The Republic of China’s victory in the Second Sino-Japanese War would simply not have been possible without supplies provided to the Chinese forces by the allies.
In this photo, we see another example of American air presence in India during WW2. After land routes were cut off due to the Japanese invasion of Burma, the India-China Division of the US Air Transport Command was forced to fly what was termed the dangerous Himalayan “Hump”.
The route over the Himalayas from India to Yunnanyi, Kunming, and other locations in China was immediately dubbed “the Hump” by those who flew it. Though relatively short, the route is considered the most dangerous ever assigned to air transport. The reason is apparent from this description contained in the official 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 14,000-16,000-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.”
Pilots had to struggle to get their heavily laden planes to safe altitudes; there was always extreme turbulence, thunderstorms, and icing. On the ground, there was the heat and humidity and a monsoon season that, during a six-month period, poured 200 inches of rain on the bases in India and Burma.
Source: Flying the Hump by Col. Carroll V. Glines, USAF (Retd.). More about this extremely interesting route, the hurdles and how the US got around them, can be found in that article.
The scale of this operation is quantified by these unbelievable statistics:
The success of the Hump operation under ATC became apparent from statistics released on August 1, 1945. 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.
Year
Source
Source Caption:
It was over country like this, the Himalayan “Hump” that 1,118 trips carried 5,327 tons for the record transporting of military supplies to China from the India China ATC division’s India bases on Air Force Day August 29, 1945. In lower right a C-46 commando is seen in flight. (AP Photo) Aug 29, 1945 6:30 AM
