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cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ca/post/17490070
humanitarian organizations, many of which have been sounding alarms about the hunger crisis in Gaza for months, are not impressed. They argue that air and sea deliveries are not only an insufficient substitute for humanitarian aid delivered by land, but a dehumanizing one that acts as a distraction to the man-made barriers that have prevented more aid from getting into Gaza in the first place. “There is no good reason why aid cannot access Gaza by road today,”
Two million people took ~4,500 tons a day. The C-54 carried 10 tons, meaning that it only required 450 flights per day. Comments like yours are based on the older C-37 and / or the Easter Push where the Allies did a maximum effort run just to flex on the Soviets.
In 2024 a C-130 Hercules has a max payload of 21 tons, over double the C-54, meaning that required flights would potentially be reduced to 225.
Then you have to consider that Operation Vittles was also delivering COAL, something that the citizens of Gaza probably don’t need.
200 flights a day would do it but that still doesn’t excuse Israel for preventing aid via land routes.
Berlin was an airlift operation, not an air drop. They landed the aircraft at several airports, and directly offloaded cargo to trucks.
AFAIK, Gaza has no operational airports, which greatly complicates the logistics of an airlift mission on the scale of Berlin.
If we are considering this sort of mission, we’re looking at sealift, not airlift. Our historical precedence will be the Mulberry harbors set up to support the Normandy invasion.
Gaza does not have any operational airports, since Israel bombed the control tower at Yasser Arafat airport in 2001 and bulldozed the runway in 2002.