Candy Bomber

by Michael O. Tunnell

  There was excited whispering. Then after some prodding from the others, the blue-eyed girl asked how they would know which aircraft he’d be flying. That was a problem, of course. There were so many planes coming and going.

  “When I get overhead, I’ll wiggle the wings,” said Lt. Halvorsen. It was the way he’d greeted his parents when flying a small plane over their Utah farm.

  The girl wrinkled her nose in confusion. “Vhat is viggle?” she asked in her accented English.

  Lt. Halvorsen held out his arms and rocked them back and forth, making the children laugh. Now that they understood the signal, some suggested he leave right away and get ready for the candy drop.

  Lt. Halvorsen with the Reichstag in the background. He had just met the children at the fence and was on his sightseeing trip into war-ravaged Berlin.

  West Berliners watch the skies, hoping the plane overhead will make a candy drop.

  After his jeep tour of Berlin, Lt. Halvorsen hitched a ride back home to Rhein-Main Air Force Base in West Germany on an empty cargo plane. Because his next flight to Tempelhof was at 2:00 AM, he tried to get some rest. However, thoughts of candy kept him awake. American airmen received weekly ration cards to buy a few sweets, and his allotment wasn’t enough for thirty kids. He needed to talk his crew into donating their rations as well. But candy was like currency in war-ravaged Germany, so they might not be willing to part with it. An airman could hire a German woman to do his weekly wash for a couple of Hershey bars. If he saved up his candy ration, he could even pick up a camera on the black market. And that was in West Germany—in Berlin, a chocolate bar had ten times the value.

  Nevertheless, when Lt. Halvorsen announced his plan, his crew quickly agreed to donate their candy, even though they might be making trouble for themselves by not asking permission. But how should they go about dropping the sweets? One package, though not large, dropped at 115 miles (185 kilometers) per hour would be a dangerous missile. Halvorsen decided on three smaller packages suspended on parachutes made from handkerchiefs.

  Later the next day, as the lieutenant came in for a noon landing at Tempelhof, he spotted his thirty kids waiting, necks craned to the sky. He wiggled the wings of his Douglas C-54, and they went wild, waving and cheering and running in circles.

  Candy parachutes scatter from a C-54. Though Halvorsen initially jettisoned only three candy-laden handkerchiefs, later drops released hundreds or even thousands of parachutes at a time.

  “Now!” Lt. Halvorsen cried to Sergeant Elkins, the crew chief, who thrust the three handkerchiefs into the tube for releasing emergency flares. The little parachutes shot out of the tube “like popcorn.” But had the candy drifted lazily into eager fingers or settled on roofs or even on the runway?

  The answer came a few minutes later. Soon after German volunteers had emptied the Skymaster’s cargo hold of its flour, Halvorsen started up the engines. The steady stream of air traffic demanded a quick turnaround—unload and get back in the air. As their plane rumbled down the taxi strip, the crew spotted three white handkerchiefs fluttering through the wire fence.

  Lieutenant Gail Halvorsen, Technical Sergeant Herschel C. Elkins, and Captain John H. Pickering made the first candy drops to the children at the end of the runway at Tempelhof.

  With cargo planes landing as frequently as every ten minutes, both loading the aircraft and unloading them had to be accomplished swiftly. This photograph shows coal-hauling C-54s being loaded at Gatow Airfield.

  “The little parachutes were being waved … at every crew as each aircraft taxied by,” Halvorsen recalls. “Behind the three with the parachutes were the rest of the cheering section with both arms waving above their heads and every jaw working on a prize.”

  Lt. Halvorsen holds an armload of silk parachutes given to him by a supply officer.

  3

  Operation Little Vittles

  During the next two weeks Lt. Halvorsen and his crew made two more drops to the kids, who waited patiently until they spotted the plane with the wiggling wings. The group at the end of the runway swelled in size each time. Then the mail began to pour into Tempelhof Central Airport: letters addressed to Onkel Wackelflügel (Uncle Wiggly Wings) or Der Schokoladen-flieger (The Chocolate Pilot). All the publicity made the crew nervous. “Holy cow!” Lt. Halvorsen exclaimed when he first laid eyes on the stacks of envelopes waiting for him at Tempelhof. Now he was certain trouble was knocking at the door. The sheer volume of mail was enough to tip off his superior officers about the candy drops. So Halvorsen and the rest of the crew decided that the next load of six parachutes would be their last—but it was already too late.

  The day after what they thought was their last candy drop, the commanding officer summoned Halvorsen to his office at Rhein-Main Air Force Base. “What in the world have you been doing?” Colonel Haun demanded. He plopped a newspaper from Frankfurt, Germany, on the desk. “You almost hit a reporter in the head with a candy bar in Berlin yesterday. He’s spread the story all over Europe.”

  Standing before the peeved superior officer, Lt. Halvorsen thought his flying days might be over. Then Colonel Haun said, “The general called me with congratulations, and I didn’t know anything about it. Why didn’t you tell me?”

  The reporter had nicknamed the candy drops “Operation Little Vittles” and praised the pilot’s efforts. Apparently the US Air Force loved the good publicity, because Lt. Halvorsen was ordered to appear at an upcoming international press conference. The colonel was only upset that General Tunner had caught him off guard. “Keep flying,” he told Halvorsen, “keep dropping, and keep me informed.”

  Soon after, the Air Force officially adopted the name “Operation Little Vittles” for the candy drops and provided two German secretaries to help deal with the mountain of fan mail. Other servicemen began donating their sweets rations; Halvorsen would return to his quarters to find his cot covered with candy, gum, and hankies to use for parachutes. When they ran out of hankies, they started using shirttails. Shirtsleeves were lopped off and sewed at one end to make candy bags to suspend from the parachutes.

  In the beginning Halvorsen’s fellow airmen kept Operation Little Vittles going by contributing their candy rations and handkerchiefs.

  The Berlin Airlift dominated the attention of even the very young. Here young West Berliners act out the daily events at Tempelhof. They have laid out the bricks in the configuration of the buildings at the airport.

  A supply officer provided a dozen small, silk parachutes (one yard—about one meter—in diameter), which could carry a much heavier load of candy and gum. They were too nice to use only once, so they were inscribed in German with the message: “Please return this parachute to any American Military Policeman that you see so it may be used again.” There was also an English message: “Please return this parachute to Tempelhof Base Operations for Operation Little Vittles.” Fabric was nearly as scarce as food, so other pilots said Halvorsen would never see the silk parachutes again—they’d be made into underwear and shirts. However, the first time they were dropped, six came back to Tempelhof the same day. Not only did children and their parents usually return the silk parachutes, but they also often enclosed with their letters the smaller parachutes they’d caught or ones they’d made themselves.

  It didn’t take long for the crowds of kids—and their parents—at the end of the runway at Tempelhof to grow too large and, therefore, too dangerous. Lt. Halvorsen worried the youngsters might trample one another—or be trampled by adults—in their “mad dash” for the candy. So he changed the parachute drops to random spots all over West Berlin, such as parks, playgrounds, cemeteries, and schoolyards. This led to letters from East Berlin children. Because the Berlin Wall, which later separated East from West, didn’t yet exist, children in the Soviet sector were dashing across the boundary to snag a few parachutes themselves. They wrote to Uncle Wiggly Wings, asking to be included. After all, “you have to fly right over us before you turn to land,” they said. “There are p
arks and schoolyards that would make good targets over here.” So Halvorsen did it—at least, for two weeks.

  Little Vittles parachutes descend over a crowd waiting near Tempelhof.

  It didn’t take the Soviets long to figure out what was happening. They lodged a formal complaint with the US State Department, claiming the East Berlin candy drops were a “capitalist trick to influence the minds of young people.” In order to avoid further trouble with Russia, the Air Force ordered the lieutenant to stop making drops over the Soviet sector of the city. However, one girl managed to grab thirteen parachutes before the ban went into place.

  The mountains of letters arriving at Tempelhof included word from the polio hospital in West Berlin. Children suffering from the crippling disease guaranteed the Chocolate Pilot that their nurses and doctors wouldn’t mind a noisy, low-level flight over the hospital. The doctors even promised to catch the parachutes and bring them inside to the kids. They said the “fun of Little Vittles was better medicine than anything they had.” But Halvorsen did not attempt a candy drop to the young polio patients because the hospital was located outside approved flight paths. Instead, he arranged to visit the children in person. By that time individuals and companies from the United States were starting to donate larger quantities of candy, and a case of Paris-brand bubble gum had just arrived. Most German kids had never seen bubble gum, so Lt. Halvorsen took the whole case to them, along with lots of chocolate.

  As word of Operation Little Vittles spread, donations of candy and parachute materials poured in from many sources, especially from back home in the United States. This photograph shows a large box of Paris bubble gum that Lt. Halvorsen took with him to the polio hospital in West Berlin.

  Lt. Halvorsen receives a hug and a bouquet from a young patient at the polio hospital.

  James Gibson demonstrates the art of blowing bubbles for children in the hospital. Like most German kids, they had never before seen bubble gum.

  The lieutenant was never much of a bubble blower, so he wondered how best to show the kids what bubble gum was all about. Then an American health officer, James Gibson, admitted that he had been something of a bubble-blowing champion in his day. He put on quite a demonstration. Learning to blow bubbles was a big hit, and the hospital halls echoed with snaps and pops for days to come. The joy that came from the bubble gum encouraged the German nurses to set aside their worries about sticky sheets and pillowcases.

  Before joining the US Army Air Corps (which later became the US Air Force), Gail Halvorsen worked on his family’s farm in Garland, Utah. Here he poses with his dogs and his 1924 Maxwell automobile. (1939)

  4

  From Little Things Come Big Things

  No matter how far the Air Force took Gail Halvorsen from his boyhood home on a farm in Utah, the values he learned from his salt-of-the-earth parents never left him. One of the nuggets of wisdom he remembered hearing from his father proved out during his time in Germany: “From little things come big things.”

  Of his experiences with Operation Little Vittles, Halvorsen has said more than once that two sticks of gum, passed through a wire fence in Berlin, brought about something larger and more important than he could have imagined. In fact, what came out of this small act captured the interest and attention of the world, making it possible to multiply the effects of Operation Little Vittles a thousandfold.

  At first contributions to the candy drops started coming in from Armed Forces personnel living in West Germany. Then supplies began arriving from England and the United States, and from as far away as Australia. Because radio stations in the United States offered to play requests if listeners sent hankies to Uncle Wiggly Wings, letters with parachutes poured into the mailroom at Rhein-Main Air Force Base where Halvorsen was stationed. (Because Lt. Halvorsen was a bachelor, some were perfumed and trimmed with lace!) Weekly Reader, the popular classroom newspaper, also urged students to send handkerchiefs. Many American children who sent hankies requested names and addresses for West Berlin pen pals.

  Lt. Halvorsen opens mail from Little Vittles supporters. Behind him are boxes of donated Hershey bars.

  An old Chicopee, Massachusetts, fire station became the Center for Operation Little Vittles in the United States. The center shipped tons of supplies donated by individuals and businesses.

  In an old fire station in Chicopee, Massachusetts, a group of supporters formed the “Center for Operation Little Vittles.” Local schools—twenty-two of them—and businesses banded together to gather and contribute supplies. Chaired by college student Mary Connors, the center became a massive operation. By January of 1949 it was shipping eight hundred pounds (more than three hundred kilograms) of supplies to West Germany every other day. Businesses and individuals donated eighteen tons (sixteen thousand kilograms) of candy and gum, and two thousand sheets, three thousand hankies, and eleven thousand yards of ribbon for parachutes.

  In November of 1948, when newspapers reported the ban on dropping candy over East Berlin, increased support poured in from across the United States. A news article recounted some of the donations:

  Latest developments in the amazing growth of… [Operation Little Vittles] include the following: a donation of 900 pounds of twine …, a gift of 1,100 yards of linen to make parachutes …, [and] another large gift of cloth for the same purpose. The kids will stamp the following message on each parachute: “This candy is sent to you from the school children of America.” The message will be in German. (From the Springfield Massachusetts Union, November 2, 1948.)

  About this time Lt. Halvorsen was suddenly in demand for appearances back in the United States, and General Tunner sent him to New York City for television, radio, and newspaper interviews. After the interviews John Swersey from the American Confectioners Association, an organization of candy companies, invited the lieutenant to lunch. The farm boy had never been at a table set with four forks at each plate, so he was a little overwhelmed. Then, in the midst of this extravagant meal, Mr. Swersey looked up and asked, “How much of this stuff can you use?” He went on to say that the members of his organization were excited about Operation Little Vittles and wanted to do more to help. Lt. Halvorsen was so surprised that afterward he couldn’t recall the amount of candy he’d requested, but in little more than a month, 6,500 pounds (2,900 kilograms) of sweets arrived in Germany—enough to fill two railroad boxcars.

  Candy companies got into the act. Here is a letter from Life Savers, offering to send 200 boxes of their product, adding up to more than 4,000 rolls.

  Halvorsen and his accomplices had too much to drop by parachute, so they arranged to have the candy and gum transported by plane to West Berlin. There it was locked up in a jail cell and guarded, as it was worth a small fortune on the black market. The candy sat in the cell for two or three weeks until Christmas. On the afternoon of Christmas Eve, the German Youth Association and the US military threw several big parties for the kids of West Berlin and gave the candy away.

  Lt. Halvorsen wasn’t able to attend the celebrations. Instead, he was in the air, flying loads of potatoes, eggs, and flour into West Berlin. As he circled above the blockaded city, the lieutenant smiled as he imagined throngs of kids munching on candy by the handful.

  Newspapers across the United States continued to run stories about Operation Little Vittles, and with every news article, more letters and contributions rolled in. Despite the mass candy giveaways at the Christmas parties, there was still enough for every pilot willing to drop parachutes. In fact, so many were involved that Operation Little Vittles needed organizational help in order to keep the candy moving. The Officers’ Wives Club and the Non-commissioned Officers’ Wives Club at Rhein-Main Air Force Base pitched in to do the job. They displayed a large map of Berlin in the Operations Office, along with boxes of candy-laden parachutes. Numbers on the boxes corresponded with coordinates on the map, helping to guarantee that the city would be evenly covered.

  The German Youth Association, shown here in a publicity photograp
h, helped distribute thousands of pounds of candy flown into West Berlin for Christmas parties in 1948.

  A German family shares the “sky-food” dropped by an Operation Little Vittles crew.

  Two representatives from the Non-commissioned Officers’ Wives Club meet with Halvorsen at the Rhein-Main Community Center to help organize the increasing number of candy drops.

  Many children sent drawings that depicted the candy drops.

  5

  “Dear Onkl of the Heaven”

  By October of 1948 Peter Zimmerman must have decided he’d never score a candy parachute unless he took matters into his own hands. So he sent a letter—in English—to the man he hoped would soon be his Chocolate Uncle. He also tucked a map and a crude homemade parachute into the envelope. “As you see,” he wrote, “after take off fly along the big canal to the second highway bridge, turn right one block. I live in the bombed-out house on the corner. I’ll be in the backyard every day at 2 PM. Drop the chocolate there.”

  Lt. Halvorsen followed the map, spotted kids waiting below, and released the parachutes. A week later another letter from a frustrated Peter arrived: “Didn’t get any gum or candy, a bigger kid beat me to it,” he complained. Of course, it was nearly impossible for Uncle Wiggly Wings to drop a parachute directly into Peter’s backyard. More than once, he failed to get any goodies into the boy’s hands, and this was made quite clear by yet another letter. On a page with a handsomely drawn airplane dropping candy-laden parachutes, Peter wrote, “Have not received any chocolate yet!” Still, he thanked Halvorsen for his “good will” and enclosed some additional drawings as a way of showing his gratitude for the American pilot’s efforts.