Aviation Days returns to Greene County Airport with flying museum, candy drop (copy)
Colleen Nelson
Colleen Nelson
Timothy Chopp, founder of the Berlin Airlift Historical Foundation (BAHF), will take visitors to the Greene County Airport back to the 鈥渃andy bomber鈥� days of the Berlin Air Lift this weekend.
Colleen Nelson
Pilot Timothy Chopp, founder of the Berlin Airlift Historical Foundation (BAHF), will drop Hershey bars, each with its own small parachute, from the sky during Aviation Days at the Greene County Airport on Sunday. (Photos by Colleen Nelson)
Colleen Nelson
Pilot Timothy Chopp shows off 鈥淰ittles,鈥� the boxer mascot who flew a number of missions to drop food in Berlin.
Greene County Airport is ready for Aviation Days this weekend, as anyone driving by the runway can see.
The historic C-54 flying museum The Spirit of Freedom has already landed and is sitting on the tarmac, waiting. Pilot Timothy Chopp, founder of the Berlin Airlift Historical Foundation (BAHF), has returned to take visitors back to the 鈥渃andy bomber鈥� days of the Berlin Air Lift of 1948-49.
Chopp lives in Toms River, New Jersey, but said that flying into Greene County Airport is like coming home.
鈥淢y mother was from Waynesburg and we lived in Washington County but this is where I learned to fly. I soloed here on Aug. 16, 1962 when I was 18. Bill Stockdale was the manager and the runways were grass,鈥� he recalled.
After serving as an Army aviation mechanic during Vietnam, Chopp returned stateside in 1966 to become a professional pilot with an abiding appreciation of the big birds of World War II. As a youngster, he heard his dad and uncles tell stories about the C-54 cargo carriers that flew humanitarian airlifts into Berlin after the war. When Stalin blockaded overland supply routes to the divided city, the Western response was to airlift the 3,475 tons of food a day needed for the city of 2 million to survive. 鈥淥peration Vittles鈥� involved around 330 C-54s that would deliver 1.8 million tons of food during the 15 months that Stalin maintained the blockade. This airlift would be the first mission of the newly formed U.S. Air Force, and marked the beginning of the Cold War.
Chopp蘑菇视频 dream of preserving the memory of one of the greatest humanitarian efforts in modern history was realized in 1988 when BAHF was launched. The foundation蘑菇视频 first Spirit of Freedom was a C-54 that was built in 1945 and completed hundreds of missions during Operation Vittles. After serving as transport for the Navy and the Marines, it was retired in 1975 and registered with the FFA to fly civil cargo. BAHF bought it in 1992 and spent four years restoring it and turning its interior into a museum of remembrance.
The Spirit of Freedom landed in Greene County for the first time in 2015, and was an instant hit.
The pandemic brought a double whammy in 2020 when Aviation Days was canceled and a tornado touched down on April 13 at the Walterboro Airport in South Carolina. The winds caused major structural damage to the Spirit of Freedom that would have taken three years and hundreds of thousands of dollars to repair, Chopp noted.
Luckily, another C-54 was found in Florida and painstakingly restored for flight. When Chopp landed at Greene County Airport in 2021 for Aviation Days, his next stop would be Arkansas to repaint Spirit of Freedom with the Berlin airlift markings of the 60th Troop Carrier Squadron.
Now the big plane is back, with a new museum that includes a walk through image of Berlin蘑菇视频 Brandenburg Gate that miraculously escaped destruction and a life-sized statue of Vittles, the boxer mascot with his own parachute that accompanied pilot Russ Steber on hundreds of airlifts.
Chopp will end Aviation Days on Sunday at 4 p.m. when he takes off to drop Hershey bars from the sky, each with its own small parachute. Kids will scramble on the field to claim them, just as kids did more than 70 years ago in Berlin.
This year蘑菇视频 event pays tribute to original candy bomber, Gail 鈥淢r. Wiggle Wings鈥� Halvorsen, who began dropping candy donated by him and buddies 鈥� mostly gum and Hershey Bars 鈥� to the hungry children of East Berlin. When word got out, American children began sending candy and handkerchiefs for 鈥淥peration Little Vittles鈥� and candy companies got into the act.
By the end of the airlifts in 1949, tons of candy had been delivered and Mr. Wiggle Wings was a national hero. Halvorsen died this year on Feb. 16, at his home in Provo, Utah, at age 101. In May, Chopp and The Spirit of Freedom flew in to honor his legacy.
Also flying in this weekend is the Lake Erie Warbirds鈥� TBM Avenger that saw action in WWII as a torpedo bomber launched from U.S. aircraft carriers.
Aviation Days opens at 9 a.m. and planes begin flying at 10 a.m. until 4 p.m. both days.
The event includes craft and food vendors, helicopter, standard plane and bi-plane rides, and a bounce house. Saturday only, Young Eagles age 8-17, accompanied by a legal guardian, get a free plane ride.
For more information go online to SOARofGreeneCounty.org.