Germany marks 70 years since the end of the Soviet blockade that sparked the Berlin Airlift
West Berlin children at Tempelhof airport watch fleets of US airplanes bringing in supplies to circumvent the Russian blockade in this undated photo. The airlift began June 25, 1948 and continued for 11 months.
After Nazi Germany's defeat, tensions between the West and the Soviet Union resurfaced to divide most of the world into two rival, nuclear-armed camps until the 1989 fall of the Berlin Wall. To western powers, West Berlin became a symbolic bulwark of freedom, a sentiment US president John F. Kennedy would later express with the words "Ich bin ein Berliner" .
In response, Soviet troops on June 24 launched a full blockade of West Berlin. Citing "technical reasons", they closed all roads, railway lines and waterways to the city and shut off electricity.With fears rising that Europe was on the brink of World War III, the western Allies launched an unprecedented rescue effort for the hugely symbolic city.
The planes travelled a combined total of 175 million kilometres, the equivalent of flying around the Earth 4,400 times. The first airman to do so was US pilot Gail Halvorsen, now aged 98, whose signature aircraft tilt earned him the nickname "Uncle Wiggly Wings".
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