In 1942, the Imperial Japanese Army had more than one million troops in China. They were opposed by far fewer Chinese forces, whose supply lines extended several hundred miles westward into India through both the towering Himalaya mountain range and the all but impenetrable jungle.
Japanese military forces had invaded China in 1937, successfully occupying and controlling nearly her entire Pacific coast as well as much of the interior. North of India, they proceeded to overrun Burma, seizing the Burma Road in the spring of 1942 and, in doing so, threatening the vital air force units of China and the United States, including Major General Claire Chennault’s Flying Tigers American Volunteer Group. The Flying Tigers, so named by the Chinese, were perceived by many as mercenaries—civilians who had been hired to fight in the air for the Chinese. They were paid $500 to $750 a month and a bonus of $500 for each Japanese plane they shot down. Of the 300 AVG volunteers, 110 were pilots, the rest mechanics and other ground personnel. It being illegal for American military personnel to fight for a foreign power (the U.S. was not yet at war with Japan when the AVG was organized), the volunteers had to operate as civilians. American war correspondent Leland Stowe wrote of the AVG: “Most of them are 100-percent mercenaries, over-cocky and know-it-all. They seemed to have the notion that shooting down Japanese was like hunting squirrels.”
These volunteers arrived in Rangoon, Burma, in September 1941, many with their golf clubs and tennis rackets, to be met by the oppressive heat and humidity, awful food, bugs, beetles, spiders, lice, fleas, flies, mosquitos, ticks, bedbugs, and giant rats. From bases in Burma and China, they flew sixty-eight Curtiss P-40 pursuit planes with shark mouths painted on their noses, relying on special tactics adopted by Chennault for combat against the vaunted Japanese Zero fighter. The Time-Life correspondent Theodore White wrote: “His squadrons were so mobile they seemed to be everywhere at once. With, maybe ten major centres needing fighter protection, Chennault manages to have his few fighters everywhere they are needed. Chungking and Kunming have not once been bombed since the AVG went into action.” At the end of their brief contract period, the Flying Tigers had accounted for a confirmed 279 Japanese planes downed, with several hundred more probably destroyed. Their operation had been crucially dependent on the same resupply line from India as that of the Chinese.
The Chinese Generalissimo Chiang Kai-Shek was also unable to resupply his armies when the Japanese took control of the Burma Road. His key role at that point was to contain many hundreds of thousands of Japanese troops in a vital holding action in China. American publisher Henry Luce declared: “For $100,000,000 China promised to keep 1,250,000 Japanese troops pinned in the field; to keep Japan’s formidable fleet blockading the China shore; to retard the aggressors’ march in the direction of U.S. interests. The merchandise was fantastically cheap at the price.” Realizing that supplies for the Chinese and the AVG would have to be brought in by air, President Franklin Roosevelt asked the U.S. Congress for the $100 million loan for China as a part of the new Lend-Lease programme, and a further $200 million in military hardware was given to the Chinese. The aid packages for China were intended to build up the strength that the Allies would ultimately need to fight and defeat Japan in Asia and the Pacific, while they were also engaged in attacking German and Italian forces in the European and Mediterranean war zones. To make the Allied strategy succeed, it was essential that China’s armed forces be kept supplied in the emergency.
Dramatic measures were called for and immediately instigated by the U.S. Army Air Forces India-China Wing of the global Air Transport Command, in the China-Burma-India theatre of operations. U.S. airmen began flying urgently needed supplies in a hazardous 500-mile airlift through mostly uncharted areas of the Himalayas—a mission commonly referred to as the “Flying the Hump”—to locations in China such as Kunming and Yunnani. The relatively short route was considered to be the most dangerous ever assigned to air transport. From the official U.S. Air Force History: “The distance from Dinjan to Kunming is some 500 miles. The Brahmaputra valley floor lies ninety feet above sea level at Chabua, a spot near Dinjan where the principal American valley base was constructed. From this level, the mountain wall surrounding the valley rises quickly to 10,000 feet and higher.
“Flying eastward out of the valley, the pilot first topped the Patkai Range, then passed over the upper Chindwin River valley, bounded on the east by a 14,000-foot ridge, the Kumon Mountains. He then crossed a series of 14,000 to 16,000-foot ridges separated by the valleys of the West Irrawaddy, East Irrawaddy, Salween, and Mekong Rivers. The main ‘Hump,’ which gave its name to the whole awesome mountainous mass and to the air route which crossed it, was the Santsung Range, often 15,000 feet high, between the Salween and Mekong Rivers.”
The American Hump pilots flew their precious cargoes through dozens of mountain passes at the 14,000 to 16,000 feet levels, far below the treacherous peaks on both sides of their flight paths. Crossing some of the most rugged terrain on earth, these C-47, C-54, C-87, and C-46 transport pilots brought their unarmed, over-loaded planes through some of the world’s worst weather—riding out sudden and violent storms, with heavy snow, rain, hail, fog, deadly icing, and high winds. The savage terrain offered little chance of putting their aircraft down safely should the need arise. Some crews flew as many as three such trips in a day.
The Hump air operation did not start from scratch. During the 1930s, important air routes over the Himalayas had been pioneered by the China National Aviation Corporation (CNAC) with the support of the Chinese government and the technical assistance of Pan American Airways. American Air Force General Hap Arnold supported the CNAC air cargo operation between India and China and soon the U.S. Tenth Air Force, based in India, joined the effort alongside the Chinese. By the end of 1942, the two organizations were delivering a combined 1,000 tons of cargo a month, but this was only a small fraction of the tonnage needed each month by Chiang’s forces. Several factors were affecting the operation and limiting the delivery tonnage and these included major shortages in both aircraft and crews. Flight crews were sometimes sent up into the nearby foothills to crash sites in order to recover spare parts for use in the repair of operational aircraft. The planes suffered from poor and insufficient maintenance which often kept them grounded. The frequent terrible weather conditions delayed, curtailed, and cancelled many flights. High-altitude flying conditions played havoc with the aircraft at times, as did the presence of enemy fighter planes, and some Tenth Air Force commanders flying the Hump seemed to lack total commitment to the effort. Thus, on October 21, 1942, General Arnold placed all Hump operations in the charge of the Air Transport Command. He transferred all the Tenth Air Force units flying Hump assignments to the ATC, who employed their new authority and their special air cargo expertise to tackle the problems of the Hump operation.
Securing urgently needed cargo in the main cabin of a Douglas C-47.
Airmen who rode the Hump had to fly during the monsoon rainstorms for six months of the year, operating out of the stifling, muggy heat of airfields in India’s eastern jungles. The fields turned to muddy quagmires, inhospitable to the men and the planes. Crews lived in perpetually damp clothes, tents, and bunks, and those who flew the Curtiss C-46 Commando aircraft also had to contend with soggy, leaky cockpits. In the monsoon season, the combination of driving rain and extreme turbulence near the airfields meant many days of operational delay. The monsoons brought more than 200 inches of driving rain to the ATC bases. But the men persevered and, as some CBI veteran pilots put it: “If you could see the end of the runway through the rain and mist, a take-off was expected.”
The launch aircraft of the Hump operation was the proven and reliable C-47—the Army Air Forces’ DC-3. Referred to as the “Gooney Bird” by many of her pilots, the C-47 would distinguish herself in every theatre of the Second World War, and in none more so than the CBI. As Otha C. Spencer stated in Flying The Hump: “The C-47 was a plane of destiny. No other aircraft in the history of aviation was so revolutionary in its impact on flight. It is an airplane born to fly. To take it into the air is simple—the C-47 takes off on its own. To fly it in the air is not necessary—the C-47 flies by itself. You just tell it where to go and make it behave. To land the C-47 is another thing. You must force it to the ground—it wants to keep flying.” The C-47 was the only aircraft flying the Hump operation until January 1943. The C-87, a cargo version of the four-engine Consolidated B-24 Liberator bomber, began arriving in India in small numbers to augment the Douglas transport. The larger C-87s significantly increased the tonnage movement in the Hump flights. Their seven-ton cargo capacity, combined with the added safety of four engines, a 36,000-foot service ceiling and a 3,300-mile range, brought an improved capability to the mission. But only a few of the ATC pilots had any four-engine experience and, initially, most lacked the necessary confidence in flying the C-87s. It was not until April of that year that the first lot of Curtiss C-46 Commando transports arrived in Karachi to begin service on the Hump run. However, so plagued were they with problems from rushed production, that all thirty of these aircraft had to be flown back to the U.S. for repairs and modification before they could be used in the CBI.
General Douglas MacArthur, Commander Allied Forces in the Pacific in World War II.
The same thirty C-46 transports returned to India in December. This time they carried huge loads of spare parts and engines. The C-46 had been designed to haul vehicles and equipment too large or too heavy for the C-47, but the C-46 had not been properly tested and quickly showed signs of serious mechanical and electrical faults. Plenty of accidents occurred and many Commando aircrews died as a result. Its flight path across the Himalaya range was nicknamed “the aluminum trail.”
The Army Air Force’s hoped to replace its ageing C-47 fleet with the C-46. The C-46 came equipped with two Pratt & Whitney R-2800 engines of 2,000 hp each and two-stage superchargers with high and low blowers, making it efficient in the thin air above 20,000 feet. With relatively low fuel consumption, a 200 mph cruising speed, and a 15,000-pound cargo capacity, it held great promise, but first the many flaws had to be resolved. Many hydraulic and fuel system problems arose—enough to cause Army maintenance personnel to speak of her as “a plumber’s nightmare.” In their history The Army Air Forces in World War II, W.F. Craven and J.L. Cate stated: “From May 1943 to March 1945, the Air Transport Command received reports of thirty-one instances in which C-46s caught fire or exploded in the air. Still others were listed merely as ‘missing in flight,’ went down in flames, or crashed as the result of vapor lock, carburettor icing or other defects.” Lieutenant General Joseph Stillwell, assigned to the CBI in January 1942 to direct the Chinese ground forces, stated late in 1943: “The C-46 is full of bugs . . . We have lost six over the Hump and the boys’ morale is lower and lower.” Captain Eddie Rickenbacker, the former WWI flying ace and later head of Eastern Airlines, took on twenty C-46A aircraft for use by his Eastern Airline Military Transport Division. Eventually, after many modifications, the more serious troubles of the plane were identified and fixed. In his testing, Rickenbacker’s pilots recommended 517 changes which he reported to General Hap Arnold, who ordered them to be implemented and the aircraft began to earn its place as the new workhorse of the Hump. In time, the pilots and crews even learned to like and respect the C-46. They appreciated it for the visibility and relative comfort in the cockpit, and the power-assisted controls that made the heavy airplane easier to handle.
Much of the Hump flying was over dense and threatening jungle terrain;
Air evacuation patients wait on stretchers under the wing of a C-47;
American nurses taking a brief break from their patient duties at a Pacific air evacuation base in the Second World War.
In the capable hands of the ATC, the Hump crews operated in an impressive new climate of efficiency. Many more and better prepared aircraft and personnel were arriving. One hundred new C-47A transports and 200 highly experienced multi-engine-rated pilots and co-pilots, along with seventy-five reserve flight officers were sent to India for the airlift assignment. The ATC provided a crew chief / radio operator and a navigator for each of the new crews. Also on hand to provide additional aircrew and support were ATC Army Air Force Base Units, Troop Carrier Groups, Ferry Command Squadrons, Air Commando Groups, the CNAC, Royal Air Force Groups, and Royal Australian Air Force Groups and Squadrons. Of the C-47s arriving in the CBI, about fifteen were destroyed or lost on operations, while many of the others spent long periods out of operation owing to shortages of spare engines and parts.
But maintenance improved greatly, as did the quality of weather forecasting. Airfield construction expanded significantly, with more emphasis placed on proper drainage and weather resistance. By the spring of 1943, the goal of delivering at least 10,000 tons of supplies a month to the Chinese armies was re-emphasized by the American president. Franklin D. Roosevelt who was determined to increase U.S. support for the Chinese ally. In line with this intensified effort, thousands of workers and an enormous amount of building equipment were soon diverted from road construction to the new airfields. In the next two years, nineteen air bases were completed in India and China for the ATC. Much of the actual construction work was done by Chinese civilian labour—men, women, and children—in tens of thousands. They took rocks brought to the sites on ox carts and broke them up, using crude picks to turn them into small chips that were compacted by primitive stone-filled rollers into bedding for the new landing strips.
Life on the ATC air bases in the CBI was miserable for the aircrews. Despite the best efforts of the ATC, the persistent shortages of major and minor items could not be resolved. Morale was dangerously low, but the airmen who, as one put it, were “living like dogs and flying like fiends,” did the job. They even started a spirited competition—attempting to load more cargo and to complete more missions than the others in their units, while accruing the most flying hours and the fewest accidents. However, a lot of accidents did occur—some unavoidable—and many airmen and aircraft were lost in the pursuit of the 10,000-tons-a-month goal, finally achieved in December 1943. The pilots and aircrew had too little time on night-flying ops, and flying heavily-loaded transports in extreme weather at high altitudes carried a very high fatigue factor. The ATC suffered 155 major aircraft accidents during the second half of 1943 and 168 aircrew fatalities flying the Hump.
The crews were flying more than 100 hours a month. Many pilots had no prior twin-engine aircraft experience, having been recruited as basic flying school instructors in Air Training Command. With spare parts hard to come by, and maintenance personnel inexperienced, it was little wonder that the accident rate was high. Colonel Edward Alexander, then commander of the India-China Wing, commented at the time: “Except on rainy days, maintenance work cannot be accomplished because shade temperatures of from 100 degrees to 130 degrees Fahrenheit render all metal exposed to the sun so hot that it cannot be touched by the human hand without causing second-degree burns.”
During the war, American Airlines president, Cyrus R. Smith, took a leave of absence to serve as a major-general with the U.S. Air Transport Command where he was most effective as a trouble-shooter. He visited the CBI late in 1943 to observe and report on the airlift conditions and on the many accidents in the programme. Smith said, “We are paying for it in men and airplanes. The kids here are flying over their head—at night and in daytime—and they bust [the aircraft] up for reasons that sometimes seem silly. They are not silly, however, for we are asking boys to do what would be most difficult for men to accomplish; with the experience level here, we are going to pay dearly for the tonnage moved across the Hump . . . with the men available, there is nothing else to do.”
With time, operational experience and the addition of more crews and aircraft, though, both the safety factor and the tonnage hauled improved dramatically. Supplies carried rose to 15,000 tons a month by spring 1944. By the end of the year, the average tonnage carried had risen to 34,000. The goods were being delivered to the Chinese with efficiency, but the accident rate was still too high and morale among the airmen still too low.
Wounded British troops being evacuated from the Italian battle front to England aboard an RAF Dakota transport plane.
In an effort to improve the operation further, a new commander was brought in to take charge of the Hump flying. Brigadier-General William H. Tunner was a disciplined, no-nonsense West Point graduate who became the outstanding U. S. Air Force authority on airlift operation. In 1948 Tunner was chosen to direct the giant Berlin Airlift, when the Soviets blockaded all land and sea supply routes to the German city. Tunner said, “It seems almost incredible that up until three o’clock in the afternoon of May 29, 1941, there was no organization of any kind in American military aviation to provide for either delivery of planes or air transport of materiél.”
In September 1944, it was Tunner’s job to increase operational efficiency, improve safety in the Hump flight operations, and to raise morale. He began by insisting on an improvement in the appearance of his personnel, with appropriate military dress and attention to detail. He raised the standard of meals and recreation opportunities, while implementing more accurate weather forecasting and better aircraft maintenance. A highly-qualified, grimly determined hands-on leader, General Tunner took the controls of a C-46 Commando transport on a typical trip over the Himalayas from an Indian base to see for himself the sort of conditions faced daily by his crews. He noted the numerous blackened blotches along the runway—evidence of ATC transports that had crashed and burned while trying to fly the Hump missions—and resolved to lower the accident rate. By the end of the Pacific war, he had succeeded in cutting that rate by half. As Tunner said, “Every drop of fuel, every weapon, every round of ammunition, and 100 percent of such diverse supplies as carbon paper and C-rations, every such item used by American forces in China was flown in by airlift.” He noted the cost in American lives: “It was safer to take a bomber deep into Germany than to fly a transport plane over the Rockpile from one friendly nation to another.”
The innovative Tunner instituted a system of production line maintenance to improve the safety and operational availability of his planes. Aircraft due for routine maintenance passed through as many as ten work stations. Different maintenance procedures were performed at each station and all of the completed work was thoroughly inspected at the end of the line. When the work passed inspection, the aircraft was test-flown before being returned to operations. The success of Tunner’s line maintenance approach was so impressive that it soon became standard practice throughout the Army Air Forces. His interests didn’t stop at the aircraft.
Tunner received reports from his flight surgeon that nearly half of the pilots flying the Hump were suffering from operational fatigue—a condition frequently leading to flying accidents. Many pilots were so anxious to finish their Hump tours and go home, that they were flying as many as 165 hours a month to accumulate the flight time required as fast as possible. On learning of the practice, Tunner immediately changed the policy to make his pilots fly in the CBI for one full year and for 750 flying hours, before they could go home. While the change did not increase his popularity, it did save lives and, in the end, the pilots were grateful to him.
American military personnel recovering in a Nissen hut base hospital at Diddington, England. The most serious cases were evacuated by air to stateside facilities for more advanced care and treatment.
First Lt Phyllis Hocking attending a patient in the U.S. 36th Evacuation Hospital at Palo, Leyte, the Phiippine Islands.
One troubling affliction for many of the airmen was the “Dhobi itch,” a persistent and nasty form of rash common in the climate. They lived, too, with the threat of malaria, which required them all to take a daily dose of Atabrine—a yellow tablet available on the mess hall tables along with the salt and pepper. The Atabrine helped in the fight against malaria, and to improve the living conditions of his men still further, Tunner established a programme of aerial spraying to help repel the malarial mosquitos in the region. He employed stripped-down North American B-25 Mitchell bombers that he called “Skeeter Beaters.” These, in combination with the Atabrine and the use of mosquito netting and repellents, proved effective in reducing the incidence of malaria among his personnel. Tunner said, “I had been sent to this command to direct American soldiers and while I was their commander, by God, they were going to live like Americans and be proud they were Americans.”
Before Tunner’s arrival, an early form of search-and-rescue organization had been set up to cope with the problem of helping airmen who had been forced to bail out or crash-land in the harsh terrain, to get to safety. Survival could be down to a matter of a few days, or even hours, and movement for downed, ill, injured, or burned airmen was difficult. In the first months of the Hump flying, news that one of the planes had gone down sent the first available crew and aircraft off on a search for the missing airmen. Later on, Chabua-based Captain John “Blackie” Porter organized Blackie’s Gang—two C-47s and crews armed with .30 calibre machine-guns, Tommy guns, and hand grenades. Porter’s outfit was successful in several search-and-rescue efforts and he was later placed in command of a more formalized search-and-rescue unit. He was lost in action on such a mission in December 1943.
William Tunner quickly focused on the need to strengthen the search-and-rescue capability and appointed Major Donald Pricer, one of the Hump pilots, to command the SR unit. Four B-25s, a C-47 and an L-5 spotter plane were painted a bright yellow and assigned to the new unit with the job to locate and identify all aircraft wrecks in the area, in order to eliminate confusion and duplication of effort. In another related move, Tunner ordered that a jungle indoctrination camp be established at each of his bases, with attendance compulsory for all new arrivals.
In his tenure with ATC, Tunner’s cargo aircraft inventory grew from 369 to 722 and his personnel from 26,000 to 84,000. By the final phase of his operations to and from China, one ATC transport aircraft was taking off every three minutes and the monthly cargo deliveries reached an average of 44,000 tons, peaking in July 1945 at a massive 71,000 tons. More than 650,000 tons of gasoline, munitions, men and materiél had been flown over the Hump during the airlift. The operation far exceeded the supply requirement of the Chinese and made it possible for the troops of Chiang Kai-Shek to tie-up more than a million soldiers of the Japanese Imperial Army in China. This seriously limited the fighting personnel available to Japan for opposing the Allied amphibious landings in their Pacific island-hopping campaign, and shortened the war. The official Air Force History: “Here [in the CBI], the AAF demonstrated conclusively that a vast quantity of cargo could be delivered by air, even under the most unfavorable circumstances, if only the men who controlled the aircraft, the terminals, and the needed materiél were willing to pay the price in money and in men.” General William H. Tunner said, “For every thousand tons flown into China, three Americans gave their lives.”
A shoulder patch for the China-Burma-India Theatre of Operations in World War II.
The highly regarded journalist and war correspondent Eric Sevareid wrote of a trip he made with a C-47 crew on a re-supply mission over the Hump “that day there was not a cloud in the skies over North Burma, and that was bad. The Japs liked to catch unarmed transport planes like ours, flying ‘over the hump’ between China and India, and the radio operator had just reported that four Zeros were somewhere around.
“Teetering on a wooden ration box, I thrust my head up into the glass bulge on the top of the C-47, peering into the dazzling blue for signs of the Zeros. I could see a long distance in three directions over the greenish, jungle-covered hills, but when I gazed eastward, toward the China we had left an hour before, the morning sun blinded me. If we could spot the Zeros first, we had a chance. The pilot, Lt. George Hannah of Louisville, could slip the camouflaged plane down low into the valleys and try to sneak away. But if they saw us first and came at us out of the sun—well, another plane number would probably be rubbed off the blackboard in the operations shack at the Assam base in India; and the boys who regularly fly the hump into China would say, in that misleadingly casual tone I have heard so many times, ‘Hannah got his today.’
“The crew chief took my place and I stood behind the pilots, watching the ridges lapping toward us. The co-pilot, who had not made this run often, was a little nervous and would quietly suggest to Hannah that maybe we wouldn’t clear the next one, a quarter-mile away. Hannah would say nohing, but turn and wink at his colleague as we cleared the ridge with no more than 40 feet to spare. That was the idea; on a cloudless day it was no good flying high, because that’s where the Zeros played about. Instead, you just coasted over the hills, below the horizon of the next range, risking a sudden downdraft which might smash you, but making it tough for the Zeros to pick you out in the bewildering patterns of green and brown.
“There was another risk. Hannah pointed down to a cluster of long, low, wooden buildings, thatched with palm and banana leaves. We were flying directly over some Japanese army barracks, almost within pistol range. I cannot describe the sensation it gave me; I know the meaning now of the phrase, ‘between the devil and the deep blue sea.’ We stared at the brush below, waiting for the first machine-gun tracer bullets. Hidden machine-guns on the North Burma hillsides have downed more than one of our transport planes.
“But this time there was no shooting. We roared on and suddenly, dead ahead, we saw a narrow, white gash winding across the hills. This was the ‘Ledo Road’ which American army engineers are driving through toward its ultimate connection with the old Burma Road. We were over it in a moment and knew then that we had the protection of our own anti-aircraft guns hidden somewhere in that impenetrable bush below us. In a little while our three-hour run from China was ended and we stepped out into the muggy heat of Assam. I never felt more relieved in my life and even Hannah, I noticed, was mopping the sweat from his ruddy face. He had that day completed his 96th flight over the hump.
“Hannah is just one of hundreds of American boys who have been ‘sweating it out’ over that route for the last two years. They are carrying gas, bombs, and ammunition for Major General Chennault’s 14th Air Force, and jeeps, guns, medicine, and a thousand other items to keep China’s flickering resistance alive. They have helped to hold the great bastion of the Chinese earth where one day, Lieutenant General Stillwell believes, Japan’s ultimate fate may be decided.
“Strangely assorted cargoes have been carried back out of China: ingots of tin ore and wolfram for America’s factories; American soldiers on stretchers, some silent with wounds, others twisting and turning, racked with malaria; Chinese soldiers sent to India for training with modern American weapons, under American officers. These Chinese troops will go back into China on foot, fighting their way. Some are already doing so, clearing the Japs away from the advancing Ledo Road.
“Few Americans know the story of the great hump flight, because the War Department had to maintain silence until now. Today the story can be told, because our protection of the route is more complete.
“We have a long list of unsung heroes in this war, and the Air Transport Command youngsters who have flown the hump day in and day out ought to be placed near the head of this list. Most of them haven’t even been able to let their families know what they are doing. ‘Just flying a routine transport run’—it sounds at a distance like a cinch, but I have heard our fighter pilots and bomber crews out there talk about the hump flyers, and I know the deep respect in which they are held. I remember Lt. Tommy Harmon, who fights in a P-38, saying at mess: ‘I would rather fly a fighter against the Japs three times a day than fly a transport over the hump once.’
“The ATC operations room is like a combat headquarters. Every night, when I was there, they jotted down the casualties or near-casualties for the day. It takes a particular type of lad to fly this route. His navigation must be excellent, because for most of the three-hour run he must maintain radio silence, and it is very easy to get lost over that rugged terrain, especially if he must fly among the towering ice-covered peaks which extend eastward from the principal range of the Himalayas.
“He must know his plane thoroughly and how it will react in all kinds of weather. He may leave India deciding to fly low over the Burma hills and find that an unforeseeable monsoon storm forces him up to 18,000 feet, where his plane may ice over in a few moments. If he has passengers, the crew chief must revive those who pass out for want of oxygen.
“Most of all, he must have steady nerves. The brash, highly strung boy who makes a good fighter pilot will not do. To be attacked when you have a gun in your hand is one thing—anybody feels confident. But to know that a Zero is after you and that you are utterly defenseless, and still to keep your eyes ahead and your mind working logically to figure out your escape—that is something quite different.
“Planes crack up on the hump, and so do flyers. Expert medical officers, such as Col. Don Flickinger at the India base, examine the pilots at frequent intervals; at the first sign of fraying nerves they are sent out for a rest—to the luxuries of Calcutta, or the cool lakes and pines of Kashmir. Some, like Hannah, seem to go on forever without a break in their nervous systems, but they are not many.
“Those who complain that we are ‘doing nothing for China’ would be surprised at the amount of stuff we are delivering by air over the hump. There are scores of flights into China every day in the year. The Burma Road, at its very peak, carried about 15,000 tons of supplies into China per month. My guess is that the ATC is already approaching that figure. Of course, that is pitifully little. One big cargo ship a month would equal it.
“Sitting about the barrack rooms you hear constant talk of crew members who are ‘hiking out.’ Boys who have had to bail out of their plane somewhere on the hump are trying to find their way across the ridges and through the jungles to the India or China side. I have heard endless discussions among the flyers as to what they would do if their turn came, what equipment they would try to salvage, where they would head for. It is constantly on their minds. They study carefully their excellent large-scale maps, noting the little red circles which indicate positions held by the enemy.
“The record of rescues is getting better, partly because more head-hunting natives are learning that rewards of salt and cloth await them if they find and return the boys unharmed. And we have more crews now which do nothing but nose their C-47s day after day through the innumerable valleys, looking for a fluttering bit of white cloth which may be the signal of a lost American flyer. More and more boys are turning up, brought by horse-cart into China (Chinese peasants are quick to hide them from the Japs) or led into India by Naga natives.
A friendly card game with the nurses playing for matchsticks;
A U.S. Army nurse washing her hair out in the open on a Pacific island in WWII;
A Japanese propaganda poster portraying a U.S. Army Air Force flier as oppressive and brutal.
“I know how efficient the rescue work can be, once the search plane spots you on the ground. Flying over the hump last August, the plane I was in developed engine trouble and the 20-odd of us aboard had to bail out into the jungle. It took us 27 days to get out.
“There are many stories of far worse experiences. You cannot crash-land your plane on the hump because there isn’t a level, cleared spot to be found, but two American boys once managed to land on the side of a snow-covered peak, and lived. Both suffered broken ankles. They huddled in the wrecked airplane, eating their scanty canned rations, wrapping themselves in their parachute silk for warmth. Several times searching planes flew near but all their signalling was in vain.
“When their food was nearly gone, they bandaged one another’s ankles and stumbled and slid down the mountain. Only one who has tried to walk on a broken bone can imagine what they went through. By a stroke of luck, wandering Chinese discovered them one day, lying by a stream, without strength to go on, and nineteen days later they were safe in an Air Force hospital.
“It would not be honest reporting to ascribe all the troubles and tragedies on the Hump to the enemy and the elements. Among the transport planes used was a new model [the C-46] hurried into service because of popular pressure in America for more aid to China. Fundamentally, it is a superb airplane, but it was very new then and all the ‘bugs’ in it were by no means ironed out. This model hauled many hundreds of tons of supplies into China, but a good many of the planes crashed and lives were lost. In time, these planes are expected to be as reliable as the steadfast C-47.”
American Army nurses waiting in line for a field shower.
This chow line on a Pacific island in wartime is being manned by some enthusiastic G.I. cooks.
Children in Berlin wave in gratitude to the crew of this C-47 Skytrain for the food, fuel, and other supplies being flown into the city each day during the 1948-49 airlift operation.
