A transport aircraft comes down through the Berlin corridor, wheels lowered, engines steady, into a city cut off on the ground and waiting on the air. In its hold isn't a bomb load or troops, but coal, flour and fuel, the plain cargo of survival. Once it lands, another aircraft is already on its way behind it.

This episode matters because in 1948, the future of Berlin, and much of the early Cold War with it, turned on whether those loads could keep arriving, ton by ton, in all weather, without stopping. The Berlin Airlift showed what disciplined air power could achieve without firing a shot.

In this episode:

• Why the Soviet blockade of June 1948 turned Berlin into the first great test of the Cold War
• Operation Plainfare, and the RAF's part in a operation that carried real weight on a real timetable
• The aircraft behind the effort, the Avro York, Douglas Dakota and Short Sunderland
• Why the airlift's real drama was discipline and repetition rather than any single decisive moment
• How the operation deepened through the winter of 1948-49, and why it continued for months after the blockade was lifted
• What the RAF's 541,937 tons of delivered supplies revealed about the future of British air power

Listen if you're interested in:

• Royal Air Force history
• British military history
• The early Cold War
• Air power and strategy
• Transport, logistics and coalition air operations

Explore more from The RAF Chronicle: For more on the history of the Royal Air Force, visit therafchronicle.co.uk to read the latest articles and explore the archive.

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