Lt. Gail S. Halvorsen
The Berlin Candy Bomber
Berlin, July 1948, Age Thirteen
There was one person who won the hearts of the Berliners — adults and children alike — and that was Lt. Gail Halvorsen who became known as the Berlin Candy Bomber.
One day during his time off duty, Lt. Halvorsen talked to a group of children who stood outside the airport fence and were watching the planes land at Tempelhof. He was impressed that they seemed to know what “freedom” meant and how important the airlift was.
The children were not begging for candy, as children everywhere else did when they encountered Americans. Wanting to give them something, Lt. Halvorsen found he had only two sticks of gum in his pocket. He split up the gum and distributed the pieces, with the promise that he would drop candy out of his airplane for them on his next flight into Berlin. Ingeniously, he made little parachutes from handkerchiefs onto which he tied Hershey bars and packages of gum, then dropped those sweet treats out of the cockpit window of his airplane to the waiting children just before landing at Tempelhof.
After several days of those candy drops, Lt. Halvorsen's “secret mission” became known to his superiors because the German newspaper pictured his airplane on the front page. The Air Force found that the thoughtfulness of this kindhearted man did more to cement relations between the Allies and their former enemies than any other attempt, and encouraged Lt. Halvorsen to continue. He became known as The Berlin Candy Bomber, and his idea turned into a large scale operation. Other pilots joined Halvorsen, and pretty soon thousands of candy parachutes had been dropped.
Colonel Halvorsen became the much admired hero of the Berliners. While all airlift pilots and personnel were heroes in the eyes of the Berliners, it was Colonel Halvorsen who put the heart into the Airlift. By sending gifts of candy down to the children, he told them that somebody cared about them personally. This great act of kindness gave them, as well as their parents, hope — hope for the future, hope for freedom, and hope for a better life.
“Without hope the soul dies” Colonel Halvorsen said fifty years later, when I had the splendid opportunity to meet this kindhearted man and to finally thank him personally for what he did for the children and for all the West Berliners. Throughout the intervening years, and still at this time as I am writing this, Colonel Halvorsen flies missions to war ravaged countries and drops candy to the children.
I have often been asked if I caught any candy parachutes. The answer is that I did not go to Tempelhof Airport at that time. Peter is four years younger than I am and he did not have the responsibilities that fell to me. Besides going to Business School, I had to stand in food lines — often four to six hours at a time, several times a week — to get our rations. This took a lot of energy, and with the limited rations we were getting, there was none left for extra trips.