My father played an important role in the Berlin airlift. At the start of the operation aircraft could only fly under visual flight rules because Temple Hoff did not have the radars and associated instruments to fly in bad weather which often occurred. The radar equipment was too big to be sir lifted. So my dad figured out a way to essentially cut them in half so that they could fit on the planes and then be easily reconnected on the ground. It allowed continuous operations.
My dad enlisted in 1936, was at Hickman Field on Dec 7th, 1942 served the entire WW2 in the Pacific, earned a direct commission after attaining the highest enlisted rank at the time and then retired as a full Colonel