Rex Waite

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Reginald Newnham Waite CB CBE (born June 30, 1901 in Duffield, Derbyshire / England , † May 7, 1975 in Southampton , Hampshire / England) was a British officer and Air Commodore of the Royal Air Force . From 1947 to 1949 he was head of the British Air Force units in Berlin . He is considered one of the fathers of the two Berlin airlifts , the implementation of which he prepared logistically.

Early years

At 19, Waite joined in 1920 as a cadet of the Military Academy of the Royal Air Force (RAF) in Lincolnshire at. After completing his basic training (1921), he then completed his training as a fighter pilot .

Later he was from 1928 as a command leader and now in the rank of flight lieutenant , deployed in the 14th and 47th squadrons of the British Air Force.

From January 1931 Waite also qualified as a pilot of military flying boats at the RAF base in Calshot . Subsequently, on July 4, 1931, he switched to the 201st Squadron as command leader, before he was appointed to the staff of the Calshot military base on March 23, 1933 .

After a year of training at RAF Staff College, Waite was transferred to Air Force Headquarters in December 1934 . From January 1936 he did staff duty again and was finally used on April 3, 1937 for the first time as a commanding officer in a squadron (224 Squadron).

After being used in the Air Force Headquarters from January 1938, Waite took over the St. Eval base of the Royal Air Force in Cornwall in 1939, after the outbreak of World War II . Subsequently, Waite, who was promoted to Wing Commander on January 1, 1939, and Group Captain on June 1, 1941 , was transferred to several administrative posts before he took over command again in St. Eval in 1942.

A short time later, he became Commanding Officer of RAF to Nassau on the Bahamas and from 1944 to the staff of the Headquarters of the Allied Forces of northwestern and central Europe ( SHAEF ).

Berlin

On June 16, 1945, shortly after the end of the Second World War, Reginald Waite was transferred to Berlin, where he took over the position of Commander-in-Chief of the Combined Armed Forces of the Control Commission Germany . With this task, he was also responsible for the logistical implementation of the disarming of the previous Wehrmacht air force .

In 1947 he was finally appointed head of the Royal Air Force units in Berlin, which was occupied by the USA , the USSR , Great Britain and France , with which he took his seat at the Gatow military airport .

Small Berlin Airlift (April 1948)

On April 3, 1948, the Soviet Union sealed off the transit and supply overland routes of the USA and Great Britain to and from West Berlin . Out of this situation, Waite worked out logistical plans for the western allies for the first time, according to which the supply of military personnel was guaranteed from the air.

In doing so, Waite adopted the three air corridors promised to the western city ​​commanders on November 30, 1945 , each of which had a width of 32 kilometers between the occupation zones in West Germany and West Berlin.

On December 31, 1945, it was assured in writing that the Western Allies would use the Hamburg Air Corridor (northwest) in the direction of Hamburg , the Bueckeburg Air Corridor (west) in the direction of Hanover and the Frankfurt Air Corridor (southwest) in the direction of Frankfurt am Main unlimited and at any time of the day or night for military and civil aircraft .

The plans worked out by Waite as part of Operation Knicker turned out to be a logistical masterpiece. The supply of American and British troops via the western air corridors was up and running within a very short time and went almost smoothly, whereupon the Soviet Union stopped its blockade after only two days.

Great Berlin Airlift (1948–1949)

Even after the end of the first airlift, Waite continued his logistical development, as he was firmly convinced that the tensions between the Soviet Union and the Western Allies would recur. In his further considerations, he now also planned the air supply for the entire population of West Berlin, which initially remained a theoretical plan and only seemed feasible for a short time.

In June 1948, against the protests of the Soviet Union, the currency reform was implemented in the western sectors, whereupon the Soviets blocked all traffic routes to and from West Berlin . It was therefore more extensive and more serious than the first lockdown in April, since the entire West Berlin population, which numbered around 2.2 million people, was cut off from all supplies.

Enthusiastic about Waite's plans, the US military governor Lucius D. Clay commissioned him to carry out a feasibility study with regard to supplying the Western Allied troops and the entire population of West Berlin via the air corridors. Prominent politicians, above all US President Harry S. Truman and Berlin Mayor Ernst Reuter , welcomed the new Berlin Airlift, but doubted that a long-term supply of more than 2 million people from the air would actually be possible.

Waite refined his plans again with regard to transport availability, freight volume, occupancy of airfields and strength calculations of the Western Allies. He then presented his revised plans to the British city commander Otway Herbert and the British military governor Brian Robertson , who approved them. A short time later, Clay, who was already convinced, also formally agreed.

Waite then put the units of the Royal Air Force stationed in Berlin on heightened alert under the operation name Planefar.

Finally, the new airlift started on June 24, 1948, initially under the command of Clay, with the first flight from the US military airport Tempelhof . Just one day later, the first British aircraft took off from Gatow, while France was only able to participate logistically, later with individual flights, because of the parallel missions in Indochina .

During the airlift, Rex Waite commanded the units of the Royal Air Force as part of the Combined Airlift Task Force (CALTF), which were also supported by units from Australia , Canada and New Zealand . In addition, he took over the management of a newly created Allied staff unit , which was not only supposed to monitor the Soviet blockade, but also had the task of organizing plans for a possible reconstruction of civil life after an emergency occurred in Berlin.

Waite's focus was the British participation, which faced particular challenges. The airfields under British control in Celle , Lübeck , Faßberg and Wunstorf were in poor condition. There were no finished runways or only inadequate runways , which repeatedly led to serious aircraft accidents . In addition, it was the British task to supply Berlin with the most important commodity, coal , which in turn required a rail connection logistically.

As a former flying boat pilot, it was also to Waite's credit that the British used Sunderland flying boats in Berlin , which had to complete difficult waterings on the Großer Wannsee and the Havel as well as in the Hamburg area.

Waite also had extensive building materials flown to Berlin, thereby promoting the expansion of the military airports and the construction of the Ruhleben power plant. A total of 160,000 t of building materials were flown in for this purpose.

On May 12, 1949, the Soviets finally gave up the blockade. The Western Allies made a total of 280,000 flights and had a total of 103 deaths, including 39 British.

Rex Waite, who was promoted to Air Commodore on January 1, 1949, initially remained in Berlin as head of the Royal Air Force even after the end of the Airlift.

Last commands

Waite left Berlin on August 6, 1950 and became chief of the supply department at the headquarters of the Royal Air Force.

Already on 15 July 1951 he was appointed Deputy Chief of Staff of the RAF headquarters in Europe appointed and finally came on 19 September 1953 at the rank of Air Commodore in retirement .

Personal

Reginald Waite was married to his wife Jessamy Lowenthal (1912-2001) from April 6, 1940 until his death. The marriage resulted in the children Romilly, Joanna and the well-known landscape photographer Charlie Waite , who still remember the work of their father to this day.

Waite mostly refrained from using his first name and mostly called himself Rex. He was considered a humble person. Although the Berlin Airlift would not have been feasible without his work, the roles of Lucius D. Clay and the US Lieutenant General William H. Tunner , who succeeded Clay as commander of the Airlift, were always rated more superficially by the general public, while Waite was almost unknown stayed.

Historians , however, also clearly rate Waite as one of the "fathers of the Berlin Airlift".

Barely noticed by the public, Waite died in May 1975 at the age of 73.

Awards

Honors

Rex-Waite-Strasse in the Berlin district of Kladow

The airlift memorial, unveiled in Berlin-Tempelhof in 1951 , commemorates the victims of the Great Berlin Airlift, but also its initiators - and thus also of Rex Waite. In 1985, the same monuments were inaugurated in Frankfurt am Main and, in a smaller version, in Celle .

On August 15, 2000 in Berlin-Kladow , not far from the former Gatow military airport, Rex-Waite-Strasse was dedicated to the public, who has since been reminiscent of the British officer.

Parts of a permanent exhibition at the Allied Museum in Berlin are still dedicated to Rex Waite today.

Web links

literature

  • Anthony Mann: Comeback Germany 1945-1952 . Macmillan, 1980, ISBN 978-0-333-27499-6 .
  • Alan Bullock: Ernest Bevin: foreign secretary 1945-1951 . Heinemann, 1983, ISBN 978-0-393-01825-7 .
  • Carsten Schanz: When knowledge crumbles . In: GUARD REPORT . May 2014. Association newspaper of the Kameradschaft 248 GSU e. V., Berlin, S. 1-4 .
  • Udo Wetzlaugk: Berlin blockade and airlift 1948/49 . Ed .: State Center for Political Education Berlin. Administrative print shop Berlin, 1998.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Sven Felix Kellerhoff: With 100 grams per person and day against Stalin. welt.de, June 24, 2013, accessed on August 9, 2018 (German).
  2. ↑ Rex Waite. In: website of the British Berlin Airlift Association. Retrieved August 9, 2018 .
personal data
SURNAME Waite, Rex
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Waite, Reginald Newnham
BRIEF DESCRIPTION British Air Force Officer, Chief of the British Air Force Associations in Berlin
DATE OF BIRTH June 30, 1901
PLACE OF BIRTH Duffield, Derbyshire , England
DATE OF DEATH May 7th 1975
Place of death Southampton , Hampshire , England