Halvorsen, Gail S. b. October 10, 1920; Salt Lake City, Utah

In June 1948 Halvorsen, a Mormon farm boy from rural Idaho and Utah, was a twenty-seven-year-old U.S. Air Force pilot who had enlisted in the U.S. Army Air Corps in 1942, but was now flying C-54 cargo planes filled with flour into Berlin’s Tempelhof Airport at the start of the famed Berlin Airlift.

The story began one day in July 1948 soon after the airlift had begun when, fol­lowing a delivery, Halvorsen met thirty children at the barbed-wire fence sur­rounding the airfield. They told him: “When the weather gets so bad you can’t

First Lieutenant Gail Halvorsen and the 17th Military Air Transport Squadron rig candy to miniature parachutes for German children in Berlin as part of Operation Little Vittles, ca. 1948. (USAF)

land, don’t worry about us. We can get by on little food, but if we lose our freedom, we may never get it back. Just don’t give up on us” (Halvorsen 2003, 1-2). He soon re­alized that what these children had recently been through had made them mature and wise well beyond their years.

Halvorsen was powerfully touched by these children and their message. He mar­veled that during the hour he was there at the fence, not one child begged for candy or gum, as other children had done, but he knew that it had been months since they had had any. At the time he had only two sticks of Wrigley’s Doublemint gum, which he broke in two and passed through the barbed wire. He watched as those chil­dren who received the gum tore off strips of the wrapper and gave them to the oth­ers.

and paper put them up to their noses and savored the faint fragrance. Halvorsen also noticed that “their pleasure was immeasur­able” (Halvorsen 2003, 1—2). He had an idea: He promised them that on his next daylight flight he would drop enough gum for each of them, although his good sense immediately told him that what he had just promised might be against military regulations and get him in trouble. But he rationalized: “Compared to mass starva­tion this shouldn’t get me more than a minor court martial” (zd.). The children would recognize his plane, he told them, because he would “wiggle his wings” as he flew over the airfield, hence, the origin of one of his German nicknames—“Uncle Wackelflugel.”

On their second flight, one that brought them to Berlin in daylight at noon, Halvorsen and his crew, Captain John Pickering and Technical Sergeant Herschel Elkins, were better prepared. They had pooled their rations of chocolate and gum and put them into three smaller packages with white handkerchiefs for parachutes. Each man was sworn to se­crecy. As they flew in low the children were again at the fence. Elkins pushed the tiny candy parachutes out the flare chutes. The crew waited only seconds after taking off to see the result; they had scored a bull’s-eye. In subsequent weeks, the crew made addi­tional drops, until they decided to quit be­fore being discovered. They feared they had been pushing their luck. Someone was bound to see the number on their plane’s tail. Still, they noticed that the crowd of children at the fence was getting much larger and waving more enthusiastically.

After a few weeks, the crew was con­fronted with a mass of mail—at Tempelhof addressed to Uncle Wackelflugel and the Schokoladen Flieger (chocolate flyers). As it also turned out, one drop had nearly hit a reporter from the Frankfurter Zeitung (Frankfurt Newspaper). Halvorsen’s superi­ors soon knew what he was up to—as did the rest of Berlin. When subsequently sum­moned to meet with his commanding offi­cer in Frankfurt am Main, Halvorsen feared the worst, but was pleasantly sur­prised, not only to find enthusiastic ap­proval for what he and his crew had done, but encouragement and a military commit­ment to officially promote its continuation and expansion. The operation was even given the homey name “Little Vittles,” a designation taken from the name of the larger operation, “Vittles.”

And expand it did.

Word of “Little Vittles” soon arrived in other parts of Western Europe and the United States. Armed forces members in West Germany began regularly sending supplies. Hundreds of readers of the Weekly Reader from across the nation con­tributed money and supplies. Chicopee, Massachusetts, became the American cen­ter of the operation with 22 schools in full support with parachutes, candy, and pack­aging. By January 21, 1949, 6 months after its beginning, the Chicopee committee’s production alone was making it possible to drop over 800 pounds every other day.

As an added expression of their com­mitment to the program, in September 1948 the air force flew Halvorsen to New York to explain on radio, television, and in press interviews what “Little Vittles” was all about. There he also met John S. Swersey, a member of the American Confectioners Association and a Jew, who pledged his own support and that of his association colleagues. In December, back in Germany, Halvorsen and colleagues discovered to their delight that Swersey was as good as his word when 3,500 pounds of candy and gum arrived in Frankfurt am Main. It made a marvelous Christmas present for thousands of children and even for parents who had nothing to give. Halvorsen was transferred to Wiesbaden soon after Christ­mas 1948, but “Little Vittles,” still in good hands, continued.

Gail Halvorsen returned to Berlin in 1969 to meet the children of the Berlin Airlift children. The next year he was ap­pointed commander of Tempelhof Central Airport. Four years later he retired from the air force with over 8,000 flying hours. Dur­ing the ensuing years he has won numerous awards for his role in the airlift and his hu­manitarian service. Some of these include the Legion of Merit; the Cheney Award, 1948-1949; the Ira Eaker “Fellow” Award by the USAF chief of staff; the Service Cross to the Order of Merit from the pres­ident of Germany, 1974; the Distinguished Humanitarian Award from the Institute of German American Relations, 1999; and, with other airlift pilots, the Eric Warburg Preis, 1998. In 1999 he was inducted into the Airlift/Tanker Hall of Fame.

Douglas F Tobler

See also American Occupation Zone; Foreign Policy (U.S., 1949-1955), Influence of West Germany on; West Berlin

References and Further Reading

Halvorsen, Gail S. “Impressions of a Berlin Airlift Pilot.” Unpublished manuscript, 2003.

------. The Berlin Candy Bomber. Springville, UT: Horizon, 2004.

Launius, Roger D. The Berlin Airlift: Constructive Air Power. Washington, DC: Air Power History, 1989.

Launius, Roger, and Coy F. Cross II. Military Airlift Command and the Legacy of the Berlin Airlift. Scott AFB: Military Airlift Command, 1989.

Tunner, William H. Over the Hump. New York: Duell, Sloan and Pierce, 1964.