By Paul Bertorelli

Vol. 4 Issue 2 Copyright © 2018 MASM June 1, 2018 Massachusetts Air and Space Museum 200 Hanscom Drive Bedford, MA 01730 www.massairspace.org By Paul Bertorelli Reprinted with permission from AVweb. Original story appeared March 8, 2018 on www/avweb.com Gail Halvorsen. Some readers will instantly recognize that name, some will search the mists of their memories and others will draw a blank. Which are you? In 1948, Gail Halvorsen was a 27-year- and the airlift. I’ll use this blog space to get you think- old prematurely balding Air Force transport pilot who ing about it because among the many things the airlift gained overnight fame as the beloved Candy Bomber represented, it was inarguably a moment in which the during the Berlin Airlift. At 97, Halvorsen is still with airplane indelibly bent the arc of history. us and this year, the 70th anniversary of the Berlin Air- lift, I suspect you’ll be hearing a lot both about him A lowly first lieutenant, Halvorsen was but a minor 20,000 pounds. Enter Lt. Gail Halvorsen, ordered to re- port to Germany in July of 1948. Seized by curiosity on his first trip into Berlin, he dra- gooned a sergeant to give him a tour of the devastated city, which he filmed with an 8 mm camera. When he en- countered a gaggle of ragged kids watching the airlift landings from the St. Thomas cemetery hard by Tempelhof’s runway, Halvorson gave them bits of gum and candy he happened to be carrying. On a lark, he promised to drop them more from his airplane, after Tempelhof Airport wagging the wings on approach. Berlin, Germany 1948 And so he did. The crowd of kids swelled cog in a big wheel, but his impact was outsized. Two and so did the buzz. books I’ve read recently chronicle the big lift: Daring When the airlift com- Young Men: The Heroism and Triumph of the Berlin mander, Gen. William Airlift, by Richard Reeves, and The Candy Bombers: Tunner, got wind of The Untold Story of the Berlin Airlift and America’s the “candy bomber,” Finest Hour, by Andrei Cherny. he summoned Hal- vorsen for a rug dance. The airlift began in late June 1948, ignited by a Except, shrewdly, Tun- spat over currency in divided Germany. The Soviets ner understood that closed road, rail and canal traffic to Berlin from west- the airlift was not a ern Germany, hoping the allies, whose tactical situa- battle of wits or re- tion was hopeless, would collapse and abandon Ber- sources, but of ideas lin. A stubborn and occasionally petulant Army engi- and public image. And he knew golden PR when he saw it. neering officer, Gen. Lucius D. Clay, thought other- Tunner encouraged Halvorson to expand his candy bomb- wise and pledged to sustain the city via an air bridge. ing, christening it “Operation Little Vittles.” Halvorsen The Soviets believed the very notion was patently ab- made a trip back home and soon became a telegenic star surd. Even the wise men in Washington counseled of a new medium: television. Clay, who had been assigned as allied governor of Germany, that the plan was untenable during the The U.S. public was enthralled and so were the beat- summer, much less during Germany’s notoriously fog- down residents of a shattered Berlin. Against fierce re- gy winter. Gen. Omar Bradley, then Army Chief of sistance from Berliners, the Soviets were trying mightily Staff, and Gen. George C. Marshall, then Secretary of to drive the allies out of the city, bribing them with food State, advised President Harry Truman that a with- drawal from Berlin would be inevitable. Truman re- Unloading supplies in Berlin jected the advice. “We stay in Berlin. Period,” he said. The record isn’t clear if Truman had the vaguest ink- ling of how ill-prepared the Air Force was to under- take such an operation. Clay was no better informed. The airlift was initially a slapdash affair, flown mainly by C-47s, some with faded invasion stripes from their Normandy labors and whose cargo capacity was woefully inadequate. Truman again overruled the staff and ordered -C 54s from all over the world— there weren’t that many of them—to Berlin. In the end, the U.S. had 225, each with a capacity of about ration cards and coal, a fuel in critically short supply. 1990, Berliners had squirrelled away 132 million pounds (Two-thirds of airlift tonnage was coal.) The airlift it- of wheat, 52 million pounds of canned meat and 15 mil- self and especially Halvorsen’s candy bombers were lion pounds of butter, among tons of other supplies. high-profile demonstrations that were instrumental With Germany reunited, they had no need for it, just in swaying public opinion, convincing Berliners that as Russians in the collapsing Soviet Union were suffering the allies would sustain the city. And whether he in- shortages and rationing. Ironically, even though Berlin tended it or not, Truman’s resolve won him a second term in an election that was all but ceded to Thomas Dewey. Mass Kids Think About Kids As summer turned to fall and the foggiest Novem- ber ever recorded in Europe, the airlift continued. Tunner was famous for charts and graphs tracking the rising weight of cargo carried into Berlin. Pilots were run ragged flying trips into Berlin’s three air- ports—Tempelhof, Gatow and, eventually, Tegel—24 hours a day, as much as a flight every three minutes. The airlift’s record on a single day was April 15, 1949: 12,941 tons in 1398 flights. One every minute. That’s more than twice as much tonnage as rail and canal traffic had been carrying before the Russian blockade. There was a price to pay, not just in treasure, but blood, too. Seventy-four pilots, crew and ground per- Many regular readers of Horizons might be perplexed as sonnel were killed in the 15 months the airlift operat- to the Massachusetts connection with this story. The ed. Under relentless pressure, pilots shaved opera- Candy Bomber himself, Gail Halvorsen, was from Utah. tional standards to the bone. By winter of 1949, new- ly arriving pilots were issued a putty knife to chip ice The various squadrons that eventually made up the com- off windshields so they could see to land. GCA ap- pliment of airlift forces came from far across the country, proaches were flown in weather so low that follow- including the territories of Alaska and Hawaii. The air- me jeeps couldn’t find the aircraft they were sup- planes were built in a variety of places, including Califor- posed to lead. nia. What was the Bay State connection? Maintenance suffered. Reeves writes that one All of the crews and the aircraft that eventually rotated to trick to start balky engines was to run down the runway on the ones that would run, spin up the balkers, Germany trained for their missions at Westover Field in brake and taxi back to takeoff on all four. When start- Chicopee, Massachusetts. But that’s not all. ers failed, ground crews wrapped ropes around the Many of the children of Chicopee were quite taken with prop hubs and used trucks to start the Pratt R-2000s. the kind gesture of our servicemen conducting the airlift, Yet the airlift posted a remarkable safety record. dropping candy to the children of Berlin. To aid in their At the time, the Air Force’s overall accident rate was endeavor, the kids crafted parachutes for the candy box- 59/100,000 hours. For the airlift, it was 26. es that were dropped from the airplane on their ap- By May of 1949, the Soviets realized they had lost proach to Tripelhof Airport. The tiny parachutes allowed the gamble and the blockade ended. But the airlift didn’t. The Air Force continued to fly cargo into Berlin the sweets to land without hard impact that could break until September, building stockpiles of supplies up the candy or, worse, hurt a child as it fell. against the Russians closing the city again. Amazingly, Western Massachusetts has a lot to be proud of! writes Cherny, when the Berlin wall came down in wished to ship the strung-together teletype food to its former tor- machines, inventing what menters, the breaka- we now know as elec- way Soviet republics tronic data interchange. blockaded roads and After the lift, it was used rail lines. They had no in many industries—and means to deliver the still is. stuff. My favorite quote Tunner’s achieve- about the airlift came ments during the airlift from Reeves’ book. Wolf- had ramifications be- gang Samuel, a young yond the immediate German boy living near geopolitical victory. the end of Tempelhof’s Robert Garrett, an air runway, would later safety investigator write: “One of those C- from the CAA who ob- 54s turned over our bar- served the airlift, said racks on a clear Decem- this: “The airlift has ber night and then fell advanced the art of air traffic control by 10 years … like a rock out of the sky. The two pilots were killed. Only the concept can easily be applied to New York, Chica- three years ago they were fighting against my country and go and Washington.” And it was. Major Edward Guil- now they are dying for us. The Americans were such bert, a Hump veteran and Tunner’s statistical genius, strange people. I wondered, as only a boy can wonder, tracked tonnage and airplanes with a network of what made these people do the things they did?” Harry Truman may have known the answer to this, even if he couldn’t have articulated it.

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