"Last week, after the Russians announced they would lift the blockade on May 12 [1949], the airlift took a bow and added a modest nod at the 324-day record:
• 189,247 flights;
• 1,528,250 tons delivered;
• best day's work: April 16 with 12,947 tons hauled in 1,393 flights.
[- and if the West had not chosen to answer the Soviet challenge in Berlin] "there might never have been an Atlantic Pact or a Western German state. The Communists might have gone amok in France and Italy. Russia might have won the Cold War in the first heat."]
