Q & A with Col. Gail Halvorsen

Col. Gail Halvorsen, a heavy transport pilot known best as the “Berlin Candy Bomber,” was in Independence July 14 as part of the Harry S. Truman Presidential Museum & Library’s 2008 Teacher Institute. Halvorsen was ultimately responsible for  277,000 candy bombing flights by 25 squadrons all over West Berlin, delivering payloads adding up to nearly 23 tons.
This year represents the 60th anniversary of the Berlin Airlift, President Truman’s response to the Soviet blockade of West Berlin in June 1948.

1 Did you drop candy to children living in East Berlin, then occupied by the Soviet Union?
I did. East Berlin kids said, ‘Look, we haven’t got any chocolate either. We can’t help they put a border here.’ So, I did for two weeks. I’d come over to East Berlin and break up soccer games. Soccer balls would go that way and the parachutes would go the opposite direction. Got some great letters. Then I came back from Berlin to Rhineline and an officer asked me what I was doing over in East Berlin. I knew I was in trouble. I told him I’m dropping (candy) to those nasty Communist kids. He said you can’t do that. He said the Soviets had complained to the state department, calling it a dirty capitalist trick, trying to influence the minds of the young people against us. I had to quit. When I flew back to Germany in 1998 lots of East Germans come through and asked me why I quit. I said politics not people.

2 Did you ever speak with President Truman about your role as the candy bomber?
Briefly. He was outside the theater in Washington D.C. and I was there for some talk or something. He yelled at me and was very brief. He said, “Good job.” That was more than enough for me. I have the greatest admiration for him. A man of integrity. A man of his word. I credit him with saving a lot of lives on the airlift. We were sitting ducks. We didn’t have anything but sacks of flour and corn to throw out of airplanes and these Russian fighters would come up head on and buzz us, to try and distract us. We didn’t know what the intentions of the Russians were. When they didn’t fire, we didn’t know why until a little later. That’s because President Truman had put 60 B-29 Bombers on the runway in England and sent a note to Stalin that if you shoot at those airplanes (involved in the airlift), there’s going to be a fire in Moscow. We had the atomic bomb, you see, and the Soviets didn’t. We voted for Truman every time we landed. We thought the world of Truman.

3 Will the legacy of the Berlin Candy Bomber last?
My grandson, Ryan Williams, organized a drop a year and a half ago with 3,500 pounds of candy to kids in Iraq and Afghanistan. Most of that was on the ground to be distributed. You also had helicopters dropping soccer balls and stuffed toys to kids in Iraq. Candy bombing is going on at a lot of different places.