Planes Carrying Food To Berliners

Chronicle (Levin), 1 July 1948, Page 5

Planes Carrying Food To Berliners

Reeeived Thufsday, 10.45 a.m. LONDON, June 30. A huge British-American air operation is now under way to ensure Berliners of food, ratiqns, Britain's part in which will be considerably- greater than the American is in numbers oi planes and goods tonnage. - When the scheme reaches its full pitch, it will be the biggest British air operation since Burma, involving Dakotas and four-engined Yorks. Already large numbers of planes are on the job and 116 American Dakotas, carrying 290 tons of foodstuffs, had landed at Tempelhof Airport, in the American Seetor, between midnight and 4.45 p.m. At Gatow, in the British Sector,j planes were landing at the rate of one every six minutes. The British and American operations will be combined in a joint undertaking, and planes will land either at Tempelhof or Gatow, whichever is convepffint. All food flown into Berlin will be distributed equitably in the British, American and French Seetors. An official statement said that every effort w'ould be made to_ increase the scale of the operations unti'l normal eommunications had been restored. Concentrated foods would be substituted for heavy foods. The Associated Press' Frankfurt correspondent. says a report that the Russians had put up a balloonl barrage in the British air corridorj was a false alarm. I British officials said that bargesi bound from the British Zone for; Berlin were still held up on thei Elbe River. |