The letters also attracted attention Halvorsen had not anticipated. A German newspaper published a story about the candy drops. Halvorsen was called in by a superior officer and questioned. His account, in multiple retellings, is that the confrontation was tense, but that General Tunner, when informed, decided the drops should continue and be expanded rather than stopped. Tunner, who understood the airlift’s public dimensions as well as its logistical ones, saw what Halvorsen had stumbled into. The candy drops did something that tons of coal and dried eggs could not: they made the airlift legible to the public, in Germany, in America, and beyond.
Halvorsen had been making drops for about three weeks before official notice transformed the effort. He had been doing it without authorization, using his own and his crew’s candy rations, hoping not to get caught. The expansion that followed was something he had not planned.
## Operation Little Vittles
Operation Little Vittles was formally established in September 1948. The name came from “Operation Vittles,” the official American airlift, with the diminutive added to capture what it was: the smaller, sweeter version of the same mission.
The formal operation launched on September 22, 1948. With official backing, it could be organized and supplied in ways that Halvorsen’s unauthorized private drops could not be. The first institutional development was the involvement of the National Confectioners’ Association of the United States. The industry group offered to supply candy for the drops, and the offer opened up a supply chain that one pilot’s candy rations could not.