The “Candy Bomber,” retired colonel Gail Halvorsen, came in to tell the kids which plane was carrying the chocolate while rocking the wings of his C-54 Skymaster aircraft
Retired Col. Gail Halvorsen, also known as the “Candy Bomber,” passed away on Feb. 16, 2022. He was 101 years old.
After beginning his career in the US Army Air Corps in 1942 and accruing more than 8,000 flying hours over the course of his 31 years of service, Halvorsen retired from active duty in 1974. Halvorsen’s heroic deeds during the Berlin Airlift in 1948 and 1949 cemented his place in history. By affixing handkerchief parachutes to chocolate bars and dropping them to the children below from his aircraft, then-Lt. Halvorsen decided to help lift the spirits of the kids in West Berlin.
He started going by the name “Uncle Wiggly Wings” among the German kids. He would also rock the wings of his aircraft as he approached to let the kids know whose plane was delivering the chocolate, according to a US Air Force (USAF) news release.
In order to launch the first “Operation Little Vittles” drop from his C-54 Skymaster on July 18, 1948, he combined his candy ration with that of his co-pilot and engineer at Rhein-Main Air Base, constructed parachutes out of handkerchiefs and string, and tied chocolate and gum to them.
“The only way I could get back to deliver it was to drop it from the airplane, 100 feet over their heads, on the approach between the barbed wire fence and bombed-out buildings,” Halvorsen recalled during an interview with Airman Magazine. “A red light came on that said you can’t drop it without permission. But I rationalized it by saying that starving 2 million people isn’t according to Hoyle, either, so what’s a few candy bars?”
For three weeks, the number of kids waiting and the supply of candy progressively increased until a Berlin newspaper published a picture of the now-famous “Candy Bomber.” Eventually, piles of letters addressed to “Der Schokoladen Flieger” or “Onkel Wackelflugel” started to arrive at Templehof base operations.
The C-54 squadron commander, Col. James R. Haun, called Halvorsen one day after he got back from Berlin. Haun had gotten a call from Brig. Gen. William H. Tunner, who was the airlift’s deputy commander of operations, asking who was parachuting above Berlin.
When Haun showed Halvorsen the newspaper with the image of little parachutes flying out of his C-54, he immediately realized he was in trouble. “You got me in a little trouble there, Halvorsen,” Haun told him.
“I’d had a long relationship with him, but he was put out because he was sandbagged,” Halvorsen said. “So when I talk to kids, especially high school kids, I say, ‘when you get a job, don’t sandbag your boss.’ He said to keep [dropping candy] but keep him informed. It just went crazy after that.”
Yet, Operation Little Vittles received funding and support from the general public. Pilot buddies contributed their candy supplies. They eventually ran out of parachutes thus until the wives of noncommissioned officers and officers at Rhein-Main AB started making them, they created more out of cloth and old shirt sleeves.
Eventually, the American Confectioners Association donated 18 tons of candy, most of which was sent via the then-Westover Air Force Base in Berlin after being tied to parachutes by students at a Chicopee, Massachusetts, school.
250,000 parachutes and 23 tons of candy had been dropped by American pilots by the time the Berlin Airlift came to an end in September 1949.
“Willie Williams took over after I left Berlin,” Halvorsen said. “And he ended up dropping even more candy than I did.”
Halvorsen’s efforts serve as a testament to the positive effects one modest deed may have on a whole community.
“As I look back at Operation Little Vittles and the years that have followed, there is one human characteristic above all others that gave it birth – the silent gratitude of the children at a barbed wire fence in Berlin, July 1948,” he wrote in his autobiography.
Indeed, the Berlin Airlift was the operation that made heavy aircraft famous. It was the US Air Force’s first significant victory over the Soviet Union during the Cold War and a huge accomplishment for the service. After retiring in 1994, Halvorsen asked to help in the distribution of food to refugees escaping the conflict in Bosnia.
“We have our freedom to choose, and when the freedom is taken away, air power is the only quick way to answer a crisis like that,” Halvorsen said.
Photo by: Rosario “Charo” Gutierrez and Bennie J. Davis III / U.S. Air Force