German workers, as noted, built the Tegel airport in ninety-two days. German workers unloaded the aircraft at Tempelhof. German civilians maintained the city’s infrastructure under conditions of acute stress. The airlift could not have operated without the people on the ground in Berlin, and that includes people who had no connection to the candy drops but whose labor made the drops possible.
## The Airlift’s Operational Peak
While Halvorsen’s drops were becoming a public story in fall 1948, Tunner’s organizational drive was transforming the airlift’s raw capacity. The numbers from the winter of 1948 to 1949 demonstrate how far the operation had come from the modest first days.
On January 17, 1949, the airlift set a weekly record of 41,540 tons of supplies delivered. Two days later, on January 19, the daily food ration in West Berlin was raised from 1,600 to 1,880 calories per person. This was a significant improvement: not abundance, but measurably better than the blockade’s opening months.
The winter of 1948 to 1949 was cold, and coal delivery was the airlift’s most urgent task. Keeping West Berliners from freezing required a steady coal flow, and the pressure on the airlift was intense. The spring brought some relief, and also the operation’s most dramatic single-day performance.
April 16, 1949, is recorded in airlift history as “Easter Parade” or the “Easter Parade Day.” In a planned demonstration of the airlift’s capacity, American and British aircraft flew a maximum-intensity day of operations. The result: 1,398 inbound flights carrying 12,940 tons of supplies in 24 hours. For portions of the day, aircraft were landing at Tempelhof at a rate of approximately one every 45 to 62 seconds. The Easter Parade demonstrated that the airlift could not only sustain Berlin but could do so at a level that made the blockade pointless.