Candy Bombers by Andrei Cherny

From The Week of August 02, 2009

In 1948, in the first post-WWII clash between Soviet Russia and the Allied powers, the USSR cut off rail traffic into the sections of Berlin, Germany, under Allied control. It was an attempt to force the West to acknowledge the inevitability of a Germany governed from Moscow and withdraw its support. Instead, an effort to fly cargo into the Allied-controlled zones was organized by the United States Air Force and backed by British, Australian, and Canadian planes. By the end of 1949, 200,000 missions had been flown, delivering 13,000 tons of food to starving Berliners. The USSR eventually withdrew its blockade and the Berlin Airlift was credited with halting the Soviet advance into Europe.

Candy Bombers by Mr. Cherhny tells the tale of the men who proposed and then made possible the remarkable airlift and the pilots who flew those missions, some of whom would be remembered for generations as the men who dropped candy to the children of Berlin during one of its darkest hours. (4/5 Stars)