The Hump
The Hump was the name given by Allied pilots in the Second World War to the eastern end of the Himalayan Mountains over which they flew military transport aircraft from India to China to resupply the Chinese war effort of Chiang Kai-shek and the units of the United States Army Air Forces based in China. Creating an airlift presented the USAAF a considerable challenge in 1942: it had no units trained or equipped for moving cargo, and there were no airfields in the China Burma India Theater for basing the large number of transport aircraft that would be needed. Flying over the Himalayas was extremely dangerous and made more difficult by a lack of reliable charts, an absence of radio navigation aids, and a dearth of information about the weather.
The task was initially given to the USAAF's Tenth Air Force, and then to its Air Transport Command. Because the USAAF had no previous airlift experience as a basis for planning, it assigned commanders who had been key figures in founding the ATC in 1941–1942 to build and direct the operation, which included former civilians with extensive executive experience operating civil air carriers.
Originally referred to as the "India–China Ferry", the successive organizations responsible for carrying out the airlift were the Assam–Burma–China Command and the India-China Ferry Command of the Tenth Air Force; and the Air Transport Command's India-China Wing and India-China Division.
The operation began in April 1942, after Japanese forces blocked the Burma Road, and continued daily until scaled down from August 1945. It procured most of its officers, men, and equipment from the USAAF, augmented by British, British-Indian Army, Commonwealth forces, Burmese labor gangs and an air transport section of the Chinese National Aviation Corporation. Final operations were flown in November 1945 to return personnel from China.
The India–China airlift delivered approximately 650,000 tons of materiel to China at great cost in men and aircraft during its 42-month history. For its efforts and sacrifices, the India–China Wing of the ATC was awarded the Presidential Unit Citation on 29 January 1944 at the personal direction of President Franklin D. Roosevelt, the first such award made to a non-combat organization.
Background: the China supply dilemma
With the War of Resistance/World War II raging in China, the Empire of Japan had effectively blockaded the entry of fuel and supplies into China by 1940, pushing the Republic of China government further hinterland to the new wartime capital of Chongqing, further culminating into the Japanese invasion of French Indochina and attack on Pearl Harbor, and necessitating the need in keeping the Chinese well-supplied for the continued fight against the Empire of Japan in the overall war effort. While committed to the success of the "Europe first" strategy of the Allied forces, keeping China well-supplied in the war on the Asian mainland would tie-down more than a million Japanese troops who might otherwise increase threat to the Allied strategic offensive in the Pacific War, had also become a priority. The Japanese invasion of French Indochina closed all sea and rail access routes for supplying China with war materiel except through central/north Asian states with the Soviet Union. That access ended following the signing of the Soviet–Japanese Neutrality Pact in April 1941 due to the need for the Soviets to commit to war against Nazi Germany, and the Burma Road became the only land route where supplies trickled in. The rapid success of Japanese military operations in Southeast Asia threatened this lifeline, prompting discussion of an air cargo service route from India; Chiang's foreign minister, T. V. Soong, estimated that 12,000 tons of materiel could be delivered monthly by air from India if 100 C-47 Skytrain-type transports were committed to an airlift. Chinese Air Force Major General Mao Bangchu was tasked with leading the exploration into suitable air-routes over the dangerous Himalayas in 1941, and commissioned CNAC pilot Charles L. Sharp flying for the first-time, this route which was to become known as The Hump in November of that year.On 25 February 1942, President Roosevelt wrote to General George C. Marshall that "it is of the utmost urgency that the pathway to China be kept open", and committed ten C-53 Skytrooper transports for lend-lease delivery to CNAC to build its capability to 25 aircraft. When the newly created Tenth Air Force opened its headquarters in New Delhi under the command of Maj. Gen. Lewis H. Brereton in March 1942, it was assigned the responsibility of developing an "India-China Ferry" using both U.S. and Chinese aircraft. Although he was never given command authority over aircraft or personnel, the officer responsible for the India-China Ferry was Brereton's chief of staff Brig. Gen. Earl L. Naiden, who held that responsibility until mid-August.
From its onset, the air route was predicated on operating two branches, unofficially deemed "commands": a "Trans-India Command" from India's western ports to Calcutta, where cargo would be transshipped by rail to Assam; and the "Assam-Burma-China Command", a route from bases in Assam to southern China. The original scheme envisioned the Allies holding northern Burma and using Myitkyina as an offloading terminal to send supplies by barge downriver to Bhamo and transfer to the Burma Road. However, on 8 May 1942 the Japanese seized Myitkyina which, coupled with the loss of Rangoon, effectively cut Allied access to the Burma Road. To maintain the uninterrupted supply to China, U.S. and other allied leaders agreed to organize a continual aerial resupply effort directly between Assam and Kunming.
Airlift history
Haynes, 1942
Tenth Air Force was hampered by a constant diversion of men and aircraft to Egypt, where Nazi Germany was threatening to seize the Suez Canal. Its Air Service Command was still en route by ship from the United States, forcing it to get aircraft and personnel for the India-China Ferry from any available source. Ten former Pan American World Airways DC-3s and flight crews were sent from the trans-Africa ferry route to outfit the new operation. 25 other DC-3s requisitioned from American Airlines in the United States could not be moved to India due to lack of crews, and were later integrated into the complement of the first transport group committed to the airlift.The command structure of the India-China Ferry was fractured after senior officers in India and Burma made competing claims for jurisdiction, with part of the authority given to Gen. Joseph Stilwell as CBI theater commander and part remaining with Tenth Air Force, which had also been ordered by Marshall to "co-operate when requested" with the British in defending India. Movement by ground transport of supplies arriving from the United States at the port of Karachi to the airfields, as well as construction of the infrastructure required to support the operation, was the responsibility of the U.S. Army's Services of Supply, commanded in the CBI by Maj. Gen. Raymond A. Wheeler. The airlift was the final leg of a journey of from Los Angeles to China often taking four months.
On 23 April 1942, Colonel Caleb V. Haynes, a prospective bombardment group commander, was assigned to command the Assam-Kunming branch of the India-China Ferry, dubbed the Assam-Burma-China Ferry Command. Col. Robert L. Scott, a pursuit pilot awaiting an assignment in China, was assigned as his operations officer and a month later as executive officer. Haynes was a fortuitous choice to be the airlift's first commander, as he had just completed an assignment as a key subordinate of Brig. Gen. Robert Olds. Olds and his staff had founded the Air Corps Ferrying Command in June 1941 and pioneered overseas military air transport, including use of the South Atlantic air route by which aircraft, personnel, and cargo would reach India from the United States. However, at the time the India-China Ferry was conceived, the ABC Ferry Command was not prepared to plan, control, or execute such an operation. Its formal organization was minimal, it had no units of its own, and its few aircraft were committed to establishing air transport routes. By June, however, the ABC Ferry Command had begun a greatly expanded wartime restructuring, and became the Air Transport Command on 1 July.
The first mission "over the hump" took place on 8 April 1942. Flying from the Royal Air Force airfield at Dinjan, Lt. Col. William D. Old used a pair of the former Pan Am DC-3s to ferry of aviation fuel intended to resupply the Doolittle Raiders. The collapse of Allied resistance in northern Burma in May 1942 meant further diversion of the already minuscule air effort. The ABC Ferry Command resupplied Stilwell's retreating army and evacuated its wounded, while establishing a regular air service to China using ten borrowed DC-3s, three USAAF C-47s, and 13 CNAC C-53s and C-39s. Only two-thirds of the aircraft were serviceable at any time. Dinjan was within range of Japanese fighters now based at Myitkyina, forcing all-night maintenance operations and pre-dawn takeoffs of the defenseless supply planes. The threat of interception also forced the ABC Ferry Command to fly a difficult route to China over the Eastern Himalayan Uplift, which came to be known as the "high hump", or more simply, "The Hump".
The official history of the Army Air Forces states:
Unfavorable weather conditions along the route were a major contributing factor to its difficulty:
The point of view of a veteran crewman who flew the Hump was described in a feature story for a local newspaper years after:
Innumerable problems with the Indian railway system meant that aircraft assigned to the airlift often carried their cargo all the way from Karachi to China, while much cargo took as long to reach Assam from Karachi as the two-month journey by ship from the United States. India's highway and river systems were so undeveloped as to be unable to support the mission, leaving air as the only practicable way to supply China in anything resembling a timely fashion.
The first crews and aircraft from the United States went to the 1st Ferrying Group, arriving on 17 May at their base at the New Malir Cantonment near Karachi. The group was activated in India in March without personnel or equipment and was assigned to the operational control of the Tenth Air Force over the objections of the commander of ATC, who feared that its planes and crews would be steered into combat units, which did in fact occur at times. Aircraft continued to arrive in small increments through October with flight crews consisting of airline pilots holding Air Corps Reserve commissions who had been called up for active duty specifically for the India-China assignment, and navigators, engineers and radiomen from the USAAF technical training schools. For the remainder of 1942, the 62 C-47s of the 1st Ferrying Group were the backbone of the airlift, flying both branches of the operation from Karachi until August, when it began a three months' relocation to Assam.
In the first two months of the airlift the USAAF delivered only 700 tons of cargo and CNAC only 112 tons, and tonnage fell for both June and July, mostly due to the full onset of the summer monsoon. In July, CNAC quadrupled its tonnage to 221 tons, but 10AF C-47s brought only 85 net tons of materiel and personnel into China.