into Berlin everyday increased.
And I think it was the 12th of March
they had nearly 1300 tons,
can you imagine that?
Going in by air, landed at Gatow.
Gradually, of course, Stalin realized
that we were succeeding, although we couldn't get in
by rail or by water or by road,
we were doing it by air.
And the three air corridors which we used,
there was one for the Americans to Tempelhof,
ours was to Gatow and the French went to an airport
which had a lake, Tegel.
Didn't have a runway to start, grass runway,
they built tarmac runways
so they could take the aircraft properly
but that was important because all the salt
which was required by the civilians
went by flying boat and landed on Lake Tegel or Lake Havel.
The Havel is a river on the western edge of Berlin
but it was wide enough to allow flying boats to land
with their supplies of salt.
And Stalin, I think scratched his head a bit
and thought, "Well, I'm not going to succeed."
So on the 12th of May 1948,
'49?
'48.
'49.
Getting it right, '49.
He opened up the roads and a lot of people think,
"Right okay, that was it."
It wasn't because know what the Russians were like.
You've probably come across it in history.
One minute they say, "Yes, you can do this."
And next minute, "No, you can't do that."
So we went on taking supplies in,
building up stocks of everything that they required.
And it actually officially finished
on the 30th of September 1949.
