William H. Tunner

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William H. Tunner

William Henry Tunner (born July 14, 1906 in Elizabeth (New Jersey) , USA; † April 6, 1983 in Gloucester (Virginia), USA) was an American Lieutenant General of the United States Army Air Forces (USAAF) or its successor US Air Force .

Youth and education

Tunneler's ancestors came from the Styrian Leoben / Austria ; these included the mining pioneer, member of the Reichstag and founder of the Montanuniversität Leoben Peter Tunner (1809–1897) and his father of the same name, Peter Tunner the Elder (1786–1844), also a mining and ore specialist. Tunneler's father had studied engineering at the school his ancestor had founded in Leoben before he emigrated to America. As one of five children, William Henry Tunner graduated from high school, the US Military Academy at West Point , which he graduated in 1928 with the rank of Second Lieutenant . In 1929 he graduated from the United States Army Air Corps (USAAC) Advanced Flying School in Kelly Field, Texas.

Operations 1930–1941, Ferrying Command, WASP

He served in several tactical and training sessions between 1930 and 1941 before helping General Robert Olds organize the Ferrying Command during World War II in 1941. As a result, the USAAC (from June 1941 USAAF ) reorganized the Ferrying Command. In July 1942, the Ferrying Command was renamed Air Transport Command and Tunner, now Colonel , became the commanding officer of the Ferrying Division. In this position he continued the previously proposed use of female pilots - at least for non-military use, e.g. B. for transfer flights, and only domestically - by ( Women Airforce Service Pilots , WASP). This enabled male pilots to be released for combat and missions abroad.

In the years that followed, Tunner stood out for its services in setting up, optimizing and implementing previously unknown, global logistics solutions by air. These included:

The three strategic airlifts 1942–1953

1. 1942–1945: The Hump, the airlift between India and China

In September 1942 Tunner was appointed to the Sino-Burmese-Indian theater of war and commanded the Indian-Chinese division of the air transport command. There he monitored the air transport of supplies and people to China. The airlift was also called the Hump ​​Airlift because of the heights of over 8,000 meters in the Himalayas that had to be overflyed . Tunner and his crew delivered 71,000 tons of material to China via the airlift, far more than anything that has ever been transported by air before. In his 1964 book "Over the Hump", Tunner later reported on his experiences during this operation. The Hump Airlift was the first strategic airlift and laid the foundations for later airlifts such as the Berlin Airlift .

William H. Tunner at his desk

2. 1948–1949: The Berlin Airlift

On June 24, 1948, the Soviet Union blocked all land and sea supply routes to Berlin ( Berlin blockade ). The USA prevented this supply bottleneck by exclusively supplying the fifth largest city in the world with 2.5 million inhabitants and 6,000 men from the air. General Tunner was chosen to lead the large-scale operation (Berlin Airlift) . Due to the masterful management by General Tunner and his aircraft crews, the airlift was far more successful than the calculations.

3. 1951–1953: The Airlift in the Korean War

During the Korean War from 1950 to 1953 Tunner again organized an airlift and received the Distinguished Service Cross for the operation there , which was presented to him by General Douglas MacArthur .

1953–1960: Commander in Chief USAF Europe

On July 27, 1953, William Tunner , who had meanwhile been promoted to Major General , returned to Germany and was promoted to Supreme Commander of the US Air Forces in Europe based in Wiesbaden and at the same time promoted to Lieutenant General . He held this post until July 1, 1957. When Tunner was retired on May 31, 1960, he had commanded the three largest airlifts to date.

On January 5, 1982, the German Ambassador to the United States, Peter Hermes , gave him the Great Cross of Merit with a Star of the Federal Order of Merit for his services to the Federal Republic of Germany . In memory of him, a street on the site of the former McNair Barracks barracks in the Berlin district of Lichterfelde was named in William-H.-Tunner-Strasse on June 1, 2000 .

William H. Tunner was married twice, from the first marriage he had two sons, as a widower from the second marriage a daughter.

In 2006 Tunner was inducted into the Logistics Hall of Fame .

Quotes

Remarks

  1. ↑ Tunner, Over the hump , Chapter 1 Early days, p. 5.
  2. ↑ Over the hump , Chapter 2 Ferrying Division, p. 39.

Fonts

  • Over the hump . - New York: Duell, Sloan, and Pearce 1964 (reprinted with a new foreword: Airforce History Museums Program 1998)

literature

  • Billy J. Hoppe: Lieutenant General William H. Tunner in the China-Burma-India "HUMP" and Berlin Airlifts: A Case Study in Leadership in Development of Airlift Doctrine. , Maxwell AFB, AL, Air War College, April 1995. 29 p.
  • William J. McKinney: Lieutenant General William H. Tunner Father of the Military Airlift Command. Maxwell AFB, AL, Air Command and Staff College, April 1987. 32 p.

Web links

Wikiquote: William H. Tunner  - Quotations
personal data
SURNAME Tunner, William H.
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Tunner, William Henry
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American Lieutenant General
DATE OF BIRTH July 14, 1906
PLACE OF BIRTH Elizabeth (New Jersey) , USA
DATE OF DEATH April 6, 1983
Place of death Gloucester, Virginia, USA