Veteran military pilot Gail Halvorsen, famous as the "Candy Bomber" who inspired air crews to drop treats to children during the Berlin Airlift, visited Stuttgart and U.S. Africa Command headquarters July 1, 2008, while touring Germany on the 60th anniversary of the historic humanitarian operation. During 11 months, from late June 1948 to May 1949, U.S. and British transport aircraft supplied the population of Berlin with food, coal and medicine during a Soviet blockade that helped set the terms of the Cold War. Military pilots delivered more than 2.3 million tons of food and supplies on more than 278,000 flights into Berlin. The airlift demonstrated the resolve of the United States and Western European nations to help postwar Germans rebuild their country into a democracy. The airlift also showed that the U.S. military could be used to support diplomacy through peaceful means, rather than through combat. Throughout the Berlin blockade, some commanders recommended using combat forces to force confront Soviet checkpoints so that ground convoys could reach the city. But senior generals and diplomats preferred negotiations and talks rather than an armed conflict, while using the nonstop transport flights as a powerful symbol of U.S. military and economic strength. "Between June 1948 and May 1949, over a quarter of a million sorties were flown around the clock, day and night, in good weather and bad weather -- and a plane landed about every 90 seconds," State Secretary Hubert Wicker of the German state of Baden-Wurttemberg, said July 1 in Stuttgart in a speech attended by Berlin Airlift veterans as well as General William Ward, commander of U.S. Africa Command. "They brought everything, from food to coal," Wicker said of the Airlift crews, "and not the least, they brought hope to the isolated Berliners by the constant aircraft motor noise. The Berliners called this motor noise 'the symphony of freedom.'" The airlift became widely known in Germany as the Luftbruecke, or "air bridge." Stuttgart has long ties with the U.S. military in Germany. The city has hosted U.S. European Command since the 1960s. Stuttgart's Villa Reitzenstein is now the Baden-Wurttemberg state government ministry building and is where U.S. General Lucius D.Clay, in the immediate aftermath of World War II, began building the government administrative offices for a united postwar Germany. Stuttgart is also where Clay convinced U.S. Secretary of State James Byrnes in 1946 to deliver a landmark policy statement saying the United States would rebuild Germany following the devastation of World War II. During their visit to Stuttgart, Ward invited Halvorsen and a fellow Berlin Airlift veteran, Bill Morrissey, to AFRICOM headquarters on the outskirts of the city. Meeting with the two airlift veterans, Ward explained that his goal of Africa Command is to focus on long-term programs that help create stability for Africans. "The spirit of humanitarian compassion reflected in the work of the Berlin Airlift and its impact on a generation of German citizens engenders precisely the objectives of US Africa Command as America reaches out to help our friends," Ward said following his meeting with the Airlift veterans. Morrissey, now a retired Air Force senior master sergeant, said his first tour of military duty was to work in a control tower in Celle, Germany, coordinating the air corridors for British and American fliers. "I was a teenager in the Lift, and I didn't realize until years later how important it was," Morrissey said. It's important to realize, he said, that "all of Germany benefited" from the Berlin Airlift. Halvorsen, a retired Air Force colonel, was a young lieutenant when he flew cargo planes in and out of Berlin. He became widely known in press accounts as the "Candy Bomber" when it was found out that he and his crew attached small parachutes to candy and treats, then dropped them out the cockpit window to German children who gathered just outside the Berlin airfields. He would tip the wings of his airplane so they children would recognize his cargo plane among the dozens that approached every hour. Other pilots soon adopted the practice. "I believe today we can say with complete accuracy that this action (by Halvorsen and his fellow pilots) created permanently a positive image of Americans in postwar Germany." Asked about his role in the airlift while visiting Ward's office at Africa Command headquarters, Halvorsen quoted a biblical passage saying, "'There is no greater love than this for a man, that he lay down his life for a friend.'" Then he added that the Berlin Airlift was not without tragedy, with dozens of aircrew dying in crashes. "Thirty one Air Force buddies and 39 British comrades gave their lives that an enemy could become a friend," Halvorsen said. The legacy of the Airlift, he said, is that helping others "brings out the best in human beings, and that Airlift made a friend of former enemies." For more information, see the Defense Departments Berlin Airlift 60th Anniversary site linked below: