was used extensively during the
Berlin airlift. In November 1915 the
French squadron MF 99 S, equipped with
Farman MF.11, flew wounded soldiers from
Serbia through
Albania to
Corfu. This was the first
medevac operation in air history. In April 1923 aircraft of the
British Royal Air Force's
Iraq Command flew 280
Sikh troops from
Kingarban to
Kirkuk in the first British air trooping operation. This operation was only conducted over a short-range and it was not until 1929 that the RAF conducted a long-range non-combat air evacuation of
British Embassy staff from
Afghanistan to
India using a
Vickers Victoria during the
Kabul airlift. The world's
first long-range combat airlift took place from July to October 1936.
Nazi German Luftwaffe Ju 52 and
Fascist Italian Regia Aeronautica Savoia-Marchetti SM.81 were used by the
Spanish Nationalist Air Force to transport
Army of Africa troops from
Spanish Morocco to the
Spanish mainland at the
beginning of the
Spanish Civil War. Airlifts became practical during
World War II as aircraft became large and sophisticated enough to handle large cargo demands. The Germans used an airlift in successful relief of the
Demyansk Pocket, albeit with the Luftwaffe suffering considerable losses to its fleet of transport planes. Due to the apparent vindication of the airlift tactic, Chief of the
Oberkommando der Luftwaffe Hermann Göring assured
Adolf Hitler that the Luftwaffe could conduct an airlift on a larger scale, which was the key factor not to let the
Sixth Army withdraw from
Stalingrad after its
encirclement by the
Red Army. However the Luftwaffe was strained at this point while facing better prepared Soviet air forces at Stalingrad, so they were unable to delivery the necessary supplies before the airfields were overrun. In spite of the airlift's obvious shortcomings, Hitler refused permission for the Sixth Army to attempt a breakout, eventually leading its commander
Friedrich Paulus to surrender. The
U.S. Army Air Force's
Air Transport Command began the largest and longest-sustained airlift of the war in May 1942, delivering more than half a million net tons of materiel from India to
Free China over
the Hump by November 1945. After many USAAF airmen were shot down in
Nazi-occupied Serbia during
Operation Tidal Wave, the
U.S. Fifteenth Air Force and the
Office of Strategic Services evacuated a number of them in
Operation Halyard with the assistance of
Draža Mihailović's
Chetnik partisans. Additionally, at the end of World War II the USAAF and the RAF arranged humanitarian
airdrops to the
Nazi-occupied Netherlands through
Operations Manna and Chowhound to alleviate the
Dutch famine of 1944-45. The largest airlift was the
Berlin airlift, lasting from June 1948 to September 1949, an international operation intended to thwart the blockading of
West Berlin by the
Soviet Union. The airlift was arranged by the
U.S. Air Force, the British Royal Air Force, the
French Air Force, the
Royal Canadian Air Force, the
Royal Australian Air Force, the
Royal New Zealand Air Force, and the
South African Air Force using
C-47 Skytrains,
C-54 Skymasters,
Handley Page Haltons, and
Short Sunderlands. Many Soviet and Western leaders alike initially assumed that an airlift to resupply West Berlin would fail because of the results of the Battle of Stalingrad. However, it instead succeeded and became an embarrassment for the Soviet Union, which ended the blockade. The blockade and the success of the airlift would be a major factor in the
beginning of the Cold War and the formation of the
North Atlantic Treaty Organization, the
Western European Union, and the
Federal Republic of Germany. The
Israeli Air Force and
El Al conducted a number of airlifts during the
Jewish exodus from Arab and Muslim countries to
Israel after the
1948 Arab–Israeli War. In 1949 Israel evacuated 49,000
Yemenite Jews to
Israel via
Operation On Wings of Eagles. In 1951 it carried out
Operation Ezra and Nehemiah evacuating over 120,000
Jews from
Iraq to Israel via
British Cyprus. The
Israel Defense Forces later evacuated over 8,000
Beta Israel refugees from
Ethiopia living in
refugee camps in
Sudan through
Operation Moses,
Operation Joshua, and
Operation Solomon during the
Ethiopian famine and
civil war. During the
First Indochina War, the French expeditionary forces devised the
hérisson ('
hedgehog') concept, establishing a fortified
airhead by airlifting soldiers to positions adjacent to key Viet Minh supply lines to Laos. This would cut off
Viet Minh soldiers fighting in Laos and force them to withdraw. "It was an attempt to interdict the enemy's rear area, to stop the flow of supplies and reinforcements, to establish a redoubt in the enemy's rear and disrupt his lines". It was executed successfully at the
Battle of Nà Sản, so the French hoped to repeat it on a larger scale at the
Battle of Điện Biên Phủ. However, based on the lessons learned from Nà Sản, the Viet Minh improved their preparations at Điện Biên Phủ including concealed artillery and massed anti-aircraft batteries, making it dangerous for the French aircraft to use the runways, afterwards a bombardment forced the French to abandon use of the airstrip altogether and rely upon parachute drops. The besieged French forces eventually surrendered. The largest civilian airlift ever, the
Biafran airlift, was carried out by
Protestant and
Catholic churches working together under the banner "Joint Church Aid" (JCA) to carry food to
Biafra, during the
Biafran secession war from
Nigeria in 1967–70. This joint effort (which those involved used to call "Jesus Christ Airlines" as an inside joke from the initials JCA) is estimated to have saved more than a million lives in Biafra. Most airplanes departed from
Portuguese São Tomé and Príncipe to the bush landing strip of
Uli, the only operational "airport" in Biafra, which was made by enlarging a common road. Flights were made flying at night with all lights off and under near-total
radio silence to avoid
Nigerian Air Force MiG aircraft. All the airplanes, crews, and logistics were paid, set up, and maintained by the joint church groups. JCA and their crews and aircraft (mostly aging multi prop airliners like
DC-7's,
Lockheed Constellation and
Superconstellations,
DC-6's, and
DC3's) kept flying into Biafra at the cost of many crews lives. During the 1973
Yom Kippur War, the
U.S. Air Force Military Airlift Command conducted
Operation Nickel Grass to resupply Israel in the face of a coordinated surprise attack by
Egypt and
Syria. The airlift allowed Israel to begin a counteroffensive against the Arab states but caused the
Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries to place an
oil embargo on the United States, beginning the
1970s energy crisis. During the 1974
Turkish invasion of Cyprus the
Hellenic Air Force attempted to airlift commandos to
Nicosia Airport through
Operation Niki but failed after the
Nord Noratlas planes were shot down by
friendly fire from the
Cypriot National Guard after flying over
RAF Akrotiri. The largest civilian airlift in history was conducted by
Air India during the
Gulf War, which repatriated 176,000 Indian
migrant workers stranded in
Ba'athist Iraq after the
invasion of Kuwait.
India has conducted other airlifts of migrant workers during Middle Eastern crises. The
Indian Navy evacuated numerous Indian civilians from the
2006 Lebanon War via
Operation Sukoon, from the
First Libyan Civil War via
Operation Safe Homecoming, from the
South Sudanese Civil War via
Operation Sankat Mochan, and from the
Saudi-Yemen War in
Operation Raahat. The
Pakistan Navy also
evacuated Pakistani nationals from Yemen via an airlift during the Saudi intervention. The Indian Armed Forces also conducted an airlift to Nepal after the
2015 Nepal earthquake through
Operation Maitri. During the
outbreak of the
COVID-19 pandemic in
Wuhan, numerous air forces and civilian airlines arranged
evacuation flights from
Wuhan Tianhe International Airport. The highest rate of civilian airlift in history (number of civilians evacuated per day) was during fall of Kabul in August 2021, where 778 flights evacuated 124,334 people over 17 days - 7,300 civilians per day (compared to 2,700 per day airlift of Indians from Kuwait in 1990). The evacuation peaked on August 23, 2021, where over 21,600 civilians were evacuated in a single day. During the
fall of Kabul at the end of the
War in Afghanistan after the
Taliban captured most of
Afghanistan in a
2021 offensive following the
withdrawal of US and NATO forces,
foreign governments evacuated hundreds of thousands of their citizens as well as at-risk Afghans from
Hamid Karzai International Airport. As part of the
U.S. Armed Forces'
Operation Allies Refuge, U.S. Secretary of Defense
Lloyd Austin requisitioned U.S. airliners through the
Civil Reserve Air Fleet to assist the
U.S. Transportation Command. The
U.S. Department of Defense later claimed to have evacuated 122,000 people, including
U.S. citizens and Afghan
Special Immigrant Visa applicants. Other airlifts included the
British Armed Forces'
Operation Pitting, the
Canadian Armed Forces'
Operation AEGIS, and the
Indian Armed Forces'
Operation Devi Shakti. ==Strategic airlift==