At 93, life is sweet for 'Candy Bomber' 5 questions for Berlin Airlift pilot Gail Halvorsen
Gail Halvorsen spent his first 20 years on small farms in Idaho and Utah. When he earned a private pilot’s license in the fall of 1941, he dropped treats from his airplane to the neighborhood children.
After the bombing of Pearl Harbor, Halvorsen trained as a fighter pilot with the British Royal Air Force and went on to serve in the Army Air Corps, flying transports in the South Atlantic Theater of Operations. When the war ended in 1945, he expected to settle down and start a family. Halvorsen was instead called up to deliver food and supplies to the former enemy during the Soviet Union’s blockade of Berlin in 1948 and 1949.
One month into the mission, Halvorsen met 30 German children at Tempelhof Airport in Berlin. The cargo pilot realized none had asked him for anything — not even a piece of candy. Overcome, Halvorsen gave them the two sticks of gum in his pocket and promised to bring more. As he had back home, Halvorsen dropped candy from the sky, now rigged to handkerchief parachutes.
“That small gesture,” according to the Air Force, “led to Operation Little Vittles, a humanitarian mission that continued for 15 months.”
Halvorsen became known as the “Candy Bomber.” Now 93, Halvorsen, who retired as an Air Force colonel in 1974, continues to make ceremonial candy drops around the world from a vintage cargo plane and share his story.....
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