With a really cool kit from Revell you can build your own “raisin bomber”, as the transport planes of the Berlin Airlift are called. A piece of the Cold War to take home, so to speak. Because it was mainly Douglas C-54D Skymaster transport aircraft that flew food, medicine, coal, petrol, diesel and much more to the besieged city.
In June 1948, the Soviets, who occupied the territory of what later became the GDR and the eastern part of Berlin, had cut all road and rail connections to West Berlin in order to bring the western part of the former Reich capital, which was held by the Americans, British and French, to its knees . But the military governor of the US zone, Lucius D. Clay, had no intention of simply giving up West Berlin and its more than two million people.
Together with the British, the USA set up a gigantic air bridge that supplied the encircled West Berlin completely from the air. The West Berliners and their Lord Mayor Ernst Reuter, on the other hand, gritted their teeth and tried to hold on with the supplies that the candy bombers flew in. At the end of August 1948, exactly 75 years ago, the volume of goods flown to Berlin by the Raisin Bombers reached the minimum freight capacity required for the summer for the first time.
The steadfastness and courage of the Western Allies – after all, there could be a direct military confrontation between the Western Allies and the Soviet Army (as the Red Army was now known) at any time – and the tenacity of the West Berliners paid off, in May 1949 the USSR reopened the Land route to Berlin and ended the blockade. The West had won.
The planes that thwarted the Soviet blockade went down in history as candy bombers. You can now build such a four-engine Douglas C-54D Skymaster with the 75th Anniversary Berlin Airlift gift set from Revell (05652) on a scale of 1:72. Price: 79.99 euros, recommended for model builders aged 13 and over. You can choose between different US versions. You can also build the aircraft closed or with the side loading door open.
revell
The finished model is around 40 cm long and has a wingspan of almost 50 cm; as a nice extra, ten small wooden cubes representing care boxes are included should. The required base colors (You will need more colors to complete the painting), glue and stickers are included with the kit, as well as printed and fully illustrated instructions.
revell
However, you should have a certain amount of experience and perseverance, because it is a demanding kit with 362 parts (level 5).
revell
The kit’s packaging lid featured the famous photo of children standing on a pile of rubble in Berlin waving at a transport plane flying overhead.
