Bay Air Base in Newfoundland, and consideration of basing the bombers in Germany, it was decided to send them to RAF bases in Britain where they would be less vulnerable. The 28th and 307th Bombardment Groups were deployed to the newly activated station at RAF Marham. Soviet reaction After a few months it was clear to the Soviets that the Americans were succeeding in supplying the western sectors of Berlin with the minimal amount of supplies necessary to sustain it. Mock attacks by Soviet Air Force fighters begun in the air corridors to scare the American pilots caused great confusion and considerably increased the danger of air collisions. Also as many Yakovlev and Lavochkin fighters as possible were assembled around Berlin and then flown en masse in a westerly direction though the corridors. Near the western border of the Soviet occupation zone, they peeled off and flew along the zone border to the next corridor so they could fly back to Berlin along it, against the traffic, to their airfields around Berlin. Western radio frequencies were jammed and chaff was released to confuse radar operators. Searchlights were shone on aircraft in the corridors at night. By the spring of 1949, USAFE announced that there were incidents of Soviets firing at cargo aircraft with anti-aircraft artillery, and of barrage balloons being allowed to float within the corridors. No serious aircraft accidents occurred as a result. The efforts of many hundreds of pilots and the many thousands of military and German civilians involved in the airlift kept the people of Berlin supplied. On one day, the Berlin Airlift delivered nearly 13,000 tons of provisions with almost 1,400 flights. So great was the stream of aircraft that an aircraft landed almost once a minute at one of the three western Berlin airfields. The continuous engine noise of the aircraft stream of heavy transports not only made an impression on the citizens of Berlin, but on the Soviet Union. The Soviet Union came to realize that the blockade of Berlin would not achieve the desired political effect they wished. On 12 May 1949, the Soviet blockade was lifted. However airlift operated at a reduced level until the end of September to ensure adequate supplies were available in Berlin in case of a re-imposition of the blockade. The 1950s Even with the Korean War raging in the early 1950s, Europe received a higher priority of