“Willie the Whip” revolutionized airlift transport.
Bill Tunner was an airlift genius who was formative in shaping America’s worldwide power projection capability. Airlift may not always be glamorous, but it is usually essential in achieving the nation’s political objectives.
Tunner graduated from West Point in 1928 and joined the Air Corps. Initially, he flew bombers, but an early incident changed his career trajectory. He was directed to fly some Soldiers to Sacramento, Calif. He had never been there. Arriving at the flight line he saw he would be flying a Fokker Trimotor; he had never flown one of those. There was no flight manual. There were no pilots around with experience in the plane to give him instructions—an enlisted mechanic explained some of the instruments and switches. There were no aeronautical charts handy. There was no weather report. Tunner made the flight safely but decided that when he was the boss such haphazard and dangerous practices would change.
When the U.S. entered World War II he found himself in Ferry Command—air transport—and he would never really leave. Tunner was known as a brilliant administrator and organizer who had a clever and innovative mind. He suggested to Gen. Henry H. “Hap” Arnold, for example, that women be used to ferry aircraft around the U.S.—they were excellent pilots, and it would free up the men for combat. His idea was accepted.
An airlift was needed to move supplies from Burma over the Himalayan mountains into China, but initial operations were of limited use. In 1944 Tunner arrived. The route over the Hump was extremely hazardous, but his incessant demands for organization, standardization, and safety quickly paid dividends. Chiang Kai-Shek wanted 5,000 tons of supplies per month to sustain his armies. By the end of the war, Tunner was moving over 71,000 tons per month: the operation cost over 1,300 crewmen with another 345 missing, so the price was steep.
China and Burma were considered backwaters, so the magnitude of the Hump operation was not appreciated by many. That would soon change. In 1948 the Soviets cut off land access to West Berlin, thinking the Americans, British and French would then leave, but President Harry Truman reacted instead by ordering an airlift to sustain the city.
Tunner took over. He was impressed by the spirit of the Operation Vittles aircrews—as the operation had been dubbed—but it was inefficient and dangerous. He introduced procedures that had proved successful on the Hump, would soon become standard in all airlift operations, and were already employed by airlines. Flight plans, weather briefings, aircraft servicing, and unloading were all prepared in advance by ground crews. More radio marker beacons were installed to help pilots keep track of their exact position, approach radars and airfield lighting were upgraded, radio transmissions were simplified, and air traffic control was systematized with aircraft landing around the clock at three-minute intervals. Eventually, it took a mere 10 minutes for German workers to unload an aircraft.
Under Tunner’s guidance, the airlift became a marvel of efficiency and reliability as tonnage and sortie rates soared. Soon, a fleet of 300 American and British aircraft were delivering 9,000 tons of food and coal daily. On April 15, 1949, the airlift set a one-day record by moving an incredible 12,941 tons in 1,383 flights.
Vittles was employing most of the USAF’s inventory of cargo planes, plus aircraft from the Navy, Britain and France, but then the Soviets blinked. Their worst fears were being realized as the Western nations and Germany banded more closely together, so on May 12, 1949, the Soviets reopened the landlines to Berlin. The blockade had been a public relations disaster for Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin.
Overall, the airlift moved 2.3 million tons of cargo (mostly coal) in over 275,000 flights. There were 70 major accidents and 83 military and civilian personnel died during Vittles, but the airlift had saved Berlin: It was the West’s greatest victory of the Cold War, achieved by airpower without firing a shot.
The following year the Korean War erupted and Tunner was tasked to run a massive airlift of men and supplies to Asia. Again, it was successfully accomplished. As one observer noted, “Before Korea, air transport had never been considered a key part of a theater combat plan. Tunner and the airlifters’ performance in Korea changed that thinking.”
Tunner had a difficult personality, often described as moody, mercurial and contrary, but no one questioned his initiative, drive, and organizational or administrative acumen. He eventually took over the Military Air Transport Service—forerunner of Air Mobility Command—and made airlift a vital and recognized part of America’s power projection force. There he pushed for jet airlifters like the C-141 and C-5, which soon entered the inventory.
Lt. Gen. William H. Tunner retired in 1960 and died in 1983. His memoirs, “Over the Hump,” are excellent, and for a biography, see the outstanding “Master of the Air” by Robert A. Slayton.
