The Candy Bomber's Parachutes

In 1948, three years after Allied bombs had reduced Berlin to rubble, a young American pilot named Gail Halvorsen stood at the Tempelhof Airport fence. On the other side, German children watched the cargo planes with wide eyes — not with fear, as they once had, but with hope. The same skies that had rained destruction now carried flour, milk, and coal to keep them alive during the Soviet blockade.

Halvorsen noticed the children never begged. He gave them his only two sticks of gum. Then he made a promise: tomorrow, he would drop candy from his plane. They would know it was him because he would wiggle his wings.

He kept that promise. Night after night, tiny parachutes made from handkerchiefs floated down from the belly of a C-54 — the same type of aircraft that had once carried bombs. Other pilots joined him. Over the months, twenty-three tons of chocolate and sweets drifted down from those Berlin skies.

The children called him Onkel Wackelflügel — Uncle Wiggly Wings. The wiggle of those wings became their sign. Whenever they saw it, they remembered the promise.