Winston Churchill called it, "An immense laborious task, unlikely to be completed until the need for it has passed.
" The need was for massive shipments of supplies for Allied air bases in China, and gasoline to fuel B-29s attacking Japan from deep inside the Chinese interior.
Churchill was referring to the building of the Ledo-Burma Road, a trail as ancient as the desire to cross the Himalayas to join the riches of China with the Indian sub-continent.
It has rarely been a useful or successful route, due to the extreme terrain, and had been abandoned after many attempts to reopen it.
With World War II a new attempt was made when the Japanese captured Rangoon in December, 1941.
The route from the sea to the Burma Road was cut off, and a new route, the Ledo Road, was commenced out of Assam, India to connect with the Burma Road in the north.
Twenty thousand engineers and thirty five thousand natives labored for two years to open the Ledo-Burma Road from India to China.
When finally completed, truck caravans took over a month to cross the 800 miles to China, over grades up to 17%, and under continuous Japanese air attacks.
Churchill was nearly correct.
The road was finally completed less than a year from the war's end.
For the enormous requirements of the China base operations, it became clear that ground transport was impracticable.
It was decided the transport problem would be solved by airlift over the highest terrain on Earth.
The "Hump" airlift operation was thus created.
It completed the longest materiel supply line in the world.
After the 12,000 mile ocean voyage from the U.
S.
to Karachi or Bombay, shipments traveled 1,500 miles on India's dilapidated main rails to connect with the ancient Bengal to Assam rail line.
That route, called "The Toonerville Trolley" by American personnel, had been built to haul tea, and changed gauges three times on the way to a barge crossing at the Brahmaputra River.
Then, every bean and bullet, as one commander put it, had to be flown from bases in Assam over into China.
The air route to China over the "Hump" rose out of the Brahmaputra river valley, to the northeast, over the 10,000 foot Naga Hills, named for the head-hunting tribe that lived there.
It then crossed the gorges of the Irrawaddy, Salween, and Mekong rivers, and on up to the backbone of the Hump, the Santsung Ranges of eastern Sichuan and Tibet.
Pilots referred to the route as "the aluminum trail" because of the number of airplanes lost along it.
The Hump was the highest risk, highest loss airlift operation of World War II.
Flight operations had never been attempted over the planet's highest and most rugged mountains, much less, on a year-round, all-weather basis.
The combination of the great monsoon flow and mountain uplift produced the most extreme flying weather on Earth.
Winds had been measured at over 250 miles per hour, and downdrafts were encountered of over 3,000 feet per minute.
Average terrain levels on some routes were 20,000 feet above sea level.
Air Fields were carved out of forests and navigation aids were scarce.
General Claire Chennault, the region's air commander, estimated that for every ton of bombs dropped on Japan, eighteen tons of supplies had to be delivered to China.
In all, 650,000 tons were delivered over the Hump.
The cost was the deaths of over 1,300 air crew, and more than six hundred airplanes lost.
There were nearly 1,200 bailouts over the Hump, 345 men were never found and are listed as missing in action.
Chennault said that only men of special caliber could live up to the demands of the Hump.
They were the swashbuckling pilots of the India-China wing.
" The need was for massive shipments of supplies for Allied air bases in China, and gasoline to fuel B-29s attacking Japan from deep inside the Chinese interior.
Churchill was referring to the building of the Ledo-Burma Road, a trail as ancient as the desire to cross the Himalayas to join the riches of China with the Indian sub-continent.
It has rarely been a useful or successful route, due to the extreme terrain, and had been abandoned after many attempts to reopen it.
With World War II a new attempt was made when the Japanese captured Rangoon in December, 1941.
The route from the sea to the Burma Road was cut off, and a new route, the Ledo Road, was commenced out of Assam, India to connect with the Burma Road in the north.
Twenty thousand engineers and thirty five thousand natives labored for two years to open the Ledo-Burma Road from India to China.
When finally completed, truck caravans took over a month to cross the 800 miles to China, over grades up to 17%, and under continuous Japanese air attacks.
Churchill was nearly correct.
The road was finally completed less than a year from the war's end.
For the enormous requirements of the China base operations, it became clear that ground transport was impracticable.
It was decided the transport problem would be solved by airlift over the highest terrain on Earth.
The "Hump" airlift operation was thus created.
It completed the longest materiel supply line in the world.
After the 12,000 mile ocean voyage from the U.
S.
to Karachi or Bombay, shipments traveled 1,500 miles on India's dilapidated main rails to connect with the ancient Bengal to Assam rail line.
That route, called "The Toonerville Trolley" by American personnel, had been built to haul tea, and changed gauges three times on the way to a barge crossing at the Brahmaputra River.
Then, every bean and bullet, as one commander put it, had to be flown from bases in Assam over into China.
The air route to China over the "Hump" rose out of the Brahmaputra river valley, to the northeast, over the 10,000 foot Naga Hills, named for the head-hunting tribe that lived there.
It then crossed the gorges of the Irrawaddy, Salween, and Mekong rivers, and on up to the backbone of the Hump, the Santsung Ranges of eastern Sichuan and Tibet.
Pilots referred to the route as "the aluminum trail" because of the number of airplanes lost along it.
The Hump was the highest risk, highest loss airlift operation of World War II.
Flight operations had never been attempted over the planet's highest and most rugged mountains, much less, on a year-round, all-weather basis.
The combination of the great monsoon flow and mountain uplift produced the most extreme flying weather on Earth.
Winds had been measured at over 250 miles per hour, and downdrafts were encountered of over 3,000 feet per minute.
Average terrain levels on some routes were 20,000 feet above sea level.
Air Fields were carved out of forests and navigation aids were scarce.
General Claire Chennault, the region's air commander, estimated that for every ton of bombs dropped on Japan, eighteen tons of supplies had to be delivered to China.
In all, 650,000 tons were delivered over the Hump.
The cost was the deaths of over 1,300 air crew, and more than six hundred airplanes lost.
There were nearly 1,200 bailouts over the Hump, 345 men were never found and are listed as missing in action.
Chennault said that only men of special caliber could live up to the demands of the Hump.
They were the swashbuckling pilots of the India-China wing.
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