(Stars and Stripes)

Somewhere above Germany, Oct. 18, 1949: Capt. Eugene T. Williams, U.S. Air Force assistant German Youth Activities officer, prepares to throw a Shmoo full of candy out of the Bon Bon Bomber. The B-17 Bon Bon Bomber flew from Wiesbaden Air base to drop some 80,000 candies over displaced persons camps at Ludwigsburg, Heilbronn, and Schwabisch-Gmund. It also dropped some sweets over the orphanage at Bad Aibling Oct. 18, 1949 as well as Frankfurt and Darmstadt.

It was the last time that chocolate bars, boxes of lemon drops and other delicious things attached to tiny white parachutes were dropped from the sky as “Operation Little Vittles” ended. The operation started in 1948 when 1st Lt. Gale Halvorsen, a pilot flying one of the many C-54 cargo planes in the Berlin Airlift, wanted to lift the spirits of the children of Berlin with candy drops from his plane. The initially unauthorized operation grew to a multitude of airlift pilots dropping candy over Germany for two years. Do you know a “candy bomber”? Help us solve a mystery and identify all the members of the last Candy Bomber crew! Read the original article and see the photograph here.