From the tarmac that 50 years ago was a lifeline for besieged West Berliners, President Clinton Thursday saluted U.S. and Allied pilots who delivered food and supplies in the Cold War's first nervy showdown. He urged American companies to be those pilots' modern-day counterparts.
Clinton, in back-to-back speeches Thursday, underscored the importance of U.S. investment in Germany. Talking with workers at General Motor's Opel car assembly plant in Eisenach, he wished aloud that more American companies would follow suit "until every person in every part of Germany has a chance to live up to the fullest of his or her God-given abilities."Earlier, Clinton commemorated the Berlin airlift's 50th anniversary at Tempelhof Airport, the main operating base for the U.S. Air Force during the 15-month-long humanitarian mission.
"The most precious cargo did not come in the well-named care packages, it was the hope created by the constant roar of the planes overhead," Clinton said.
"Berliners called this noise a symphony of freedom."
At Clinton's side, Chancellor Helmut Kohl voiced Germany's gratitude.
"This city owes its survival and freedom during the Cold War to the firm resolve of the United States and our other Western allies," Kohl said. He called the 462-day airlift a symbol of democracy's durability.
With an old propeller-driven C-54 plane as his backdrop and hundreds of airlift veterans packing flag-lined bleachers, Clinton said Western defiance of Soviet Moscow's road and rail blockade of West Berlin was a defining moment of the 20th century.
The airlift, known by the men who flew it as "Operation Vittles," began June 26, 1948, on orders from President Truman after the Soviets blocked all train and road traffic and cut electricity to the western part of Berlin. The 2 million inhabitants of that area were under the administrative control of the United States, France and Britain. Moscow was trying to force the Western powers to abandon their enclaves 110 miles inside the Soviet-occupied zone of Germany.
In all, the Western allies made more than 277,000 flights in round-the-clock deliveries of more than 2.3 million tons of food, fuel and medicine to Berlin. At the peak of the airlift, aircraft were taking off and landing about every minute. On May 12, 1949, the Soviets ended the blockade.
While recalling the 39 Britons and 31 Americans who lost their lives in the airlift, Clinton also hailed heroes such as Utahn Gail Halvorsen, who, as an Air Force 1st lieutenant, began the practice of dropping candy with handkerchief parachutes to the German children watching the landings at Tempelhof.
Halvorsen and other pilots became known as the candy bombers.