Berlin Airlift
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UK deliveries from £2.49 postage
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Delivery & Returns
Delivery & Returns
We use the Royal Mail, DHL Express or UPS for our customers. For UK addresses, deliveries under 10kg are a standard £4.95 via Royal Mail Tracked 48 Service. For orders over 10kg and overseas customers, postage is calculated for you at checkout once you have entered your postal address. This price, does not include any potential custom charges that may apply, depending on the product or destination, as every country has very different import duties / taxes. Online exclusive products (such as trainers) will be delivered to you directly from the printer, separate from other items in your order, but your postage fee covers ALL items in your order.
If you are unhappy with your purchase, please email shop@tankmuseum.org within fourteen (14) working days of receiving your goods, and return it to us at the address below, in its original condition, unopened (with any seals and shrink-wrap intact) and we will issue you a full refund or replace it. Goods must be returned at your own cost. If the item is faulty, you do not need to return it, we will send you a replacement free of charge.
Berlin Airlift
Description
Description
By John Grehan
Paperback
The fate of the free world hung in the balance.
Stalin's Soviet Union sought to drive the Western democracies from Germany to continue the communist advance across Europe. The first step in Stalin's scheme was to bring Berlin under Soviet control.
Berlin was situated deep inside the Soviet-occupied region of the country, but the German capital had been divided into two halves, one of which was occupied by the Soviet Union, the other, in separate sectors, by Britain, France and the USA. Stalin decided to make the Allied hold on West Berlin untenable by shutting down all the overland routes used to keep the city supplied. The choice faced by the Allies was a stark one - let Berlin fall, or risk war with the Soviets by breaking the Soviet stranglehold.
In a remarkably visionary move, the Allies decided that they could keep Berlin supplied by flying over the Soviet blockade, thus avoiding armed conflict with the USSR. On 26 June 1948, the Berlin Airlift began. Throughout the following thirteen months, more than 266,600 flights were undertaken by the men and aircraft from the US, France, Britain and across the Commonwealth, which delivered in excess of 2,223,000 tons of food, fuel and supplies in the greatest airlift in history.
The air-bridge eventually became so effective that more supplies were delivered to Berlin than had previously been shipped overland and Stalin saw that his bid to seize control of the German capital could never succeed. At one minute after midnight on 12 May 1949, the Soviet blockade was lifted, and the Soviet advance into Western Europe was brought to a shuddering halt.
