The Candy Bombers; The Untold Story of the Berlin Airlift and America's Finest Hour

New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 2008. First Printing [Stated]. Hardcover. Very good/Very good. xiv, 624, [2] pages. Illustrations. Notes. Bibliography. Index. Minor edge soiling. DJ has slight wear and soiling. Signed inside front cover by Earl (sp?) Moore, President of the Berlin Airlift Veterans, U.S. Navy Commander VR-6 and signed on fep by Bill Morrissey (sp?), RAF Nov. 1948 - Sep 49. A third signature is present but relationship to Airlift is unclear. Andrei Hugo Cherny (born August 4, 1975) is the CEO of Aspiration. He is also an author, historian, and the founder and President of Democracy: A Journal of Ideas as well as a former business consultant to Fortune 100 companies, prosecutor, Navy reserve officer, White House aide, senior fellow at the Center for American Progress and the John F. Kennedy School of Government Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs and chair of the Arizona Democratic Party. He is the author of The Candy Bombers: The Untold Story of the Berlin Airlift and America's Finest Hour. "The Candy Bombers" was described as like "Stephen Ambrose at his best" by historian Douglas Brinkley and "everything one could want from a work of history-engrossing, informative and stirring" by the Washington Post. On the sixtieth anniversary of the Berlin Airlift, Andrei Cherny tells a remarkable story with profound implications for the world today. In the tradition of the best narrative storytellers, he brings together newly unclassified documents, unpublished letters and diaries, and fresh primary interviews to tell the story of the ill-assorted group of castoffs and second-stringers who not only saved millions of desperate people from a dire threat but changed how the world viewed the United States, and set in motion the chain of events that would ultimately lead to the dismantling of the Berlin Wall and to America's victory in the Cold War. On June 24, 1948, intent on furthering its domination of Europe, the Soviet Union cut off all access to West Berlin, prepared to starve the city into submission unless the Americans abandoned it. Soviet forces hugely outnumbered the Allies', and most of America's top officials considered the situation hopeless. But not all of them. Harry Truman, an accidental president, derided by his own party; Lucius Clay, a frustrated general, denied a combat command and relegated to the home front; Bill Tunner, a logistics expert downsized to a desk job in a corner of the Pentagon; James Forrestal, a secretary of defense beginning to mentally unravel; Hal Halvorsen, a lovesick pilot who had served far from the conflict, flying transport missions in the backwater of a global war-together these unlikely men improvised and stumbled their way into a uniquely American combination of military and moral force unprecedented in its time. This is the forgotten foundation tale of America in the modern world, the story of when Americans learned, for the first time, how to act at the summit of world power-a masterful and exciting work of historical narrative, and one with strong resonance for our time. The VR-6 was reassigned in 1948 to the emerging Military Air Transport Service (MATS) at which time it joined it's sister squadrons VR-3 and 8 in "Operation Vittles" for the air lift of supplies and commodities into Russian isolated East Berlin. During the 8 plus months in Germany, they flew a total of 49,990 hours and carried 229,989 tons of cargo into the city of Berlin. They established a record for payload efficiency and aircraft utilization at better than 10 flight hours per day per aircraft for the entire period. It is interesting to note that either VR-6 or VR-8 was the top ranked squadron each month (Navy, Air Force or Allied) every single month of the operation.