As blizzard relief organizations were created in Garfield and Blaine counties, Burwell organizers arranged for airlifts of hay to ranches in neighboring Loup County. When Air Force Operation Haylift flights from Kearney Air Force Base began on January 26, local people were enlisted provided directions for C-47 (“Sky train”) and C-82 (“Flying Boxcar”) flights to drop hay.

In Blaine County, County Treasurer Dan Norris of Brewster, conducted a telephone survey, but to contact ranchers without phones he sought the aid of Herb Hardin, a North Platte pilot. Hardin flew over the ranches and dropped notes tied to lumps of coal, giving instructions how to signal if they needed hay. Some recipients did need Haylift drops. Norris said, “We saw much trouble from the air,” including seven cows lying dead near one ranch house.
The C‑47s carried a payload of 2.5 tons, the C‑82s, 4.5 tons. Along with the crew on each flight was a spotter, as well as Air Force and civilian “kickers”—four or five on the C-47s, and seven or eight on the C-82s—whose job it was to shove the hay out the open cargo doors of the aircraft. Kickers were kept from falling out by straps secured to a bulkhead. The spotter was a civilian familiar with the area, who guided the pilot to the ranch in need. At the sound of a buzzer from the cockpit, the kickers shoved out the bales of hay. Most broke apart on impact.

Civilians on Haylift missions had to sign a waiver freeing the government of any liability. The also had to designate next of kin. Nevertheless, the atmosphere aboard Haylift flights was cheerful. The Air Force personnel enjoyed the low‑level flights, and the civilians were thrilled by the novelty as well as feeling they were doing something useful. Obviously, there was some danger in these missions: two C-47’s—one from Kearney and the other from Lowry—were seriously damaged when hay bales struck their vertical stabilizers. Fortunately, both aircraft landed safely at Kearney Air Force Base.

Volunteers arranged fifty‑four drops totaling about 240 tons of hay. Each of the fifty‑four ranchers in Garfield, Loup, and Blaine counties received from 34 to 404 bales. The Haylift program coordinated by the Chadron Junior Chamber of Commerce dropped 1,854 bales to twenty‑nine local ranchers.

Blizzard relief work was a final big moment for the Kearney Air Force Base, which was soon to close. One C-47 sent from Kearney to North Platte on January 10, made seventy-eight or more drops to towns and ranches. Thirteen planes from Kearney’s 27th Fighter Group were used to search the countryside for distress signals. By the last week of January, eleven C-47s and ten C-82s from Kearney were available for Operation Haylift duty. The snowplows and their crews dispatched to O’Neill represented a peculiar contribution from Kearney Air Force Base.

Even before the Haylift flights from Kearney Air Force Base, planes from Lowry Field in Denver had been carrying hay to stranded cattle and sheep in western Nebraska. Some hay was brought to Alliance for use by aircraft from Lowry, and some Haylift flights to the Sheridan County‑Pine Ridge Reservation area along the Nebraska‑South Dakota border came from Rapid City Air Force Base. According to the Strategic Aid Command, two Haylift missions were flown from Offutt Air Force Base near Omaha.

Not everyone was convinced the Haylift flights were useful. The vast number of cattle needing feed rendered Haylift impractical compared with the relief that could be supplied by ground‑based operations. Haylift crews tried to drop bales as close to livestock as possible, but even if it landed within a hundred yards, animals caught in ice‑crusted drifts might not be able to reach it. Sometimes cattle were frightened by the aircraft and bolted.

Dan Norris of Brewster, Nebraska, probably put Operation Haylift in proper perspective when he said, “No doubt the operation did a great deal of good in its way. It was a temporary measure, and kept cattle alive until they could be fed in the natural way.”

Sidebar of Statistics:

Operation Snowbound

1. 193,193 square miles in four states
2. 4,011,184 cattle saved from starvation
3. 243,780 snowbound people freed
4. 115,138 miles of road cleared
5. 1,600 pieces of heavy equipment brought to bear
6. 6,000-man workforce

[source: Fifth Army, Disaster Operation Snowbound, 1949]