Hope in the Form of Chocolate
May 12, 1949
When Gail Halvorsen left for Germany in 1949, he was in such a rush that he packed a bag full of handkerchiefs to deal with his rather bad cold and parked his brand-new Chevy under a tree near the base where he was stationed, hoping that it would still be there when he got back.
Halvorsen’s mission was simple: Help get supplies flown into Allied-claimed portions of Berlin to break through the brand-new Soviet blockade that had been erected after a disagreement among Allied powers over Germany’s currency.
In the post-war era, both Germany and its capital, Berlin, had been divvied up between the Allied powers. Rather than keeping the peace, the whole situation quickly turned rather awkward. Not only did the U.S., England, and France want to combine territories under the same economic and governmental system (something that made the Soviets deeply uncomfortable), but Berlin happened to be buried deep inside Soviet territory.
So, when the U.S. issued a new and separate currency for Western Germany (as opposed to the already existing Soviet currency being used in East Germany), the Soviets felt that it was time to escalate the issue.
It was relatively easy to prevent Western forces from using Eastern trains and roads to get to Berlin (after all, they had to pass through Soviet territory to do so, and they had no legal right to do that), but it was less easy to shoot down airplanes crossing over Eastern Germany without starting World War III.
That, at least, is what the U.S. government figured when it called on men like Halvorsen to start dropping supplies into the western side of Berlin via aircraft.
Halvorsen was a genial character. He was the kind of man who tended to carry chocolate and a bit of gum in his pockets for any child he happened to come across; something about the polite, wide-eyed, war-stricken children he met in Berlin pulled at his heartstrings. So, he promised them candy delivered via handkerchief parachute, and told them to look out for a plane wiggling its wings.
News of “Uncle Wiggly Wings” quickly made it back to Halvorsen’s commander, who wasn’t pleased. But, by that point, the whole operation had become so popular in Germany that the Americans decided to keep it going.
By the time the Soviet blockade ended on May 12, 1949, Halvorsen and his fellow pilots had dropped some 26,000 lbs of candy over Germany, and the Soviets had filed a complaint with the State Department claiming that the candy operation violated propaganda agreements.
Halvorsen may have become a national hero by distributing hope in the form of chocolate, but when he finally make it back to the U.S., his brand-new Chevy was nowhere to be found.
:)