C-46 Commando over "The Hump"
C-46 Commando over "The Hump"
Marking.
Since 2009, Indian and American teams have scoured the mountains in India’s north-eastern state of Arunachal Pradesh, looking for the wreckage and remains of lost crews of hundreds of planes that crashed here over 80 years ago.
I had a client who flew the hump, wish I had been more active in talking to him about it.
He did talk about a bit, at end of the war they loaded up a lot of equipment that fit in the plane and dumped them out over the sea.
I’ve read a little about the “Hump” campaign, but didn’t know they lost that many planes. Tough duty. I remember reading that the C-46 was called a flying coffin because of its’ propensity for engine fires when airborne.
Here is the actual source for those not thrilled with having to tip Yahoo first.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-67633928
That’s an insane amount of aircraft lost.
Here is the "Burma Road" land route overlaid on "The Hump" air route.
I worked in a natural gas / urea plant about 50 miles south of Yibin for seven months back in '76-'77. At the time, I had no idea I was in the main transport and supply lines area of WW II.
called the “flying coffin” - I was a passenger several times flying into Korea, 52’-’53. They claim if power is lost in one engine, the other cannot keep her up.
The China-Burma-India theater may still may have been safer than flying bombing runs over Europe.
The grouchy old hardware store owner I used to frequent in the 1970s was a c-47 pilot who flew over the hump with supplies for Chang and Chenault during the war.
From a book I once read, cited from memory, so I don’t have the source:
Vinegar Joe Stillwell needed every scrap of aid he could give to the Chinese, but the OSS outmaneuvered him and got the U.S. government to guarantee that 1/3 of every cargo shipment flown over the Hump was designated to their use.
Operation Matterhorn. I did my Squadron Officer School paper using the original documents. Truly audacious and successful.
I always wanted to fly in a DC-3.
The Ted Stevens International Airport, Anchorage, Alaska, has a bronze statue and plaque of former Alaska US Senator Ted Stevens. Mentioned on the plaque: he had been in WW2 one of the C-46 pilots who “flew the hump.”
Hence the fortune paid to develop the high-altitude B-29 to be able to attack Japan from the Pacific instead of from bases in China that required such resupply, and the development of the atomic bomb.
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One crashed aircraft and 3 dead per 1,100 tons delivered,