SLIPSTREAM THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF AN AIR CRAFTSMAN

To the world at large, Berlin Airlift headlines only highlighted another crisis in the “cold war.” Yet behind those headlines lay an epochal event: commercial air transports—not combat aircraft—had become the spearhead of United States foreign policy.This dramatic incident brought renewed hope to air craftsmen who, nearly a half century earlier, had embarked on a starry-eyed crusade to utilize the airplane for the benefit of mankind. In World War I, they had helped smash the German Kaiser, only to find Hitler rising phoenixlike in his boots. Two decades later, they had strafed Hitler to earth, only to discover a colossal portrait of Joseph Stalin looming beyond a smoke curtain. Still later, as atomic bombs and lethal bacteria became weapons, they were asking themselves, “what next?” when the Berlin Airlift came up with the answer: air cargo, air commerce, air industry, air finance—air power for peace!