Operation Airlift

Right after the Air Force alerted U.S. passenger and cargo airlines for a possible airlift to Korea (TIME, July 17), it began calling for planes. Last week the Air Force announced that the airlines* had agreed to supply 63 transports, most of them DC-45, for the transpacific flights. It had already chartered 33 of the planes; the rest would soon be in hand.

The Air Force said that it was taking only planes that could be spared without disrupting civilian airline schedules. But if the airlines did have to supply more planes later, they were a lot better prepared than when the Air Transport Command called them for World War II. U.S. commercial airlines now boast a total of 1,660 transport planes, almost quadruple the 1941 fleet of 453.

* Including Pan American, United, Northwest, Seaboard & Western, Transocean, Overseas National, Flying Tiger Line, Trans World Airlines, Capital, American Overseas.

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