'Candy Bomber' Gail Halvorsen returns to Berlin

Jun 24, 2008, 6:00 GMT

Berlin - The memories suddenly flood back to Gail Halvorsen when he looks out of the widow of the aging DC-3 as it begins its descent to Berlin's Tempelhof Airport.

The sight of bombed-out houses and mountains of rubble race through the mind of the 87-year-old as he recalls events which happened during the Berlin Airlift six decades ago.

The former US Air Force pilot is on a return trip to mark the 60th anniversary of the air bridge that supplied vital necessities to West Berlin after the Soviets closed land and water routes on June 24, 1948.

Started on June 26, 1948, the airlift saw a total of 2.3 million tons of food and coal flown into Berlin in 277,264 flights, a ton of food for each of west Berlin's 2.2 million citizens.

It was the biggest airlift operation the world had ever seen.

The city of Berlin is holding a series of celebrations to mark the event and pay tribute to heroes like Halvorsen, better known as the 'Candy Bomber' for dropping mini-parachutes of candy and chewing gum to Berlin kids during the blockade.

The Salt Lake City native got the idea after he saw a group of children watching the planes land from their vantage point outside the barbed wire fence around Tempelhof.

'Their behaviour impressed me,' he said, looking at the runway from the plate-glass viewing area of Tempelhof, which is due to close later this year to make way for a super airport being built on the outskirts of the German capital.

Halvorsen broke the ice by using the few words of German he knew to ask them how they were doing. They responded in school English by telling him who they were and what their life was like.

'They talked about their relatives in East Berlin who were not free to speak their minds. They described how important freedom was for themselves, to be able to express their thoughts without fear of reprisal. They were just children between 8 and 14 years old.'

As the young pilot was about to leave after spending almost an hour chatting, something else struck him about his new-found friends.

'Everywhere else I'd flown in the world children would beg people in uniform for candy. But these kids were different. They didn't have enough to eat and certainly no gum or candy. Yet the only thing they begged for was freedom,' he said.

Halvorsen wanted to give them something, but when he reached into his pocket all he found was two sticks of gum to go around 30 kids.

'I broke them in two and passed them through the barbed wire, and the children that got half a stick looked like they'd got a million dollars. The other children didn't fight, they just wanted a piece of the wrapper to smell.'

'I was so moved. I told the children that if they'd stand by the fence everytime I came in to land my plane I would tilt the wings and drop them gum and chocolates in mini-parachutes made from handkerchiefs.'

Halvorsen kept his word and the plan functioned for several weeks until one of the mini-parachutes almost landed on the head of a journalist.

The pilot was hauled before his commanding officer who was so surprised to learn at what he had been doing that he allowed him to continue his charitable work.

Halvorsen was assigned two secretaries to collect donations and answer letters sent by children, which were piling up at Tempelhof, addressed to 'Candy Bomber' or 'Uncle Wobbly Wings'.

During the next few months Halvorsen and his colleagues dropped around 20,000 tons of sweets and chocolates. Special permission was given for him to fly low over Berlin when making his deliveries.

Mercedes Wild was a seven-year-old living in Berlin's Friedenau district in 1948 when the airlift began. She wrote to Halvorsen saying she had never received any of his candy, and that the noise his plane made on landing frightened the chickens in her back yard.

Halvorsen, then an air force lieutenant, responded by sending her a parcel full of sweets.

'I smelled the chewing gum and then gave it away because I didn't know what it was. But there was a raspberry lollipop which I liked. Since then raspberry has been my favourite flavour,' said Wild, now 67.

A tall, personable man, Halvorsen has paid many visits to Berlin since the end of the airlift in August 1949. The first was during the 1970s when he was US commander of Tempelhof Airport for four years.

'Berlin has become my second home,' said the father of five. 'The people here mean a lot to me.'