The aircraft flew out of four primary airfields in western Germany. Rhein-Main Air Base, near Frankfurt, and Wiesbaden Air Base were the main American departure points. Fassberg, an RAF base in Lower Saxony, became a third American-operated departure point in August 1948. The British flew from Fassberg, Gatow, and Celle, among other bases. Celle required the construction of a new runway, completed quickly enough to open during the blockade.
In Berlin itself, aircraft landed at three airports. Tempelhof, in the American sector, was the primary hub and the airport where Halvorsen was based. Gatow, in the British sector, was the second airport. The third, Tegel, did not exist in June 1948. The French sector had no airport suitable for heavy transports, so the French authorized and helped supervise the construction of one. Approximately seventeen thousand to nineteen thousand German workers built Tegel’s runway in roughly ninety-two days. The first plane landed there on November 5, 1948.
Managing the flow of aircraft in and out of Berlin was one of the airlift’s central operational challenges. The air corridors were narrow, the weather over northern Germany was often poor, and the volume of traffic grew week by week. The first American commander of the airlift, Brigadier General Joseph Smith, organized the initial effort and named it Operation Vittles. But the scale of the problem called for someone with deeper experience in large-scale air transport.
In late July 1948, General Curtis LeMay, commander of U.S. Air Forces in Europe, brought in Major General William H. Tunner to take over. Tunner had commanded the famously complex airlift over the Himalayas in World War II, supplying China from India across what pilots called “the Hump.” He knew how to run a large-scale air transport operation, and he applied that knowledge to Berlin with methodical intensity.