Who Was the Candy Bomber?

            My VIP for this week is Gail “Hal” Halvorsen who passed away last week at age 101 years. He is otherwise known as the Candy Bomber because he started dropping candy to the children around the landing strips as he flew in the Berlin Airlift. His gesture of kindness brought adoration from thousands of children in Berlin and gratitude from Germany and the United States. His actions also helped to heal the wounds of World War II. His story is remarkable. 

After the war, the defeated state of Germany was partitioned into zones administered by the victorious Allies. The American, British and French sectors combined to form West Germany. The Soviet sector became East Germany. Within East Germany lay the city of Berlin, which also was divided into two sections, east and west, eventually separated by the wall that came to represent the Iron Curtain that had fallen across Europe.

From June 1948 to May 1949, in one of the first major confrontations of the Cold War, Moscow blockaded West Berlin, blocking rail and road access to that part of the city. More than 2 million West Berliners, deprived of food, fuel, medical supplies and other basic necessities, faced starvation.

The Berlin airlift, one of the most massive humanitarian aid missions ever undertaken, circumvented the Soviet blockade by delivering goods to West Berlin by plane. More than 278,000 flights into Berlin — including 190 by Mr. Halvorsen, The Washington Post reported in 1998 — delivered more than 2 million tons of supplies to the city over 15 months. The accounting of casualties varies, but at least 70 American and British airlifters were killed during the operation, which ran day and night in often hazardous conditions, with planes sometimes landing every three minutes.

            Halvorsen volunteered to fly in the Berlin airlift and began making deliveries. On one delivery in July 1948 at the Tempelhof airfield in West Berlin, he met a group of children who were outside the barbed wire divide. He could tell that they were hungry, and he offered everything that he had in his pockets – two sticks of gum. He tore the two sticks of gum in half and gave them to four out of the thirty children. They were thrilled with the smell of the wrapper. He promised that he would return the next day and drop chocolate and other goodies. He told him that he would wiggle the wings of his airplane, so they could know it was him. He became known as Uncle Wiggly Wings.

            Halvorsen went back to his base and collected candy rations from other airmen. He attached them to handkerchiefs to float them down to the children. His continuing candy drops attracted other children and a German journalist. He had not consulted his superiors before making his candy drops because he knew about the bureaucratic red tape. He was “dressed down” by his commanding officer for making unauthorized drops. There may have been talk of a court-martial, but then the officer told him to carry on with his “good idea.”

            With official permission, Halvorsen’s private project became Operation Little Vittles, and “American candymakers donated tons of sweets for the effort.” Headlines were written about the operation, and cheers came from both sides of the Atlantic Ocean. “By the end of the airlift, pilots had dropped a reported 23 tons of candy over West Berlin.” The operation taught the children in Berlin that Americans were not the bad people who had destroyed their nation, but good people at heart.