Grateful Berlin to honor airlift veterans

Relief effort marked beginnings of Cold War, Western alliance

May 11, 1998
Web posted at: 9:24 a.m. EDT (1324 GMT)

(CNN) -- "They called me the 'Candy Bomber,'" Gail Halvorsen remembers. "But the kids in Berlin called me 'Uncle Wiggly Wings.' That's because I wiggled the wings of the airplane when I came in over Berlin."

Fifty years ago, Halvorsen earned his unusual nicknames as a pilot in what many call the largest humanitarian mission ever. The Berlin Airlift brought needed supplies to the besieged city for 11 months, in one of the first confrontations of the Cold War.

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Cynthia Tornquist reports on Gail Halvorsen's role in the Berlin Airlift
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Now Halvorsen and his fellow pilots are preparing to return to Berlin, to a city and a country reunited. Aboard the "Spirit of Freedom," a Douglas C-54 cargo plane like the ones used in the airlift, he and a dozen others will fly to Berlin this week to take part in anniversary celebrations. U.S. President Bill Clinton, on a European tour, also will attend.

Capt. Jack Bennett, who flew more airlift missions than any other pilot, made the trip last week. In an emotional meeting, Germans thanked Bennett.

"It was the most terrible, one of the most terrible episodes in history," Bennett said. "They tried to starve almost 3 million people to make them into Communists, a very bad deal, so flying the airlift was for me the most rewarding flying I've ever done."

'Candy bombers' raised spirits

'Uncle Wiggly Wings' in 1998

While their cargo kept Berlin alive, Halvorsen and other pilots helped sustain the spirits of the city's children, for whom memories of war remained vivid. The pilots dropped candy, gum, and other treats tied to tiny parachutes.

"The airlift was our life," says Irmtraut "Nina" Jueterbock, a 13-year-old schoolgirl when the blockade began. Jueterbock lived with her family in a one-room apartment without electricity, the best they could do in the war-ravaged city.

'Uncle Wiggly Wings' in 1948

But when arrangements were made to fly children out of Berlin, the Jueterbocks declined.

"I didn't want to be separated from my family," she says today. "It was said the blockade couldn't last long."

But last it did -- from June 24, 1948, when the Soviet Union closed off road and rail access to Berlin, until the roads were opened on May 12, 1949.

'No guns, just flour'

After Germany's defeat in World War II, the country was split into zones administered by the United States, France, Great Britain and the Soviet Union. The wartime capital of Berlin, deep within the Soviet zone, was split along the same lines.

In 1948, the U.S., British and French zones were inching toward unification, into what would eventually become West Germany. In an effort to halt that process, the Soviet Union blocked all road and rail access to the western part of the city.

All of the necessities for the city's 2.5 million residents -- an estimated 4,500 tons of food, coal and other materials each day -- had to enter the city by air.

At first, the pilots did not know how far the Soviets would go to maintain the blockade.

"The first couple of times, we wondered if we were going to get shot," Halvorsen says. "We had no armor at all. We had no guns, just flour."

But the Soviets, dismissing the airlift's chances, did not shoot. On its biggest day, the "Easter parade" of April 16, 1949, the airlift sent 1,398 flights into Berlin -- one every minute. Before it was all over, more than 278,000 flights would carry 2.3 million tons of relief supplies.

Only 11 days after the blockade was lifted, the western zones of Germany adopted a new constitution. The airlift continued for four months after the blockade was lifted, until the end of September 1949.

The airlift marked a rise in tensions between the West and the Soviets, but it also helped heal divisions left by World War II. Almost immediately, The United States, Great Britain, and France shifted from Germany's conquerors to its protectors.

"The airlift was the starting point for Germany's inclusion in the West and for the reconciliation with the Western powers," Berlin Mayor Eberhard Diepgen says.

Related sites:

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• Berlin Airlift Site
• Berlin Airlift Historical Foundation
• Berlin Airlift Veterans Association

External sites are not endorsed by CNN Interactive.

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