The Candy Bomber
1948 · Event
Pilot Gail Halvorsen starts wiggling his wings on approach to Tempelhof and dropping chocolate to the children below on handkerchief parachutes. 'Operation Little Vittles' spreads through the whole airlift — 23 tonnes of sweets by the end — and does as much as any statesman to turn yesterday's enemy capital into an ally.
On these timelines: The Berlin Blockade, Germany, USA, Cold War, Master
More from The Berlin Blockade
- Berlin Airlift (1948)
- Stalin blockades West Berlin (1948)
- Stalin lifts the blockade (1949)
- The Deutschmark ignites the crisis (1948)
- The Basic Law founds West Germany (1949)
- The GDR is proclaimed (1949)
- The Easter Parade (1949)
Around 1948
- US Civil Rights Movement (1954)
- Indian independence and Partition (1947)
- Apartheid (1948)
- Cuban Revolutionary War (1953)
- Decolonisation of Africa (1952)
- The Holocaust (1941)
- Battle of Stalingrad (1942)
- Battle of Britain (1940)
- Chinese Civil War (resumed) (1945)
- Korean War (1950)