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Spirit Of Freedom In Snyder County

MONROE TOWNSHIP — A big piece of history is parked at an airport near Selinsgrove. The “Spirit of Freedom” is a C-54 Skymaster, a big cargo pl...

MONROE TOWNSHIP -- A big piece of history is parked at an airport near Selinsgrove.

The "Spirit of Freedom" is a C-54 Skymaster, a big cargo plane used by the military beginning in the 1940s.

It's a flying museum now, and was used during the Berlin airlift after World War II.

Crews in the plane and others dropped supplies to residents in Berlin after Russian forces cut off the city from the west.

We spoke with one man who worked on similar planes during the Vietnam War.

"They flew supplies into Berlin," said Russell Hering of McEwensville. "The pilot would actually drop Hershey bars down to the kids with paper napkin parachutes so they'd see these planes coming, they wouldn't be intimidated by the big airplanes."

The airplane became known as the chocolate flier.

The plane will be parked at the Penn Valley Airport in Snyder County until Friday.

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