Candy Bomber

by Michael O. Tunnell

  On the tarmac at Rhein-Main, Halvorsen demonstrates how candy-laden parachutes are dropped from a C-54.

  In this letter, Peter Zimmerman complains that he has missed out on the chocolate so far. Notice that the message on the tail of the plane says, “No chocolate yet.”

  Peter Zimmerman usually sent artwork with his letters to Uncle Wiggly Wings.

  Lt. Halvorsen’s drops to Peter were never successful, so Peter’s patience wore thin. In a letter without the gift of his artwork enclosed, he chided the American flyer: “You are a pilot? I gave you a map. How did you guys win the war?” He even suggested he might build a fire so the smoke would guide the plane—then Uncle Wiggly Wings could drop the candy upwind. After that letter Lt. Halvorsen decided not to risk missing his target again. He loaded a package with chocolate and gum and mailed it to Peter.

  This child’s drawing shows not only the candy drops, but also the delivery of food supplies.

  The post office also proved to be the only way to fulfill the request in Mercedes Simon’s letter. “My dear chocolate uncle,” Mercedes wrote in German. “We live near the airfield at Tempelhof and our chickens think your airplanes are chicken hawks, and they become frightened when you fly over to land. They run in the shelter, and some molt and give us no more eggs.” However, Mercedes knew a way to offset the tragedy of unhappy hens that wouldn’t lay eggs. She concluded her letter by saying, “When you see the white chickens please drop [the chocolate] there, all will be OK.” But Lt. Halvorsen was never able to find the white chickens from the air and ended up mailing the candy to Mercedes.

  Like Peter Zimmerman, Peter Petri wasn’t big enough to compete for the parachutes. “Dear Onkl of the Heaven,” he wrote in awkward English, “I’ll often standing on the park of Neukolln and waiting for something of you. But I’ll never couldn’t catch anything cause I am not big enough. The children of 12–14 years old, and the people pick the best stuff up. But what’s to do? Can you help me?”

  Of course, not all the letters were requests for special candy runs; most were letters of gratitude. Sometimes the thank-you notes included humorous stories about the perils of catching parachutes. For example, Klaus Rickowski wrote that he jumped into a duck pond to retrieve a parachute. When he climbed out he was covered with mud, algae, and duck manure. He continued on to school, arriving late and in a smelly and sodden condition. Klaus’s usually strict teacher overlooked his tardiness and sent him home to change.

  Mercedes Simon wrote to Lt. Halvorsen about her chickens that stopped laying eggs because of the noisy C-54s flying overhead. In this picture, taken the year before the Airlift began, Mercedes poses on the first day of school. Her shoes, purchased on the black market, are of the same style but are two different sizes.

  Here is an example of the many thank-yous regularly received by Gail Halvorsen from grateful children in Berlin.

  Often the pilots would receive letters thanking them not for the candy but for the food, fuel, and medicine that kept West Berliners alive. Here is a thoughtful letter, complete with drawings and a photograph of the sender.

  Other letters were less humorous and far more poignant. A West Berlin father wrote to say he had nothing, absolutely nothing, to give his son for his birthday. He tried in vain to carve a little horse from wood, noting that his miserable failure proved that—contrary to common belief—not all Germans are great wood-carvers. Then, from his window, the father spotted a smudge of white against the gray roof. Hands trembling, he used a stick to rake in the parachute and his son’s birthday gift.

  Scraping up something for birthdays seemed a widespread problem. Another parent sent a letter thanking Lt. Halvorsen for providing the only present her son received when he turned sixteen. “It was the first sweets for the children in a very long time,” Helga Müller wrote. “Chocolate can’t be bought even with money.” In fact, sweets were so precious that “if there was only one chewing gum, it would be passed from mouth to mouth,” Inge Tscherner recalled years later in a letter to Halvorsen. “Everyone was allowed to chew 10 times.”

  Adults and children alike addressed Lt. Halvorsen with a variety of affectionate names in their letters: “Dear Angel from the Sky,” “Dear Chocolate Uncle,” “Dear Uncle from Heaven,” “Dear Aviator of Chocolate,” “Dear Mr. Candy Bomber,” “Dear Flying Chocolate-Officer,” “Dear Bonbon Pilot,” and, of course, “Dear Uncle Wiggly Wings.” Some letters began simply with “Dear Lt. Halvorsen.” One such note arrived from Gertraud and Brigitte Schuffelhauer. “We live in Charlottenburg,” they wrote, “and cannot to Tempelhof come. My sister and I like so much chocolate to eat, but our mother can us not buy and our father is dead. Please perhaps one time something for us to bring?”

  By December not only Lt. Halvorsen but also every Berlin Airlift pilot was a hero to the kids of West Berlin. It was commonplace to see children crossing the ramp at Tempelhof or one of the other airfields to greet their benefactors. Followed by a parent, the youngsters would shyly approach the pilots and present them with armloads of fresh flowers that had somehow surfaced in the bombed-out city even in the dead of winter. Halvorsen recalls watching two little girls, bundled in their winter coats and trailed by their grandmother, hurrying across the wind-blown airfield. Smiling, they curtsied to the surprised American flyers, handed them a colorful reminder of summer’s glory, and then skipped happily away.

  On October 15, 1948, Elly Muss wrote a pleading letter to the “Schokoladen Flieger” (Chocolate Pilot). “For days and days, four small brothers without a father have run to the airport in vain to get their hardworking mother a piece of chocolate,” Elly wrote. “Is there another way to fulfill this request for five hungry souls?” She included this photo and provided her return address. The air-base secretaries who helped handle Operation Little Vittles mail saw to it that the request was “fulfilled.”

  Lt. Halvorsen received a letter from Trugard Brunger asking for his help. “Our little children … only get poor … milk powder, which they cannot drink but only eat on their bread…. Is it possible to bring us better powdered milk during the Blockade?” Eventually, shipments of fresh milk came in on the cargo planes. Perhaps other than the chocolate and gum, it was the cargo most appreciated by the children of West Berlin.

  Children in West Berlin sometimes visited the airfields to see the cargo planes and meet the airmen. Afterward, they often wrote thank-you notes.

  Of all the Airlift pilots Halvorsen was arguably the most popular. All the press coverage had made him something of a celebrity. He received his fair share of thank-you bouquets—and other gifts as well. For instance, Manfred and Klaus Meisner scrounged broken pieces of marble from the destroyed Reichstag (Germany’s parliament building), shaping and polishing them into a fine set of bookends for Lt. Halvorsen. Then before Christmas Irene Oppermann and her mother baked him a gingerbread Saint Nicholas carrying a candy-laden parachute.

  Children greet Lt. Halvorsen at Tempelhof.

  Irene Oppermann and her mother baked Lt. Halvorsen a gingerbread Saint Nicholas and delivered it to him at Tempelhof. Note that St. Nick is holding a parachute from which is suspended a candy bar.

  The most touching gift came from a little girl who handed him her most cherished possession—a brown Berlin teddy bear with fur worn thin. It had been her comfort in the dark cellar during the American and British bombing raids. “Take good care of him for me,” she said, eyes welling with tears. Although the American pilot tried to return her prized, fuzzy friend, the girl would have none of it.

  These outpourings of gratitude had their roots in something deeper than chocolate, as expressed by one of the children years later. He remembered walking to school one day when he was ten. Through the clouds and drizzle he could hear but not see the planes landing at Tempelhof. “Suddenly, out of the mist came a parachute with a fresh Hershey chocolate bar from America,” he recalled. “It took me a week to eat that candy bar. I hid it day and night. The chocolate was wonderful, but it wasn’t the chocola
te that was most important. What it meant was that someone in America cared. That parachute was something more important than candy. It represented hope. Hope that someday we would be free. Without hope the soul dies.”

  After Lt. Halvorsen left Germany, the work of Operation Little Vittles was continued by Capt. Eugene Williams, who produced this flyer in 1949. Williams is pictured on the upper left and Halvorsen on the lower left.

  6

  Ties That Are Never Broken

  As 1948 drew to a close, the US Air Force informed Lt. Halvorsen that his rotation time had come. His new assignment was to fly the larger C-74 cargo planes out of Brookley Air Force Base in Mobile, Alabama. While he prepared to leave, some must have wondered what would happen to Operation Little Vittles without Uncle Wiggly Wings.

  As he flew out of Rhein-Main in January of 1949, heading home to the United States, Halvorsen wasn’t a bit worried about the candy drops. He had left them in good hands. For the first month Captain Larry Caskey would head the operations. Then Captain Eugene T. “Willy” Williams, an ardent supporter of Operation Little Vittles, would take charge.

  As it turned out, not only did Willy continue the work, but he and the other pilots also increased the payload as more planes took to the air. For example, on Easter Sunday in 1949, a plane landed almost every sixty seconds, setting a one-day record of 1,398 flights that transported 12,940 tons (11,740,000 kilograms) of food and supplies. With the rise in the number of flights and a growing number of Little Vittles volunteers, Willy ended up dropping more candy by the time the Berlin Airlift ended than Uncle Wiggly Wings and Captain Caskey combined.

  In May 1949 the Soviets finally acknowledged that the Airlift was unstoppable and lifted the blockade on Berlin. Although transports by train, truck, and barge were now allowed, the Airlift continued until September 30. The Western Allies weren’t certain the Russians would stick to their agreement, so they continued airlifting supplies into the city until enough food and fuel were stockpiled—just in case the Soviets changed their minds.

  During the sixteen months of the Berlin Airlift, seventy USAF and Royal Air Force personnel lost their lives in plane crashes and other accidents, especially during the brutal winter weather. Many civilians died aiding the Airlift, as well, but at least the sacrifices had been meaningful. As the titan effort ended, the staggering payload totals were a measure of the millions of lives saved. Pilots and their crews made 277,569 flights into West Berlin to deliver food, coal, and liquid fuel totaling 2,325,510 tons (2,109,670,000 kilograms). Not included in those numbers were the tons of candy and gum delivered by Uncle Wiggly Wings and Operation Little Vittles.

  Capt. Williams, the new chief of Operation Little Vittles, drops a large container of candy parachutes over West Berlin.

  The Berlin Air lift was not without its casualties, as shown in this photograph of a crash. Winter weather was especially treacherous for the pilots.

  As Gail Halvorsen left Germany behind and moved ahead with his life, one thing didn’t change: he stayed in the US Air Force and made it his lifetime career. But even as the years passed and he moved up the ranks to Colonel, Halvorsen’s connections with the children of West Berlin were never really severed.

  US airmen and German civilians celebrate the end of the Berlin Airlift on September 30, 1949.

  For example, Mae and Ernie Jantzen contacted Colonel Halvorsen while he was assigned to the Pentagon in Washington, DC, and asked if they might have the privilege of taking him and his wife to dinner. During the evening out, the Jantzens revealed that they had responded to a radio station’s offer to play requested tunes for those who would send parachutes to Operation Little Vittles. “We sent you three with our names and addresses on them,” they said. “In a couple of weeks we received replies from two of the kids who caught them.” Mae and Ernie, who could not have children of their own, informally adopted the two children, sending a total of seventy-seven care packages over the following years. They even provided the wedding dress for the little girl when she grew up and was married—and later formula for her baby. “These kids blessed our lives,” said Mae. “They were an answer to a prayer, and all for such a little thing as three handkerchiefs!”

  Lt. Halvorsen proposes to his future wife, Alta Jolley. The engagement ring is in the payload of the Little Vittles parachute in his hands. (February 1949)

  Lt. Halvorsen, accompanied by his wife, accepts the 1948 Cheney Award “in recognition of … self-sacrifice in the humanitarian interest.” Secretary of the Air Force Stewart Symington stands to Halvorsen’s left. General Hoyt Vandenberg is on Mrs. Halvorsen’s right. (May 1949)

  In July of 1969 the Pentagon telephoned Halvorsen, who was then a commander at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California. The voice on the other end of the telephone said, “Those kids who caught your parachutes in 1948 and 1949 have gone to the Air Force Colonel commanding Tempelhof … and told him their kids want to see what it is like to catch those parachutes.”

  Tempelhof was still operating as an American air base, and once a year the Air Force opened it to Berliners, who came to see the cargo planes and remember how their city was saved (plus eat American hamburgers and ice cream). “Now they want you to come and drop goodies to their kids during the celebration,” the caller said. “Will you do it?”

  Colonel Halvorsen was on his way in no time. He sent ahead a list of names from the letters German children had written him, and Air Force personnel found many of them. Halvorsen and the “children”—now adults, of course—had a grand lunch together, swapping stories and laughing over the letters and pictures he’d received from them. He was thrilled to join the flight line again and soar over Berlin, dropping candy parachutes to a new generation. “The kids ran just as fast as ever,” he recalls.

  Colonel Halvorsen dumps candy parachutes from a C-47 Skytrain over Berlin in 1969, during a twenty-year commemoration celebration of the Airlift.

  Halvorsen surrounded by the children of the children who caught his parachutes in 1948. (July 1969)

  Even with the reenactment of his candy drops still fresh in his mind, Gail Halvorsen couldn’t have expected what happened next. A few months later, just before Christmas, another call came from Washington, DC. The Air Force had a new assignment for him—Commander at Tempelhof in Berlin.

  Gail Halvorsen’s return to Berlin in 1970 opened wide the door to reconnecting with the children from 1948. Again he represented all his Air Force buddies who had been part of Operation Little Vittles. “Almost everyone who caught a parachute wanted us to come to dinner,” he remembers. It was during this tour of duty that he learned for the first time that some children of Russian military personnel in East Berlin had also nabbed a few parachutes.

  Sitting at his desk at Tempelhof, Colonel Halvorsen recalls Operations Vittles and Little Vittles.

  Of course, it was impossible to accept all the dinner invitations, but the genuine nature of one insistent invitation finally caught the colonel’s attention. He and his family canceled an official engagement and made their way to an old apartment building on Hähnelstrasse, not far from Tempelhof. A young couple and their two sons welcomed them at the door. Ushering them inside, the boys’ mother retrieved an old envelope and handed it to Halvorsen. “Read this,” she said, her voice trembling.

  As he unfolded the page, he recognized his own signature. The letter was dated November 4, 1948, and the words, typewritten in German by a secretary, read:

  My dear Mercedes,

  Thank you for your little letter. I don’t fly over your house every day but surely quite often.

  I didn’t know that in Hähnelstrasse there lived such a nice little girl. If I could fly a few rounds over [your neighborhood], I surely would find the garden with the white chickens, but there is not enough time for this.

  I hope I can give you a little joy with what accompanies this letter.

  Affectionate greetings,

  Your Chocolate Uncle

  Gail Halvorsen

&nb
sp; Here is the letter Lt. Halvorsen wrote to Mercedes Simon in 1948. After finally meeting Mercedes in 1972, Halvorsen began adding a note to the letter with each subsequent visit.

  Colonel Halvorsen stands next to a C-54 with Mercedes Simon Wild, her husband, Peter, and their two sons.

  “I carefully rationed the candy and gum and ate it little by little,” explained Mercedes, “but I will keep the letter forever.” Then stepping to the same window she had peered through as a little girl, she pointed out the small backyard that had once held her elusive white chickens.

  Although many years have passed since the Berlin Airlift—and even since Uncle Wiggly Wings finally met the little girl with the frightened chickens—the memory of candy parachutes hasn’t faded from German memory. As the days of the 2002 Winter Olympic Games approached, the telephone rang at eighty-year-old Gail Halvorsen’s home in Spanish Fork, Utah. “We would like you to lead the German Olympic Team into Eccles Stadium for the opening and closing ceremonies,” said the caller. “Will you do it?” Stunned, Halvorsen accepted the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.

  On a frigid February evening, retired Colonel Gail S. Halvorsen marched into Salt Lake City’s Olympic Stadium, leading Germany’s athletes. He wondered if some of those following him might be grandchildren, or even great-grandchildren, of the youngsters he had helped to feed in 1948 and 1949. “The image of that destroyed city under my C-54 wings came back to me in a flood of … memories,” he recalls. “My feelings … [were] beyond my ability to express.” The children of war-torn Berlin hadn’t forgotten the young pilot and his friends who’d once given them hope in the guise of a chocolate bar.