Berlin Airlift

[Tyre Smoke]

I'm currently trying to trace my birth mother ( I was adopted at 8 weeks) and I have long been told that my birth mother's dad was involved in the Berlin Airlift.

Now, I know when it occurred and why it occurred and how we and our allies flew tons of supplies into West Berlin.

It has come to light that my maternal grandfather died in Devizes in Wiltshire on November 22nd 1948 aged 26. Hid death certificate states he 'died of multiple injuries through misadventure' which is all rather intriguing considering the Airlift connection. Apparently death by misadventure means he died doing something legal, but was deliberately putting himself in harm's way. As far as I know, there are no family connections with Wiltshire, it's Cornwall. There were quite a few airbases still operational in Wiltshire at that time after the war.

Would it have been possible he was injured during the Airlift and flown home for treatment? Did that happen? Or am I guilty of just wishful thinking, and he stepped out in front of a number 9 bus? Obviously just after the war, the medical facilities in West Germany might have been somewhat lacking, so is it actually possible he was flown home?

The Airlift took place between May '48 and June '49, so the timeline works, I just don't know enough about it.

Can anyone help?

[Eric Mc]

Just a correction, the airlift was to supply the WHOLE of Berlin, not just the part of Berlin that wasn't controlled by the Soviets. In 1948, Berlin was not divided as securely as it became with the building of the "Wall" in 1961.

The Soviets effectively cut off the entirety of Berlin from the rest of Germany.

[Tyre Smoke]

You are correct Eric. I did know that.

I remember watching a series when I was a lad (late 70s?) about a bloke who started an airline business after the war with an ex services Dakota. Think it was called 'Airline' actually. Second series saw him on the verge of bankruptcy, then along came the blockade. Roy Marsden was in it I think.

[Equus]

Have you done the obvious thing of searching the local newspaper archives for Devizes, around that date?

Back before the days of facebook and twitter, there is a good chance that that sort of death would have been reported, if it happened locally.

[Dr Jekyll]

Tyre Smoke said:

You are correct Eric. I did know that.

I remember watching a series when I was a lad (late 70s?) about a bloke who started an airline business after the war with an ex services Dakota. Think it was called 'Airline' actually. Second series saw him on the verge of bankruptcy, then along came the blockade. Roy Marsden was in it I think.

Supposed to be based very loosely on the early career of Freddie Laker.

[Equus]

Tyre Smoke said:

I remember watching a series when I was a lad (late 70s?) about a bloke who started an airline business after the war with an ex services Dakota. Think it was called 'Airline' actually. Second series saw him on the verge of bankruptcy, then along came the blockade. Roy Marsden was in it I think.

I remember that, too - IIRC, it was based on a (heavily) fictionalised account of the history of Dan-Air.

[Equus]

Dr Jekyll said:

Supposed to be based very loosely on the early career of Freddie Laker.

lol... crossed post. You may be right!

Dan-Air started out with a single Dakota in the second Berlin Airlift, too, though, so there were parallels with both?

[Tyre Smoke]

Equus said:

Have you done the obvious thing of searching the local newspaper archives for Devizes, around that date?

Back before the days of facebook and twitter, there is a good chance that that sort of death would have been reported, if it happened locally.

No, I wouldn't really know where to begin if I'm honest. I'm more interested at this stage if it was likely he might have been flown home.

Hang on, I know the Airlift flew in and out of Berlin via three air corridors, but where did they fly from? I just assumed it was West Germany, but could it have been from the UK?

[Equus]

Tyre Smoke said:

No, I wouldn't really know where to begin if I'm honest.

Well, there were an awful lot of ways to die of misadventure, so you may be fixating on one that will lead you up a blind alley.

I haven't done so for a long time, but the local libraries used to hold microfiche records of local newspapers (probably digitised now), and I think there are online newspaper libraries you can subscribe to. Local history societies probably have an anorak who would be delighted to help, too.

You've got a name and an exact date of death, and like I said, that sort of death is highly likely to have been reported.

[Carnage]

Death by misadventure in the context of a coroners court simply means by accident, so it seems unlikely, if not impossible, that it was connected to active service.

To have a finding there must have been an inquest, so worth enquiring if they kept or fiched the records locally.

[Tyre Smoke]

I'm not fixated on this, just want to rule it in or out.

He could just have easily stepped off the kerb in front of a number 9 bus.

[Equus]

Tyre Smoke said:

Hang on, I know the Airlift flew in and out of Berlin via three air corridors, but where did they fly from? I just assumed it was West Germany, but could it have been from the UK?

The three corridors were indeed from West Germany:


If you're trying to shuttle as much cargo into Berlin as fast as possible, you're clearly not going to attempt it from Wiltshire...

[marksx]

This link has a list of names on the airlift monument:

https://www.uswarmemorials.org/html/monument_detai...

[Tyre Smoke]

marksx said:

This link has a list of names on the airlift monument:

https://www.uswarmemorials.org/html/monument_detai...

Thanks! He's on there! R/O D.W. Robertson.

So there was something in the rumour that my maternal grandmother received a pension in grateful thanks from city of Berlin.

Amazing the power of Pistonheads! Thank you, thank you so much. So he must have been injured and flown home.

[Tyre Smoke]

Bit more digging and his Avro Lancastrian tanker crashed on takeoff from Thruxton killing all on board.

What was a tanker doing taking off from Thruxton for the Berlin Airlift?

[Simpo Two]

Tyre Smoke said:

Bit more digging and his Avro Lancastrian tanker crashed on takeoff from Thruxton killing all on board.

That is truly an amazing bit of research!

So would it be true that the wartime 'killed in action' is replaced by 'death by misadventure' in peacetime? I'd expect the RAF to have some record of it.

[Carnage]

Simpo Two said:

That is truly an amazing bit of research!

So would it be true that the wartime 'killed in action' is replaced by 'death by misadventure' in peacetime? I'd expect the RAF to have some record of it.

Coroners court can’t record KIA. UK personnel killed in action abroad are recorded as unlawfully killed.

[Eric Mc]

Tyre Smoke said:

You are correct Eric. I did know that.

I remember watching a series when I was a lad (late 70s?) about a bloke who started an airline business after the war with an ex services Dakota. Think it was called 'Airline' actually. Second series saw him on the verge of bankruptcy, then along came the blockade. Roy Marsden was in it I think.

A good series too. Sadly, plans for a follow up series failed to materialise. This was partly due to the fact that the aeroplane they had their eye on, which was an ex KLM Lockheed Constellation (N7777G), had been stored in the open at Dublin Airport since 1974. When they looked at it they found it was too badly corroded to be made flyable. The good news is that the film company sold it to the Science Museum where it is held in store to this day.

Abandoned at Dublin -



As restored -

[Eric Mc]

Tyre Smoke said:

No, I wouldn't really know where to begin if I'm honest. I'm more interested at this stage if it was likely he might have been flown home.

Hang on, I know the Airlift flew in and out of Berlin via three air corridors, but where did they fly from? I just assumed it was West Germany, but could it have been from the UK?

They flew directly from the UK and from locations in Germany outside the Soviet Zone. "West Gerrmany" as a political entity did not yet exist. What we had was Germany split into four zones , each zone being controlled by the victorious Allies. So you had a British, French, American and Soviet Zone. Berlin was deep within the Soviet zone but Berlin was also divided between the Allies. Up until the imposition of the blockade (which cut the whole of Berlin off from the non-Soviet zones), there had been relatively free movement between all four zones.

Blackbushe was one of the airfields in the UK from where some flights originated.

[Eric Mc]

This is a Charles E Brown picture of Lancastrians at Blackbushe (I think) during the airlift.