Jumping the Hump:
Airlift to China, 1942-45
by Mike Yoder
From the start of their invasion of China in 1937, the Japanese Imperial Army
moved to seize Chinese seaports and seal the country off from trade with the
Western world. To keep his armies supplied with war materiel, Generalissimo
Chiang Kai Shek ordered the building of the Burma Road. Supplies arriving in
Rangoon, Burma, were taken to rail yards in the city of Leshio. From there,
convoys began the overland journey through the jungles and mountains of Burma
to Kunming, China.
Although officially neutral, President Franklin D. Roosevelt recognized that it
was in the United States strategic interests to keep China fully engaged in the
war with Japan. From 1938 onwards, more than 1 million Imperial Army troops
were commited to the struggle to conquer the Chinese mainland. Maintaining
Chiang and his army was essential to keep these forces from contributing to the
conquest of SE Asia and the Pacific. With the fall of France to the Germans in
1940, Japan seized the French Colonies in Indo-China. Overland traffic to China
from the Vietnamese port of Haiphong was disrupted as the Japanese moved to
cover the left flank of their Chinese venture.
In the days following the raid on Pearl Harbor, the Japanese Imperial Army
struck out for the Philippines, the Dutch East Indies, Thailand, Singapore and
Burma. Moving rapidly inland from Rangoon, the Japanese took Leshio and cut the
Burma Road by April, 1942. The Japanese advance through Burma was so fast that
their armies nearly captured Gen. Joseph W. Stilwell and his staff, who had
just arrived in Burma to take command of Chinese and Allied forces in the
country. A lean, hard officer with a reputation for being crusty and vulgar,
"Vinegar Joe" led the remnants of his command on a remarkable overland march
through the steaming jungles and swamps of Burma to safety in Imphal, India.
From India, Stilwell organized the campaign to retake Burma from the Japanese.
The core part of his plan was to cut a new road from Ledo, India, across
Northern Burma and intercept the existing Burma Road in the Karen State of
Burma. Pending the completion of this road, all supply of China would be by air
transport. The route entailed flying from airfields in India's Assam province
to Kunming, China, over the Eastern ranges of the Himalayas. The most imposing
mountains in the world, the Himalayas were promptly nick-named "The Hump" by
the pilots and aircrew who flew this route.
Responsibility for this mission initially fell upon Lt. Gen. Lewis Brereton,
commanding the US 10th Air Force in India. Brereton commenced operations with
an allotment of some 62 C-47s. The immortal "Gooney Bird" was the Douglas DC-3,
pressed into wartime service, given the Army Air Corps designation C-47 and
slapped with a coat of Olive Drab paint. Brereton was originally allotted 75
C-47s, but a dozen or so were diverted for duty in N. Africa. Of the 62 which
actually arrived in the China-Burma-India Theater, 15 were destroyed or lost
before airlift operations actually got underway.
C-46 Commando
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Of the remaining craft in the original small fleet, a considerable number were
down for lack of spare parts. Maintenance crews took to "cannibalizing"
questionable airplanes to keep the remainder flying. The first supply flights
to China didn't actually get underway until July of 1942. The original target
of resupply by air was set at some 5000 tons a month. Those first few meager
attempts fell far short of this mark It was soon obvious to Gen. Henry Arnold
and the USAAF staff that airlift operations were a specialized field which
needed to be organized outside of the realm of the Theater Air Commander.
Accordingly, the US Army Air Force Air Transport Command officially assumed
control of airlift operations from Gen. Brereton in October of 1942. All
transport aircraft involved in airlift operations were transferred from 10th AF
to the ATC at that time. The "Hump" operation was originally organized as the
India-China Airlift Wing under the command of Col. Edward H. Alexander.
Alexander's crews faced some daunting problems both on the ground and in the
air. In a report to ATC's General George, Alexander noted that, "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".
However formidable ground maintenance might have been, actually flying the
route over the Hump was even more challenging. Fortunately, the basic routes
had been laid down during the early 1930's by the Chinese National Aviation
Corporation (CNAC) and Pan American Airlines. But the route over "the Roof of
the World" wasn't any easier from the need to go deeper into the Himalayan
chain to avoid Japanese fighters ranging out of airfields in Burma. In a direct
line, the flying distance from an airfield near Ledo, India to Kunming was only
500 miles. Swinging North to avoid Japanese fighters stretched the fully-laden
Gooney Bird to the very limits of fuel endurance.
Just getting the heavy load into the air and at altitude to cross the Hump was
a challenge in itself. The airfields in the Brahmaputra Valley were only some
900 feet above sea level. Upon take-off, the Gooney Birds would struggle to
gain altitude to cross the first chain of mountains, the 10,000 foot high
Patkai Range. After crossing the Chindwin River Valley, the pilots approached
the series of 14,000 foot high ranges separating the Salween and Mekong rivers
before making the final climb to cross the Santsung Range. This was the most
demanding part of flying the Hump, threading their way through peaks between 15
- 20,000 feet in height.
This would have been a daunting task even under ideal flying conditions and
with well-trained and experienced aircrew. However, flying through any part of
the Himalayas entailed severe turbulence, thunderstorms and icing. Aircrews
would often find that lack of proper de-icing equipment would force them to fly
at lower altitudes through river valleys looking for a pass through which they
could fly their iced up transports. Losing an airplane in these remote
mountains often meant losing an experienced aircrew as well. Many men bailed
out of a stricken plane in these areas and were never heard from again.
C-47 Gooney Bird
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Adding to the pilots woes, the 4 month long Monsoon season would dump some 200
inches of rain on the soggy airfields in India and Burma. Runways would be
turned into quagmires and heavy downpours would ground all aircraft. Hardened
tarmac runways and proper drainage eventually solved this problem, but pilots
were still expected to at least attempt a take-off if they could see halfway
down the runway through the fog and mist. For all their efforts, the airmen of
the Hump set down 800 net tons in China during the month of December, 1942.
Although the CBI was the "forgotten war" and on a much lower priority than the
needs of the European and Pacific Theaters, the build-up for meeting the
monthly goals of the airlift proceeded apace. Additional C-47s joined the
airlift fleet and the larger Curtiss C-46 "Commando" started arriving in
quantity during early 1943. Trained aircrew were still in short supply, and ATC
started combing the ranks of flight instructors, airline pilots and anyone with
any multi-engine time in their log-books. The aircrew that was available was
putting in more than 100 flying hours a month and pilots with only single
engine experience (often fresh from Air Training Command flight schools) were
quickly checked out in the C-46 and pressed into service for the airlift.
The build-up continued and the tonnage set down in China started to approach
the initial goal of 5000 tons a month. Chiang Kai Shek started demanding more
and President Roosevelt responded by raising the tonnage to 10,000 tons
monthly. The India-China Airlift Wing was expanded to the India-China Airlift
Division, now under command of Gen. Earl S. Hoag. Thirteen airfields were
established in India and an additional 6 in China. Along with the increased
airlift capacity came an increase in losses of aircraft and crew. Hoag reported
155 flying accidents and 168 fatalities for the last half of 1943. Hoag did
deliver upon the target of 10,000 tons monthly by the beginning of 1944, but
the cost in aircraft and crew was deemed too high.
In August of 1944, Hoag was relieved and command of the airlift passed to Maj.
Gen. William H. Tunner. Tunner was known in Air Force circles as a strict
disciplinarian and his first step was to demand proper military attire from
ground and air crew alike. Tunner personally flew a C-46 on a round trip flight
from India to Kunming and declared that it was "safer to fly a fully loaded
bomber deep into Germany" than to fly the Hump. He immediately changed the
routing of flights through the Himalayan chain to a more direct route to
Kunming, cutting down the flight time. He demanded and received fighter escorts
for his transports. The capture of the Japanese airfield at Mitchina, Burma
reduced the threat of Japanese fighters and provided forward operational
airstrips for P-51s flying escort duty.
As they became available, the 4 engine Douglas C-54 began to replace the
struggling Gooney Birds and Curtiss Commandos. The C-54 could carry 3 times the
payload of a Gooney Bird and with proper de-icing equipment, fly higher and
faster. Tunner may not have been able to shrink the Himalayas in size, but he
gave his airmen a larger margin of safety. With aircrew safety in mind, Tunner
also revised the pilot rotation system. When he took charge, aircrew were
rotated out of the CBI after flying 650 hours. Some pilots were cramming in as
much flying time as possible to get out of the Theater that much faster. Tunner
established a years tour of duty for everyone and upped the rotation
requirement to 750 hours of flight time. With these and other changes, the
losses of aircraft and crew diminished drastically.
Tunner also addressed problems on the ground with maintenance. Lt. Col. Bruce
White was his chief of maintenance and a former executive of Standard Oil of
New Jersey. White implemented a system of "production-line maintenance",
whereby each plane brought in for servicing went through several checkpoints,
as if on an assembly line. Only after a rigorous inspection and flight testing
was an aircraft returned to line duty. The US Air Force uses this procedure to
this day when dealing with large numbers of the same type of aircraft.
Morale only increased as Tunner called for an improvement in food and living
conditions for his fliers. War-worn B-25s were called into service as
"Skeeter-beaters", spraying insecticide in the vicinity of the airfields, thus
reducing the rate of malaria among the men. Publicity back on the Home Front
drew attention to the airlift operations and the innovations of fliers and
ground crew was played up in the press. Running a story and a picture of an
elephant being trained to load barrels of gasoline onto a transport got wide
circulation in papers back in the States.
The success of the measures imposed by Tunner was reflected in the figures
which were released by ATC for Aug. 1, 1945. From the website of
Freerepublic.com and the story of the airlift:
"On that day, the command had flown 1,118 round trips, with a payload of 5,327
tons. A plane crossed the Hump every minute and twelve seconds; a ton of
materiel was landed in China four times every minute. All of this was
accomplished without a single accident." The airlift is believed to have hit
its peak in July of 1945, when 71,000 tons of materiel were safely set down in
Kunming.
Those figures and that statement gloss over the price the American airmen paid
for their success. It was a painful and costly learning process. A total of 407
aircraft and their crew were lost in the wilds of the Himalayas and over the
jungles of Burma and India. As the official history of the US Air Force notes:
"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 materiel were
willing to pay the price in money and in men."
However, Tunner and his staff wrote the book on Airlift Doctrine and they went
on to apply it to great effect in another time and place. In 1947, the first
major operation of the newly minted US Air Force was the resupply of the city
of Berlin, then under a Russian blockade. Faced with the worst flying weather
in Europe, the attempt to resupply Berlin by air was expected to fail just as
badly as the Luftwaffe's attempt to resupply Stalingrad had failed. Recalled to
command "Operation Vittles", Gen. William Tunner, his staff and a cadre of
airmen wearing the distinctive patch of the China-Burma-India Theater assembled
one more time for yet another supply mission. The costly lessons they learned
in war paid a dividend in time of peace as they pulled a major city back from
the edge of starvation.
External Link:
The following website includes a message board for posting information about
fliers and support personnel who served with the China-India Airlift Division:
Imphal, The Hump and
Beyond. U.S.A.A.F. Combat Cargo Groups of the Second World War
Copyright © 2004 Mike Yoder.
Written by Mike Yoder. If you have questions or comments on this
article, please contact Mike Yoder at:
mikeyzinaz@hotmail.com.
About the author:
Coming soon...
Published online: 6/12/2004.
* Views expressed by contributors are their own and do not necessarily represent
those of MHO.
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