The Airlift on Berlin

           The Berlin Airlift began on June 29, 1948. It was a godsend for the West Berliners. Before they had had almost no food. Each person in West Berlin was getting about 900 calories of food per day, when the average is 2000. Now suddenly they had food. American planes would fly by every day dropping thousands of pounds of food and water down to the West Berliners. It helped them to get through a cold and harsh winter. The planes carried more than two million tons of food in over 270,000 flights. Without the airlift onto West Berlin, thousands of people would have died. In May of 1949, the Soviets lifted the blockade on Berlin.