When I was younger, I remember reading a fiction book about some kids living in Berlin while items were being air-dropped in by the US. The awesome part was that, along with the food and supplies, candy also rained down in parachutes for the kids! I always loved that story, so I decided to look up what was really happening. I discovered that the man who started this was named Gail Halvorsen, and he was a pilot of one of the C-54 cargo aircrafts that were bringing supplies to Berlin while it was blockaded by the Soviets in 1948. He got the idea when one day he saw a group of kids on the other side of the fence, and shared a piece of candy with them. He marveled at how they didn't fight over it, and decided to bring joy to the kids more often by dropping candy attached to parachutes on his flights. The idea caught on, and soon he was joined by other pilots, all getting some candy with their rations and tying handkerchiefs or bits of clothes as parachutes. Eventually, word got back to the States, and everyone pitched in to help. Since the name of the airlift was "Operation Vittles," the commander decided that the candy drop would be appropriately named "Operation Little Vittles." Over the course of 15 months, about 23 tons of different types of candy were dropped to children on the other side of the blockade. One of the names that Halvorsen obtained among the children of Berlin was "Uncle Wiggly Wings" because he had told them to look for his plane - the one that wiggled its wings.
For more information, you can check out this website. It's got info on the Berlin Airlift, the Candy Bomber, and lots of photos:
http://wigglywings.weebly.com/
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