Gail Halvorsen. Colonel Gail Seymour "Hal" Halvorsen (born October 10, 1920) is a retired officer and command pilot in the United States Air Force. He is best known as the "Berlin Candy Bomber" or "Uncle Wiggly Wings" and gained fame for dropping candy to German children during the Berlin Airlift from 1948 to 1949.
Halvorsen, 97, started his candy drops when he was a U.S. pilot for the Allied forces during the Berlin Airlift. In 1948, the Russians cut off food and supplies to West Berlin, Germany. The United States and its allies started airdropping packages filled with flour, milk, meat and even coal to the starving city.
How old is Gail Halvorsen?
99 years (October 10, 1920)
At the beginning of the operation, the planes delivered about 5,000 tons of supplies to West Berlin every day; by the end, those loads had increased to about 8,000 tons of supplies per day. The Allies carried about 2.3 million tons of cargo in all over the course of the airlift.
Back at Rhein-Main Air Base, just 280 miles away, he combined his candy rations with those of his co-pilot and engineer, made parachutes out of handkerchiefs and string and tied them to chocolate and gum for the first “Operation Little Vittles” drop from his C-54 Skymaster July 18, 1948.
On May 12, 1949, an early crisis of the Cold War comes to an end when the Soviet Union lifts its 11-month blockade against West Berlin. The blockade had been broken by a massive U.S.-British airlift of vital supplies to West Berlin's two million citizens.
The Berlin Airlift could be called the first battle of the Cold War. It was when western countries delivered much needed food and supplies to the city of Berlin through the air because all other routes were blocked by the Soviet Union.
Keeping Berlin fed during the Cold War. After the end of World War Two, West Berlin was surrounded by the Soviet occupation zone - and in 1948, the Soviet Union cut off the access routes to the city, in a bid to push the US, French and British out. The only way to get food into West Berlin was by air.
The fear of Soviet expansion into Western Europe was among the reasons for the formation of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. NATO was also a product of the experiences of the Berlin Airlift.
The impact on relations
Germany and Berlin would remain a source of tension in Europe for the duration of the Cold War. After the crisis of the Berlin Blockade in 1948-49, Europe became divided into two opposing armed camps - the US-backed NATO on one side, and the USSR Warsaw Pact , on the other.Checkpoint Charlie (or "Checkpoint C") was the name given by the Western Allies to the best-known Berlin Wall crossing point between East Berlin and West Berlin during the Cold War (1947–1991). Soviet and American tanks briefly faced each other at the location during the Berlin Crisis of 1961.
The official purpose of this Berlin Wall was to keep Western “fascists” from entering East Germany and undermining the socialist state, but it primarily served the objective of stemming mass defections from East to West. To this day, the Berlin Wall remains one of the most powerful and enduring symbols of the Cold War.
The Berlin Wall was built in 1961 to stop an exodus from the eastern, communist part of divided Germany to the more prosperous west. Between 1949 and 1961 more than 2.6 million East Germans, out of a total population of 17 million, had escaped.
As World War II was ending, the Cold War began. This was to be a long lasting and continuing confrontation between the Soviet Union and the United States, lasting from 1945 to 1989. It was called the Cold War because neither the Soviet Union nor the United States officially declared war on each other.
