During the Berlin Airlift, Western Allied aircraft supplied West Berlin after the Soviet blockade cut ground routes. From 1948 to 1949, transport planes carried food, fuel, and necessities into the city. The operation made aviation a humanitarian and geopolitical instrument of the Cold War.

The airlift turned cargo aircraft into symbols of endurance and political hope. Cold War literature inherited the image of the divided city supplied from the sky, where flight meant survival as well as strategic theatre.