Allied pilots kept two million people fed by air for nearly a year

In June 1948, Soviet forces cut off all road, rail and canal access to West Berlin, hoping to starve the western sectors into submission. American and British crews responded with over 200,000 flights in less than a year, delivering more than two million tonnes of food and coal, landing a plane roughly every three minutes at the peak. The blockade was lifted in May 1949 without a single shot fired.

— Andrei Cherny, The Candy Bombers: The Untold Story of the Berlin Airlift and America's Finest Hour — 2008
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