Among the invited guests of honour was 98-year-old U.S. pilot Gail Halvorsen, who dropped hundreds of boxes of candy on tiny parachutes into West Berlin during the blockade. Halvorsen came to Berlin from Utah with his two daughters on Friday, the German news agency dpa reported. Allied pilots flew a total of 278,000 flights to Berlin, carrying about 2.3 million tons of food, coal, medicine and other supplies. Halvorsen is probably the best known of the airlift pilots, thanks to an inadvertent propaganda coup born out of good will. To this day, the airlift still shapes many Germans’ views of the Western allies, especially in Berlin.

Source: National Post May 12, 2019 10:07 UTC