Berlin Airlift
Discussion
I have read over this very interesting tread and obviously, it means so much to me.... I have heard over the years stories from dad... What happened recently when we went to Baldonnel was amazing with a special thanks to The British Embassy and The RAF. Now, connecting with you guys is wonderful, a real treat!!! What a great life my father has lived.... But again, I have to say, he has never forgotten his crew mates , Never <3
Good morning everyone, I want to share with you an article that was published by Derek Scally, German Correspondent of The Irish Times.
The Irish Times - Tuesday, September 28, 2010
An Irishman's Diary
Vincent Stanley was one of those who volunteered to keep West Berlin alive for 11 months until May 1949. Above, with a picture of the Lancaster aircraft he flew with until it crash-landed. The back of the aircraft broke and turned into an inferno from residual fuel from the fractured cargo tank.Vincent Stanley was one of those who volunteered to keep West Berlin alive for 11 months until May 1949.
Derek Scally
WHEN veterans of the Berlin Airlift meet, they refer to Vincent Stanley as “The Survivor”.
It seems like an unlikely, overly dramatic title for the fresh-faced octogenarian who strolls into the restaurant of the Stillorgan hotel.
Vincent Stanley has brought plenty of time with him to tell his story, but he has no time for legend-building. “There’s nothing spectacular about my story, apart from the fact that I’m still sitting here,” he says.
Stanley doesn’t accept praise; he acknowledges facts. And the facts are that he was one of those who volunteered to keep West Berlin alive for 11 months until May 1949. The Soviets had blocked all land routes into the city through their territory and Stalin was determined to starve West Berlin into submission and absorb it into the surrounding Soviet Zone, what would become East Germany.
This was the chilliest moment yet in the Cold War and the western Allies were determined not to allow the Soviets this strategic and propaganda victory. With all roads blocked, they vowed to supply the city by air.
Everything a city needs to survive was loaded up in planes, from potatoes to coal, and flown into the city every day for 318 days, every three minutes.
With clockwork efficiency planes landed, emptied, refuelled and departed.
One cargo was more important and more dangerous than any other: petrol, the lifeblood of the besieged city. This was Vincent Stanley’s cargo.
Born in London of Irish parents 84 years ago, he returned to Ireland, aged three, with his family. He was working as an Shannon Air Radio section air radio operator in Shannon when a friend asked him if would be interested in working for Flight Refuelling Ltd, a British company involved in the Airlift.
“I was 22 and a totally free agent. The job offered an increase in pay and the chance to fly, so I consulted my mother and off I went,” he says.
After a short period of training he found himself radio operator on converted Lancasters and Lancastrian planes carrying 1,500 gallons of cargo fuel to Gatow, a former Luftwaffe base near Berlin.
“We were buzzed quite regularly by Soviet planes,” remarks Stanley of the tight flight paths through enemy airspace. Watching the Soviet planes, he remembers thinking: “If you knew what we were carrying, you’d stay where you are.” The crew, under a former RAF pilot, kept radio silence during long flights over the German skies. The work involved four days of intensive flying in and out of Berlin followed by a return flight to the UK for aircraft service and three days off.
It was on one of these home flights, after flying 75 hours in and out of besieged West Berlin, that disaster struck.
The Lancaster crew began their descent into the base north of Bournemouth but didn’t realise until it was too late that they were homing in on a beacon 25 miles north of where they should have been.
At 700 feet in low fog and dusk light they flew directly into trees. The back of the aircraft broke and turned into an inferno from residual fuel from the fractured cargo tank.
“The first thing I felt was a sharp jar, I knew that was different. I immediately buried my eyes into my elbow,” he remembers.
The body of the plane acted like a flue and soon the craft was burning like a blow torch. Stanley was thrown to the side and back, by chance landing in the central, strongest, part of the plane through which the main wing girders passed. He was momentarily knocked out and, when he came to, he spotted the escape hatch over his head with the lid blown off, and climbed out through the flames.
“I stood on the top of the aircraft, on its belly, and I was smiling. I was on fire but I remember smiling. I clearly remember saying, ‘This is silly’.” Still burning, Stanley leaped from the aircraft and dived for a branch of a nearby tree. Some time later a passing pensioner found him, standing among the trees with his arms folded, crying.
The man ripped off what remained of Stanley’s clothes – the trousers had already burned their way down his legs – and rolled him on the ground to try and put the flames out.
Stanley heard later he had walked a mile to the local manor house, still smouldering, and was brought to a military hospital. He was spared serious internal injures but sustained terrible burns to every part of his body. After five months he was released from hospital, but returned over three years for a long, painful series of plastic surgery operations.
Surgeons transplanted skin and reconstructed his ears, but not all damage could be repaired: Stanley is missing part of his left thumb and little fingers; on his right hand his index and little fingers show the scars of the accident.
Over the next three years, after dozens of operations and a near-fatal case of jaundice, the 25-year-old Stanley pulled himself together and began his life again.
He got a job with Dunlop, for whom he worked for nearly 40 years, married one of the first Aer Lingus hostesses and had three children.
As the physical wounds healed he noticed gaps in his memory, something that persists to this day. It is this, combined with unfailing politeness, that helps him maintain a distance from his extraordinary service and that extraordinary event in his life.
In total, some 39 men lost their lives in the airlift, including the entire crew of Vincent Stanley’s plane apart from Stanley himself.
Asked how he feels about the airlift today, he speaks of the sacrifice made by countless people who died in the effort. Then he finally concedes, “If one thinks about it then, yes, there was a tremendous amount of good done. It was a major happening. I don’t consider myself special, just fortunate.”
...
The Irish Times - Tuesday, September 28, 2010
An Irishman's Diary
Vincent Stanley was one of those who volunteered to keep West Berlin alive for 11 months until May 1949. Above, with a picture of the Lancaster aircraft he flew with until it crash-landed. The back of the aircraft broke and turned into an inferno from residual fuel from the fractured cargo tank.Vincent Stanley was one of those who volunteered to keep West Berlin alive for 11 months until May 1949.
Derek Scally
WHEN veterans of the Berlin Airlift meet, they refer to Vincent Stanley as “The Survivor”.
It seems like an unlikely, overly dramatic title for the fresh-faced octogenarian who strolls into the restaurant of the Stillorgan hotel.
Vincent Stanley has brought plenty of time with him to tell his story, but he has no time for legend-building. “There’s nothing spectacular about my story, apart from the fact that I’m still sitting here,” he says.
Stanley doesn’t accept praise; he acknowledges facts. And the facts are that he was one of those who volunteered to keep West Berlin alive for 11 months until May 1949. The Soviets had blocked all land routes into the city through their territory and Stalin was determined to starve West Berlin into submission and absorb it into the surrounding Soviet Zone, what would become East Germany.
This was the chilliest moment yet in the Cold War and the western Allies were determined not to allow the Soviets this strategic and propaganda victory. With all roads blocked, they vowed to supply the city by air.
Everything a city needs to survive was loaded up in planes, from potatoes to coal, and flown into the city every day for 318 days, every three minutes.
With clockwork efficiency planes landed, emptied, refuelled and departed.
One cargo was more important and more dangerous than any other: petrol, the lifeblood of the besieged city. This was Vincent Stanley’s cargo.
Born in London of Irish parents 84 years ago, he returned to Ireland, aged three, with his family. He was working as an Shannon Air Radio section air radio operator in Shannon when a friend asked him if would be interested in working for Flight Refuelling Ltd, a British company involved in the Airlift.
“I was 22 and a totally free agent. The job offered an increase in pay and the chance to fly, so I consulted my mother and off I went,” he says.
After a short period of training he found himself radio operator on converted Lancasters and Lancastrian planes carrying 1,500 gallons of cargo fuel to Gatow, a former Luftwaffe base near Berlin.
“We were buzzed quite regularly by Soviet planes,” remarks Stanley of the tight flight paths through enemy airspace. Watching the Soviet planes, he remembers thinking: “If you knew what we were carrying, you’d stay where you are.” The crew, under a former RAF pilot, kept radio silence during long flights over the German skies. The work involved four days of intensive flying in and out of Berlin followed by a return flight to the UK for aircraft service and three days off.
It was on one of these home flights, after flying 75 hours in and out of besieged West Berlin, that disaster struck.
The Lancaster crew began their descent into the base north of Bournemouth but didn’t realise until it was too late that they were homing in on a beacon 25 miles north of where they should have been.
At 700 feet in low fog and dusk light they flew directly into trees. The back of the aircraft broke and turned into an inferno from residual fuel from the fractured cargo tank.
“The first thing I felt was a sharp jar, I knew that was different. I immediately buried my eyes into my elbow,” he remembers.
The body of the plane acted like a flue and soon the craft was burning like a blow torch. Stanley was thrown to the side and back, by chance landing in the central, strongest, part of the plane through which the main wing girders passed. He was momentarily knocked out and, when he came to, he spotted the escape hatch over his head with the lid blown off, and climbed out through the flames.
“I stood on the top of the aircraft, on its belly, and I was smiling. I was on fire but I remember smiling. I clearly remember saying, ‘This is silly’.” Still burning, Stanley leaped from the aircraft and dived for a branch of a nearby tree. Some time later a passing pensioner found him, standing among the trees with his arms folded, crying.
The man ripped off what remained of Stanley’s clothes – the trousers had already burned their way down his legs – and rolled him on the ground to try and put the flames out.
Stanley heard later he had walked a mile to the local manor house, still smouldering, and was brought to a military hospital. He was spared serious internal injures but sustained terrible burns to every part of his body. After five months he was released from hospital, but returned over three years for a long, painful series of plastic surgery operations.
Surgeons transplanted skin and reconstructed his ears, but not all damage could be repaired: Stanley is missing part of his left thumb and little fingers; on his right hand his index and little fingers show the scars of the accident.
Over the next three years, after dozens of operations and a near-fatal case of jaundice, the 25-year-old Stanley pulled himself together and began his life again.
He got a job with Dunlop, for whom he worked for nearly 40 years, married one of the first Aer Lingus hostesses and had three children.
As the physical wounds healed he noticed gaps in his memory, something that persists to this day. It is this, combined with unfailing politeness, that helps him maintain a distance from his extraordinary service and that extraordinary event in his life.
In total, some 39 men lost their lives in the airlift, including the entire crew of Vincent Stanley’s plane apart from Stanley himself.
Asked how he feels about the airlift today, he speaks of the sacrifice made by countless people who died in the effort. Then he finally concedes, “If one thinks about it then, yes, there was a tremendous amount of good done. It was a major happening. I don’t consider myself special, just fortunate.”
...
Nice one David. I met with Pop Taylor's grand daughter last night for dinner. She still has her grandfather's radio cap and his flight logs...
60th anniversary of the Airlift at our grandfather's grave...
And extract from his flight log...
We are meeting up again at the grave this lunchtime. I've a bit to tell Donny, I've met up with one of my brothers this week for the first time, found out from digging that Jig Willy was part of Pathfinder 97Sqn during the war and flew on the raid to Peenemunde. Survived the war and sold to Flight Refuelling Ltd in 1946.
Donny would have been 100 on July 9th this year.
60th anniversary of the Airlift at our grandfather's grave...
And extract from his flight log...
We are meeting up again at the grave this lunchtime. I've a bit to tell Donny, I've met up with one of my brothers this week for the first time, found out from digging that Jig Willy was part of Pathfinder 97Sqn during the war and flew on the raid to Peenemunde. Survived the war and sold to Flight Refuelling Ltd in 1946.
Donny would have been 100 on July 9th this year.
Gassing Station | Boats, Planes & Trains | Top of Page | What's New | My Stuff