The choice of the Cheney Award was apt in ways that went beyond the official citation. The award’s language about humanitarian interest captured what distinguished the candy drops from Halvorsen’s other activities during the airlift. He flew missions, as did hundreds of other pilots. The candy drops were the specific act that crossed the line from professional duty to personal initiative in a humanitarian direction. The award named that distinction.
The Cheney Award had been given to several notable recipients before Halvorsen, and it continued to be awarded after. For Halvorsen, it was the first formal recognition that what he had done was something the Air Force wanted to recognize, rather than merely tolerate. It validated the expansion of the candy drops into an official operation and signaled that military institutions could accommodate this kind of individual initiative when it served larger purposes.
Vandenberg’s presence at the presentation reflected the airlift’s high profile within the Air Force. The Berlin operation had been, by any measure, the Air Force’s most significant peacetime demonstration of its capabilities and its utility as an instrument of policy. The Chief of Staff presenting an award to a junior officer for the candy drops was a symbolic act connecting the organization’s achievement to one of its most humanizing moments.
## The Operation Ends
The formal end of the Berlin Airlift came in stages. The Soviet Union lifted the blockade on May 12, 1949. The blockade had lasted approximately eleven months, from the late June 1948 land route closures to the May 1949 reopening.