“July 1948, first flights of the Berlin Airlift.
After forty minutes over the Soviet Zone, they began to descend into Berlin. The voice of Tempelhof’s tower came over the radio to guide them. Up ahead loomed the city. As they approached, the view, Halvorsen remembered, “just about took our breath away. Nothing I had read, heard, or seen prepared me for the desolate, ravaged sight below.” It was, William Shirer wrote after seeing Berlin from up in a plane, “a great wilderness of debris, dotted with roofless, burned-out buildings...”
...A few days later, Halvorsen would write home — after having by then seen the honey-combed city a dozen times — and he still could not come to grips with what he saw below. “Berlin is a shell of a city. I think how easily it would be for Detroit, New York, or any U.S. city to look the same way...”
In 1948, Mr. Halvorsen clearly did not have an appreciation for the destructive power of the Democrat Party. It far exceeded the 8th Air Force.”
Worthy of being repeated again, and again, and again.
Thank you for telling this story.
Sure. Forgot the citation: “The Candy Bombers: The Untold Story of the Berlin Airlift and America’s Finest Hour,” by Andrei Cherny.