Colonel Gail Seymour "The Candy Bomber" Halvorsen[1] (October 10, 1920 – February 16, 2022) was a senior officer and command pilot in the United States Air Force.

[3] He joined the United States Army Air Forces in 1942 and was assigned to Germany on July 10, 1948, to be a pilot for the Berlin Airlift.

During that time he founded "Operation Little Vittles", an effort to raise morale in Berlin by dropping candy via miniature parachute to the city's residents.

He helped to develop reusable manned spacecraft at the Directorate of Space and Technology and served as commander of Berlin Tempelhof Airport.

[4] After completing pilot training, he returned to the Army Air Forces and was assigned flight duties in foreign transport operations in the South Atlantic Theater.

[4] Lieutenant Halvorsen's role in the Berlin Airlift was to fly one of many C-54 cargo planes used to ferry supplies into the starving city.

Halvorsen had an interest in photography and on his days off often went sightseeing in Berlin and shot film on his personal handheld movie camera.

Halvorsen remembers: "I met about thirty children at the barbed wire fence that protected Tempelhof's huge area.

The accumulated candy was heavy, so in order to ensure that no children were hurt by the falling package, Halvorsen made three parachutes out of handkerchiefs and tied them to the rations.

[5] Support for this effort to provide the children of Berlin with chocolate and gum grew quickly, first among Halvorsen's friends, then to the whole squadron.

[5] Although Lieutenant Halvorsen returned home in January 1949, he passed on leadership of the operation to one of his friends, Captain Lawrence Caskey.

Halvorsen personally thanked his biggest supporter Dorothy Groeger, a homebound woman who nonetheless enlisted the help of all of her friends and acquaintances to sew handkerchiefs and donate funds.

[25] He also met the schoolchildren and "Little Vittles" committee of Chicopee, Massachusetts who were responsible for preparing over 18 tons of candy and gum from across the country and shipping it to Germany.

He changed his mind, however, when he was offered a permanent commission with full pay and the promise that the Air Force would send him to school.

[28] In 1951 and 1952 he earned bachelor's and master's degrees in Aeronautical Engineering from the University of Florida as an assignment from the Air Force Institute of Technology.

[10] He was next assigned to the Deputy Chief of Staff for Research and Development, HQ USAF, the Pentagon, and in the Directorate of Space and Technology.

During this period, he also served as the US Air Force Europe Representative in Berlin, as well as completing a master's degree in Guidance and Counseling from Wayne State University through an on-base educational program.

"[45] In June 2022, Senator Mike Lee proposed legislation to rename the Provo Vet Center in Halvorsen's honor.

[51] The United States Air Force has helped cement Colonel Halvorsen's airlift legacy by naming its next generation, 25,000-pound capacity aircraft loading vehicle in his honor.

[53] In 2008, Halvorsen was honored as Grand Marshal of the German-American Steuben Parade in New York City, where he was celebrated by tens of thousands of spectators on Fifth Avenue.

On February 8, 2002, for the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City, he carried the German national placard into the Rice-Eccles Stadium.

In 1992, then Brigham Young University Student Michael Van Wagenen produced a 7-minute work entitled "The Candy Bomber", which was later made into a full-length film.

The Senate of Berlin is actually planning to tear down the historical fields, along with other sport facilities (e.g. a Basketball court, sponsored by Nike).

[62] During Halvorsen's career and for several years following his retirement, he voluntarily represented the U.S. Air Force and the United States of America.

Halvorsen again participated, this time with a television team from Good Morning America, and dropped candy to Berlin children, including some of the grandchildren of those he had originally given chocolate to.

In 1994 he persuaded the air force to let him drop hundreds of candy bars over Bosnia-Herzegovina as part of Operation Provide Promise.

[9] In 2003 and 2004, he advocated a similar series of candy drops over Baghdad as a humanitarian mission to be a "ray of hope, a symbol that somebody in America cares".

[68] Since that time, the United States military has emulated some of his actions in Iraq by dropping toys, teddy bears, and soccer balls to Iraqi children.