"We are flying out of Berlin"

This was the headline of a school newspaper article written by the Berlin schoolboy Braatz in March 1949 at his new school in Kassel. Like many thousands of other children from West Berlin, he was flown out of Berlin as part of Operation Stork via the Gatow and Tempelhof airfields.

"As all the formalities necessary for a flight were completed, we, 80 children, took off from Gatow airfield in Berlin on September 21, 1948. There were a total of four Dakotas flying to Lübeck. About 20 people were assigned to each airplane. Around half past eleven in the morning, it was time, and we took off. The flight lasted one and a half hours. It was very beautiful to see the world from above, but you must not include the air pockets. Dropping about 10 to 20 meters every now and then is no pleasure at all. Well, at least it was fun to fly through the air above everything."

Operation "Storch", unlike the more well-known "Children's Airlift", is less anchored in public perception. During the "Children's Airlift", which took place from 1953 to 1957, mainly the US Air Force played a role by taking over the transport of children in both directions. In contrast, during the Berlin Blockade from June 24, 1948, to May 12, 1949, British planes brought relief supplies to West Berlin and took Berlin children back to their bases near Hamburg, Lübeck, and Hanover on the return flight. Thousands of school-aged children had left blockaded Berlin via Gatow airfield by May 1949 and had to integrate and connect in their new schools in the Bizone. Only after the end of the Berlin Blockade and the resumption of inter-zone highway and train traffic could these children return to their families and friends in West Berlin.