THE MILITARY: BERLIN:

OUTLOOK

Before Russia's May 27 deadline on Berlin, diplomats may find a way to sidestep or postpone a repetition of the 1948-49 Berlin blockade. But U.S. military planners can risk no false hopes. They are ready with alternate sets of operations orders, have plans for every predictable contingency save one: evacuation of U.S. troops. The omission is not an oversight or a gamble. U.S., British and French forces are set to hold the city against all Communist pressures save an all-out attack, which, the Russians well know, would start World War III. In the cold logistics of a military exercise, this is the Berlin blockade problem in 1959:

THE U.S. occupation force in West Berlin totals about 4,000 men, mainly of the 6th Infantry Regiment, and the British and French account for the rest of an Allied garrison of about 11,000 troops. To supply them, the U.S. runs two to three convoys per week—three to ten trucks in each convoy—over the 110-mile, four-lane Autobahn between the border check point of Helmstedt, and Berlin (see map). The British send in about one convoy a week, and the French about one a month. The West Germans, in a thriving trade with 2,300,000 West Berliners and West Berlin industries, send some 14,000 truckloads over the road monthly, plus some 600 barges through the Mittelland Canal, and a dozen freight cars daily by rail.

The U.S. well knows that it would be relatively easy for the Communists to throttle this traffic by blandly claiming that any or all of the routes are under repair and impassable. This prospect has led to loose talk in Western capitals about spearheading a supply column through the roadblocks with U.S. tanks. No such plan gets serious consideration in the Pentagon. Reason: an armored column or train would be not only a diplomatic fiasco —in that the U.S. would seem to make the first warlike move—but a military absurdity as well. The four-lane Autobahn snakes along over no fewer than 29 vulnerable bridges, among them the quartermile span over the Elbe River, still only half replaced since its total destruction by Allied bombers in World War II; the railroad has 49 bridges. Destruction of a single bridge or a short stretch of rail or highway would halt a column or train in country commanded by superior forces*

The U.S. Army's entire strength in Europe (three pentomic infantry divisions and two armored divisions, armed with M48 Patton tanks, atomic cannon. Honest John and Redstone missiles) would be outmatched against the 22 Russian divisions in East Germany (4,000 new T-54 tanks) and the 125,000 to 150.000 Red-impressed German militiamen. NATO's 21 combat-ready divisions, organized for defense, would not likely be committed to road-opening chores.

So the landlocked island of Berlin could, under Red siege, be reached reliably only by air, as during the historic "Operation Vittles" airlift of 1948-49. And this time, thanks to lessons learned in the first Berlin blockade, the U.S. has a vastly expanded capacity and know-how in the airlifting business.