The British public was engaged with the airlift in ways that paralleled American interest. British newspapers covered it extensively. Donations from British civilians, including handkerchiefs for the candy drops, were included in the material flowing to the operation. British political figures who visited Berlin and observed the airlift brought back accounts that shaped public understanding of the operation and its stakes.
## The French Contribution
The French sector of Berlin did not have an airport suitable for large transport aircraft when the blockade began. The French contributed to the airlift effort primarily by authorizing and supporting the construction of Tegel Airport, the facility built by approximately 17,000 to 19,000 German workers in roughly 92 days.
The French deployed six aircraft in the airlift’s early months, a relatively small contribution that reflected both the limits of French transport capacity and the political constraints France was operating under in 1948. France was itself still recovering from the war and German occupation, and its occupation policy in Germany was shaped by security concerns that sometimes differed from American and British priorities.
The construction of Tegel was the French contribution that mattered most operationally. It provided a third Berlin airport in addition to Tempelhof and Gatow, distributing the inbound traffic load and increasing the system’s total capacity. The airport was built faster than anyone had expected, a reflection of what tens of thousands of workers could accomplish when motivated by both necessity and payment.
A notable episode in Tegel’s early history involved a tall radio tower in the Soviet sector that was interfering with instrument approaches to the new airport. French engineers and American officers requested that the Soviets remove the tower. When the Soviets declined, the French demolished it themselves. The demolition was unauthorized in the sense that no Soviet permission had been obtained, but it was effective: the approach path to Tegel was clear afterward. The incident illustrated the characteristic texture of four-power relations in Berlin during this period.