Two trained pilots, Charles “Larry” Lamb and Charles, Prince of Wales, clambered through the fuselage of an ancient Hastings cargo plane yesterday and tried to imagine how it was, 60 years ago, packed with coal and powdered milk for West Berliners besieged by the Soviet Union.

The 1948-49 airlift was one of the hottest phases of the Cold War and the British pilots, alongside the Americans, risked their lives to prevent Stalin from starving out the two million West Berliners. Yet none of the British pilots received a medal and the history books play down the British contribution.

Now veterans and historians are hoping that the Prince’s visit to the relics of the airlift will spark popular support to declare the pilots bona fide heroes, not only because they helped to save the city from communism but because they set a model for humanitarian relief around the world.

“There was a narrow gap between the cargo and the roof and that’s where we had to crawl through as soon as we landed,” said Mr Lamb, then a 23-year-old flight lieutenant and later an air vice-marshal. “We could pack in nine tonnes of coal, though I carried tobacco twice and I got in two loads of ten tonnes.

“It was 2½ hours down the flight corridor from northern Germany, then 25 minutes’ turnaround — it took ages to get the chains off the coal — and then back for a second delivery.” Mr Lamb, now 83, carried out 81 missions.

“The Prince was fascinated by the technical details of how you save a city,” he said after descending from the aircraft, which is in the forecourt of the Allied Museum in Berlin.

“It is really important that the Prince came to see the details of the airlift,” Helmut Trotnow, the museum’s director, said, “because the British role in the airlift has been buried. We shouldn’t ever forget that the British had to impose food rationing in their own country in order to feed the Berliners who three years earlier had been their enemies. The problem is that the British have forgotten it themselves.”

The US Air Force and the RAF flew more than 200,000 flights to provide 13,000 tonnes of food every day as well as fuel, building material and medical supplies. The outward flights evacuated 15,000 young children and more than 1,000 tuberculosis patients.

West Berlin was a Western outpost in the middle of Soviet-controlled East Germany. When Stalin decided to cut road, rail and barge links to the city the Allies had to decide whether to let West Berlin slip into Soviet control, or to risk a war by supplying it through the air corridors.

Ernest Bevin, the Foreign Secretary, declared: “If Berlin falls, Germany will be next. If we intend to defend Europe against communism, we should not budge.”

The US response to the blockade came later and was more muted. The Prince was shown yesterday how a British air commodore, Rex Waite, worked out the practical details of supplying a city by air for almost a year.

“You know, it was very saddening that the Americans and the French gave their pilots medals for the airlift operations, but we didn’t get a thing because it was supposedly not a combat operation,” Mr Lamb said. In fact, in 1948 Berlin was probably the most dangerous city in the world. At least one British transporter was forced to crash by Soviet aircraft; in all, 30 British servicemen lost their lives.

“I’ll always remember the sweet noodles that the British brought over,” Ilse Krueger, 73, a retired teacher, said after meeting the Prince. “If you went to school you got food brought over in the airlift but you weren’t allowed to take it home. But I hid the bottom quarter of my lunch as a 13-year-old and took it home to feed my mother who was clearing the bomb rubble and was half-starved.”

The next attempt to reclaim the British role in the airlift will be on May 12 when RAF top brass come to Berlin to visit the old Gatow airbase and sing the praises of forgotten heroes.

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