Short answers, pulled from the story.
Gail Halvorsen was a United States Air Force colonel who gained the nickname "Berlin Candy Bomber" for dropping candy to German children during the Berlin Airlift from 1948 to 1949. He began by fashioning parachutes from handkerchiefs and attaching candy rations, later expanding the effort into the officially sanctioned Operation Little Vittles. He was also known as "Uncle Wiggly Wings" and "The Chocolate Flier."
Operation Little Vittles dropped more than 23 tons of candy from more than 250,000 handkerchief parachutes. The operation ran officially from the 22nd of September 1948 to the 13th of May 1949. A committee in Chicopee, Massachusetts, alone prepared over 18 tons of candy and gum and shipped it to Germany.
Halvorsen told the children he would wiggle his wings before dropping candy so they could identify his plane. He had used the same wing-wiggling gesture for his parents when he first earned his private pilot license in 1941. The signal gave him one of his most enduring nicknames, "Uncle Wiggly Wings."
Halvorsen received the Congressional Gold Medal in 2014, the highest award Congress can give to a civilian. In 1949 he received the Cheney Award from General Hoyt S. Vandenberg for his humanitarian action. He was also decorated with the Großes Bundesverdienstkreuz, Germany's highest order of merit, in 1974, and received the General Lucius D. Clay medal from the Federation of German-American Clubs in 2015.
Gail Halvorsen died from respiratory failure in Provo, Utah, on the 16th of February 2022 at the age of 101. His funeral included a flyover by a KC-135R from the Utah Air National Guard's 151st Air Refueling Wing and a firing party provided by Air Force ROTC honor guard members from BYU and Utah Valley University.
Halvorsen organized candy drops in multiple countries after the Berlin Airlift, including Bosnia-Herzegovina, Kosovo, Japan, Guam, Albania, and Iraq. In 1994 he persuaded the Air Force to drop hundreds of candy bars over Bosnia-Herzegovina as part of Operation Provide Promise. His last flight came on the 17th of December 2019, when he piloted the Berlin Airlift Historical Foundation's C-54 Spirit of Freedom shortly after his 99th birthday.