planned to starve the people and businesses of West Berlin into submission. President Truman saw this happening and made it clear to the Soviets that the United States of America would not tolerate this. He had his people set up an airbridge. The mission was wrought with dangers. We only had a narrow air corridor to use and the landing and 3 airfields to use. The take offs had to avoid tall buildings which surrounded some airfields plus problems with the runway soon developed and the landing strip was under constant maintenance. The Soviet Aircraft also harassed our pilots. At the peak of the airlift, a plane took off or landed every 30 seconds for 24 hours a day. Daily tonnages were about 8,000 tons on the average. 550,000 sorties for the airlift brought in over 2,000,000 tons of supplies. It also hauled things out of Berlin. I'ver heard reports of this many years ago and the pilots said it was very hairy. I've also heard some Germans speak of it and was told that they grew happy to hear the planes coming and going.