Airlift to America
Airlift to America

Author: Tom Shachtman

Publisher: St. Martin's Press

Published: 2009-09-15

Total Pages: 302

ISBN-13: 1429960906

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This is the long-hidden saga of how a handful of Americans and East Africans fought the British colonial government, the U.S. State Department, and segregation to transport to, or support at, U.S. and Canadian universities, between 1959 and 1963, nearly 800 young East African men and women who would go on to change their world and ours. The students supported included Barack Obama Sr., future father of a U.S. president, Wangari Maathai, future Nobel Peace Prize laureate, as well as the nation-builders of post-colonial East Africa -- cabinet ministers, ambassadors, university chancellors, clinic and school founders. The airlift was conceived by the unusual partnership of the charismatic, later-assassinated Kenyan Tom Mboya and William X. Scheinman, a young American entrepreneur, with supporting roles played by Jackie Robinson, Harry Belafonte, Sidney Poitier, and Martin Luther King, Jr. The airlift even had an impact on the 1960 presidential race, as Vice-President Richard Nixon tried to muscle the State Department into funding the project to prevent Senator Jack Kennedy from using his family foundation to do so and reaping the political benefit. The book is based on the files of the airlift's sponsor, the African American Students Foundation, untouched for almost fifty years.

Kenyan Student Airlifts to America 1959-1961
Kenyan Student Airlifts to America 1959-1961

Author: Stephens, Robert F.

Publisher: East African Educational Publishers

Published: 2014-01-16

Total Pages: 122

ISBN-13: 9966259309

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What did it take to get hundreds of Kenyan students, thirsting for higher education, into US colleges in the late 1950s and early 1960s? It took perseverance, help from countless people, and the overwhelming desire of the students themselves. This is an engaging and insightful book about an important and ignored slice of history. When we think of vital historical airlifts, minds race back to the Berlin Airlift. Robert Stephens takes us to another American-sponsored airlift that brought a generation of future African leaders to American shores for higher education. This effort profoundly altered the lives of these men and women, the development of East African nations, and the perception of America. At a time when the world struggled to understand the value of 'soft' as opposed to military power, this book offers a valuable historical model. Set during the last days of colonialism in Kenya, the book documents the development of human talent that would foster a majority-ruled independent Kenya. Its focus on Africans ñ their individual and collective biographies, aspirations and intermittent assistance from the US and others - is the story.

The Candy Bombers
The Candy Bombers

Author: Andrei Cherny

Publisher: Penguin

Published: 2008-04-17

Total Pages: 612

ISBN-13: 1440635951

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In the tradition of the great narrative storytellers, Andrei Cherny recounts the exhilarating saga of the unlikely men who made the Berlin Airlift one of the great military and humanitarian successes of American history. “What an exciting, inspiring, and wonderfully-written book this is....Each page has lessons for today, and it is also a thrilling narrative to read.”—Walter Isaacson, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Steve Jobs The Candy Bombers is a remarkable story with profound implications for our own time. Cherny tells the tale of the ill-assorted group of castoffs and secondstringers who not only saved millions of desperate people from a dire threat, but also won the hearts of America’s defeated enemies, inspired people around the world to believe in America’s fundamental goodness, avoided World War III, and won the greatest battle of the Cold War without firing a shot. With newly unclassified documents, unpublished letters and diaries, and fresh primary interviews, The Candy Bombers takes readers along as American pilots, with only a few small rickety planes, manage to feed and supply West Berlin completely by air for nearly a year; as Harry Truman exploits the very real threat of war to win an upset reelection campaign; as America’s first secretary of defense descends into madness in the midst of a dangerous military crisis; and as a lovesick American pilot shows that acts of basic human kindness can send powerful ripples through the course of history.

Over the Hump
Over the Hump

Author: William H. Tunner

Publisher:

Published: 2009-06-01

Total Pages: 340

ISBN-13: 9781437912852

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The memoirs of Lieutenant General William H. Tunner, a key leader in the development of military airlift from World War II through 1960. He recounts major challenges of his career: organizing the aircraft ferrying effort of World War II, flying the "Hump" route of supply from India to China, managing the Berlin Airlift in 1948 and 1949, and commanding the Combat Cargo Command of Far East Air Forces in the crucial early months of the Korean War. Photos.

To Save a City
To Save a City

Author: Roger G. Miller

Publisher: Texas A&M University Press

Published: 2008-04-21

Total Pages: 276

ISBN-13: 9781603440905

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Following World War II, the Soviet Union drew an Iron Curtain across Europe, crowning its efforts with a blockade of West Berlin in a desperate effort to prevent the creation of an independent, democratic West Germany. The United States and Great Britain, aided by France, responded with a daring air logistical operation that in fifteen months delivered almost three million tons of coal, food, and other necessities to the people of Berlin. Now, drawing on rare U.S. Air Force files, recently declassified documents from the National Archives, records released since the collapse of the Soviet Union, and the memories of airlift veterans themselves, Roger G. Miller provides an original study of the Berlin Airlift. The Berlin Airlift was an enterprise of epic proportions that demonstrated the power of air logistics as a political instrument. What began as a hastily organized operation by a small number of warweary cargo airplanes evolved into an intricate bridge of aircraft that flowed in and out of Berlin through narrow air corridors. Hour after hour, day after day, week after week, a stream of airplanes delivered everything from food and medicine to coal and candy in defiance of breakdowns, inclement weather, and Soviet hostility. And beyond the airlift itself, a complex system of transportation, maintenance, and supply stretching around the world sustained operations. Historians, veterans, and general readers will welcome this history of the first Western victory of the Cold War. Maps, diagrams, and more than forty photographs illustrate the mechanical inner workings and the human faces that made that triumph possible.

The Hump
The Hump

Author: John D. Plating

Publisher: Texas A&M University Press

Published: 2011-02-08

Total Pages: 346

ISBN-13: 1603442375

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Chronicling the most ambitious airlift in history . . . Carried out over arguably the world’s most rugged terrain, in its most inhospitable weather system, and under the constant threat of enemy attack, the trans-Himalayan airlift of World War II delivered nearly 740,000 tons of cargo to China, making it possible for Chinese forces to wage war against Japan. This operation dwarfed the supply delivery by land over the Burma and Ledo Roads and represented the fullest expression of the U.S. government’s commitment to China. In this groundbreaking work—the first concentrated historical study of the world’s first sustained combat airlift operation—John D. Plating argues that the Hump airlift was initially undertaken to serve as a display of American support for its Chinese ally, which had been at war with Japan since 1937. However, by 1944, with the airlift’s capability gaining momentum, American strategists shifted the purpose of air operations to focus on supplying American forces in China in preparation for the U.S.’s final assault on Japan. From the standpoint of war materiel, the airlift was the precondition that made possible all other allied military action in the China-Burma-India theater, where Allied troops were most commonly inserted, supplied, and extracted by air. Drawing on extensive research that includes Chinese and Japanese archives, Plating tells a spellbinding story in a context that relates it to the larger movements of the war and reveals its significance in terms of the development of military air power. The Hump demonstrates the operation’s far-reaching legacy as it became the example and prototype of the Berlin Airlift, the first air battle of the Cold War. The Hump operation also bore significantly on the initial moves of the Chinese Civil War, when Air Transport Command aircraft moved entire armies of Nationalist troops hundreds of miles in mere days in order to prevent Communist forces from being the ones to accept the Japanese surrender.

The Berlin Airlift
The Berlin Airlift

Author: Barry Turner

Publisher: Icon Books

Published: 2017-10-05

Total Pages: 215

ISBN-13: 178578255X

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Acclaimed historian Barry Turner presents a new history of the Cold War's defining episode. Berlin, 1948 – a divided city in a divided country in a divided Europe. The ruined German capital lay 120 miles inside Soviet-controlled eastern Germany. Stalin wanted the Allies out; the Allies were determined to stay, but had only three narrow air corridors linking the city to the West. Stalin was confident he could crush Berlin's resolve by cutting off food and fuel. In the USA, despite some voices still urging 'America first', it was believed that a rebuilt Germany was the best insurance against the spread of communism across Europe. And so over eleven months from June 1948 to May 1949, British and American aircraft carried out the most ambitious airborne relief operation ever mounted, flying over 2 million tons of supplies on almost 300,000 flights to save a beleaguered Berlin. With new material from American, British and German archives and original interviews with veterans, Turner paints a fresh, vivid picture the airlift, whose repercussions – the role of the USA as global leader, German ascendancy, Russian threat – we are still living with today.

Berlin Candy Bomber Special Edition
Berlin Candy Bomber Special Edition

Author: Gail Halvorsen

Publisher: Cedar Fort Publishing & Media

Published: 2023-07-10

Total Pages: 390

ISBN-13: 1462128440

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The Berlin Candy Bomber is the story of how two sticks of gum and one man's kindness to the children of a vanquished enemy grew into an epic of goodwill‚-spanning the globe and touching the hearts of millions in both Germany and America. In June 1948, Russia cut off the flow of food and supplies to Berlin. The Americans, joined by the English and French, began a massive airlift to bring sustenance to the city and thwart the Russian siege. Gail Halvorsen was one of hundreds of U.S. pilots involved in the airlift. While in Berlin, he met a group of children standing by the airport watching the planes. He was impressed to share two sticks of gum with them, and he promised to drop candy the next time he flew to the area. The next day he wiggled the wings of his plane to identify himself and then dropped several small bundles of candy, using parachutes crafted from handkerchiefs. Local newspapers picked up the story. Suddenly, letters addressed to ""Uncle Wiggly Wings"" began arriving as the children requested candy drops in other areas of the city. Enthusiasm spread to America, and candy contributions came from all across the country. The blockade and airlift ended in 1949, but the story of the Candy Bomber lives on-a symbol of human charity, and the candy drops have continued into a new century.

Berlin Airlift
Berlin Airlift

Author: John Provan

Publisher:

Published: 1998

Total Pages: 79

ISBN-13: 9781888962055

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Many books, pamphlets & reports have been written about the Berlin Airlift of 1948-49. These have ranged from the almost encyclopaedic British Air Ministry publication to short leaflet summaries. They have been concerned primarily with the truly impressive statistics, & some have concentrated almost exclusively on the aircraft. But none has seemed to approach this historical event from the viewpoint of its historical perspective. John Provan & Ron Davies have now cooperated in this Paladwr Press book to try to compensate for this past shortcoming. The first part of the narrative explores the political & economic circumstances that led to the crisis of May 1948, & it also takes a look at the situation as it probably appeared to the Soviet Union. To have a capitalist enclave within its jealously (& military)-guarded sphere of influence must have seemed something of an imposition in Muscovite eyes. On the other hand, many readers may be surprised to realize that Berlin is only 30 miles from Poland. And--again to remember perspectives of time, as well as of place & motivation--how many recall that the Airlift was launched only three years after the end of the Second World War? In addition to picture-descriptions of all the transport aircraft, U.S. & British, military & civilian, involved in the Airlift, this book has delved into the problems of logistics, on the ground as well as in the air & has not forgotten the human aspects, for example, the famous exploits of the Candy Bomber & the Camel Caravan. Here is a book that, in addition to being a useful reference to one of the great events of transport aviation history, should delight the eye; & even, here & there, amuse. For without a sense of humor, the Berlin Airlift would have been a grim experience for all the participants.