Thread: THE "CANDY BOMBER" OF THE BERLIN AIRLIFT, 60 YEARS

THE "CANDY BOMBER" OF THE BERLIN AIRLIFT, 60 + YEARS LATER

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2d7eOF8- ... re=related

In celebration of the greatest generation and the fall of the Berlin Wall



The Candy Bombers - Part 1

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oAbEQp1D ... re=related




The Candy Bombers - Part 2

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=86nZe9kl ... re=related

Obama didn't dignify the Berlin Wall Celebration... instead he sent our goof ball Sec. of State Hillary Clinton .....

For the Greatest Generation.. we haven't forgotten, nor will we let the Democrats throw you under the Bus on Health care

I am so thrilled to know about this! It's the first I've heard of it. Thank you so much sharing this story about the Candy Bomber, AirborneSapper7.

They were the greatest generation alright, the generation that never asked for anything, that rose to every occasion with dignity and intelligence, who had the depth of understanding, compassion and ingenuity to not only win a war but to heal the nations we defeated.

the greatest generation did it's part America.. now it's the Baby Boomers time to leed the way ...

thats what its all about.. we have to step forward en mass just like those in the past

Hear Hear, AirbornSapper7, and 10 AMENS. Our parents and grandparents would be appalled to see what we've let happen to our country.

AirbornSapper7, thanks for posting.

I am so proud of the brave men and women that have fought so bravely for our Democracy and freedom.

Restored WWII plane to return to Normandy for D-Day anniversary

Published March 24, 2014 Associated Press

• 
  This photo taken March 6, 2014, shows a World War II-era Douglas C-47, housed at the National Warplane Museum in Geneseo, N.Y., and pilot Naomi Wadsworth. At the invitation of the French government, the airplane will return to France in June to participate in celebrations marking the 70th anniversary of the D-Day invasion of Normandy. The airplane, known as Whiskey 7 because of its markings, is one of the original troop carriers that dropped paratroopers in advance of the amphibious invasion. In June it will recreate its role and drop paratroopers over the original drop zone in Sainte-Mere-Eglise. (AP Photo/Carolyn Thompson) (AP2014)
  
• 
  This photo taken March 6, 2014, shows pilot Naomi Wadsworth near a World War II-era Douglas C-47, housed at the National Warplane Museum in Geneseo, N.Y. At the invitation of the French government, the airplane will return to France in June to participate in celebrations marking the 70th anniversary of the D-Day invasion of Normandy. The airplane, known as Whiskey 7 because of its markings, is one of the original troop carriers that dropped paratroopers in advance of the amphibious invasion. In June it will recreate its role and drop paratroopers over the original drop zone in Sainte-Mere-Eglise. (AP Photo/Carolyn Thompson)
  
• 
  This photo taken March 6, 2014, shows a World War II-era Douglas C-47, housed at the National Warplane Museum in Geneseo, N.Y. At the invitation of the French government, the airplane will return to France in June to participate in celebrations marking the 70th anniversary of the D-Day invasion of Normandy. The airplane, known as Whiskey 7 because of its markings, is one of the original troop carriers that dropped paratroopers in advance of the amphibious invasion. In June it will recreate its role and drop paratroopers over the original drop zone in Sainte-Mere-Eglise. (AP Photo/Carolyn Thompson)
  
• 
  This photo taken March 6, 2014, shows pilot Naomi Wadsworth with a World War II-era Douglas C-47, housed at the National Warplane Museum in Geneseo, N.Y. At the invitation of the French government, the airplane will return to France in June to participate in celebrations marking the 70th anniversary of the D-Day invasion of Normandy. The airplane, known as Whiskey 7 because of its markings, is one of the original troop carriers that dropped paratroopers in advance of the amphibious invasion. In June it will recreate its role and drop paratroopers over the original drop zone in Sainte-Mere-Eglise. (AP Photo/Carolyn Thompson) (AP2014)
  

Next Slide Previous Slide


The next time the American military transport plane known as Whiskey 7 drops its paratroopers over Normandy, France, it will be for a commemoration instead of an invasion.
Seventy years after taking part in D-Day, the plane now housed at the National Warplane Museum in western New York is being prepared to recreate its role in the mission, when it dropped troops behind enemy lines under German fire.
At the invitation of the French government, the restored Douglas C-47 will fly in for 70th-anniversary festivities and again release paratroopers over the original jump zone at Sainte-Mere-Eglise.

"With me, it's almost, sometimes, like yesterday. It really never leaves you."

- Leslie Palmer Cruise, Jr.

"There are very few of these planes still flying, and this plane was very significant on D-Day," said Erin Vitale, chairwoman of the Return to Normandy Project. "It dropped people that were some of the first into Sainte-Mere-Eglise and liberated that town."
Museum officials say the twin-prop Whiskey 7, so named because of its W-7 squadron marking, is one of several C-47s scheduled to be part of the D-Day anniversary, with jumpers made up of active and retired military personnel. But it is believed to be the only one flying from the United States.
The plane will fly to France by way of Labrador, Greenland, Iceland, Scotland and Germany, each leg 5 ½ to 7 hours. Vitale compared it to trying to drive a 70-year-old car across the country without a breakdown. "It's going to be a huge challenge."
Among the 21 men it carried in 1944 was 20-year-old Leslie Palmer Cruise Jr., who also will make the return trip to France, his fifth, and be reunited with the craft — once it's on the ground. He is flying commercially from his Horsham, Pa., home outside Philadelphia.
"With me, it's almost, sometimes, like yesterday," Cruise, now 89, said by phone, recalling his first combat mission. "It really never leaves you."
Although the C-47 looks much the same today as it did on June 6, 1944, it looked very different when it arrived at the museum as a donation eight years ago. It had been converted to a corporate passenger plane.
"We had to take an executive interior out," said the museum's president, W. Austin Wadsworth. "It had a dry bar, lounge seats, a table with a nice map of the Bahamas in there. It was beautiful."
The museum's restoration of the historic plane to its original condition has been a roughly $180,000 project so far. Most of the money went toward two rebuilt engines and the rest to parts, equipment and service. The museum is trying to raise a total of $250,000 for the restoration and return to Normandy.
One upgrade it did allow was the installation of two GPS systems to keep the aircraft on course.
"The avionics in the airplane are modern. We're not going to go with what they had in 1943," Wadsworth said. "They would have had probably a radio beacon receiver and a lot of dead reckoning."
There is still no autopilot, said Wadsworth's daughter, Naomi, who will be among five pilots — one including her brother, Craig — taking turns at the controls on the way to Europe. That's fine with her, she said.
"It's history. It's real flying," she said. "With a lot of the computerized, mechanized things that you see in the airliners today, the airplane basically flies itself. ... This is not a situation where you can be asleep at the wheel. You really have to pay attention."
Said her father, also a pilot: "You don't just grab something and push it. There's a kind of feel to everything you do in these old birds. It doesn't have a soul obviously, but you don't just tell it what to do. You ask it."
Cruise still remembers being squashed between other paratroopers seated on pan seats as the plane left England's Cottesmore Airdrome. He was weighed down with probably 100 pounds of gear, including an M-1 rifle that was carried in three pieces, 30-caliber rifle ammo, a first-aid pack, grenade, K-rations and his New Testament in his left pocket, over his heart.
"We could hear the louder roar as each plane following the leader accelerated down the runway and lifted into the air," he wrote in an account of the mission. "Our turn came and the quivering craft gathered momentum along the path right behind the plane in front."
The airplane's engines were so loud he had to shout even to talk with the paratrooper next to him, he said, and the scenery through its square windows looked like shadows in the dark. Over the English Channel, a colonel pointed downward.
"In the partial darkness below we could make out silhouetted shapes of ships and there must have been thousands of them all sizes and kinds," Cruise wrote. "If we had any doubts before about the certainty of the invasion, they were dispelled now."

http://www.foxnews.com/us/2014/03/24...cmp=latestnews

WE haven't forgotten you Battle Buddies; for those that have passed; Rest in Piece and god Speed

WATCH: The incredible interview with the Berlin Candy Bomber

Tuesday, Oct 21, 2014 at 2:50 PM EDT

Glenn spoke with a living legend named Gail Halvorsen on TV last night, the original “Candy Bomber” from World War II. During the Berlin Airlift he began attaching little parachutes to chocolate candies and dropped them for German children to eat. He never could’ve imagined the everlasting impact this one small act would do.
While in Berlin for the Berlin Airlift, Halverson came across a group of children along the fence outside the airport. He was used to kids in Europe begging for candy when seeing American soldiers, but these didn’t.
“It was against the rules to drop stuff out of airplanes, and I got along well because I followed by all the rules,” Halverson said.
“When I did it, I hoped nobody found out about it. I met those kids at the fence, as you saw, and when they didn’t beg for any chocolate, and they didn’t have any for two years — kids around the world where I flew before would run you down in the street in this uniform, 1945 uniform, and grab your arm. After an hour when they didn’t beg and I turned to leave to catch my Jeep, I realize that, and I felt my pocket, and I said I’ve got to give them something. And I had the two sticks of gum,” Halvorsen
He broke the gum in his pocket into four pieces and pushed it through the fence. Their faced lit up with joy.
“I said I’ve just got to give those kids more. And I didn’t want anybody to find out about it because I didn’t have permission,” he explained.



“So Gail, when you’ve looked at this now for the last several decades, and you’re thinking about this, you’ve had to have reflected on this. What is it about the candy drop, what you and your fellow copilots and everybody else got involved eventually? What is it that you think…why has this lasted? Why has this become so legendary? What is it about this,” Glenn asked.

“Well, I think it comes back to enemies becoming friends and how does that happen. Jesus Christ said greater love than this have no man than he lay down his life for a friend. Thirty-one of my Air Force buddies and 39 of my British comrades gave their lives, not for a friend, but for an enemy who became a friend. So the bottom line I think it is, it just exemplifies the durability of the truth that the only way to real happiness in life is not a bigger car than the neighbor or a bigger house but getting outside yourself and serving someone else. Serving others is the only solution to happiness,” Halverson said.
“And the idea that…it was those kids, not me. Scrooge had been standing at the fence, and the kids had done the same thing. So the children of today are the leaders of tomorrow, and the metamorphosis from killing each other just a little while before to flying day and night is the thing that changed everything around.”
“I came back, I lived in a barn, up in the attic of a barn. There wasn’t room in the inn at first. One of my buddies bombed Berlin during the war not long before, and here they were just getting back to the states, meeting the family so the kids didn’t say who’s that stranger coming through the door, and they asked they go back to Germany. And my buddy bombed them. He got shot up.”
“One member was almost dead when he got him back to England, and I looked at him in the eyes, and I said, ‘Friend, how do you feel leaving your family again and feeding the guys that tried to kill you?’ And he took a moment, he looked at me, and he said, ‘Hal, it’s a whole lot better to feed them than it is to kill them. I’m glad to be back.’ That’s the healing balm on the wounds of war, the service.”

Watch Part 1 of the interview below:

1st Video at the page link:

Watch Part 2 of the interview below:

2nd Video at the page link:

http://www.glennbeck.com/2014/10/21/...-candy-bomber/