Over the Rock Pile

The saga of the Hump was ending. This week, after three years of peril-strewn operation over the Himalayas into China, the most hazardous air route in the world practically went out of business.

Until next spring there would be daily scheduled flights from India and Burma to Chungking and beyond, but now they could follow a more southerly course over the "low-Hump," by way of Myit-kyina. By year's end, Air Forces personnel in the India-China Division of the Air Transport Command will be down to around 9,000, from a peak of 35,000 (including 4,712 pilots).

To the last, the sky lane over "the Rock Pile" had been fraught with danger. At the Kunming field, a mud-brick Chinese village at one end of the runway snagged so many incoming planes into wreckage that ground crews finally leveled it with bulldozers. At one stage more than 700 crashes--including many bombers and tactical aircraft--were spotted on the map at Search and Rescue headquarters in Chabua. India.

One of the most dreadful occurred one December night when a plane carrying 30 nurses back from a Christmas dance in Chabua took off without clearance on a 20-minute flight to Ledo. The plane crashed in landing, killing the 30 nurses and the crew. On an even worse night last January, 33 cargo planes crashed.

Unofficial estimates were that 3,000 Allied transport and tactical aircraft had been lost among those jagged peaks. But for this price, the U.S. had backed China (and U.S. units in China) with invaluable aid: 78.000 tons went over the Hump in the peak month of July.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.