The Hump - Operations On The Low Hump and In China

Operations On The Low Hump and In China

The first diversion of India-China Wing resources to operations in the region other than the Hump airlift began in February 1944. The Japanese attack in Arakan, followed by the threat to Imphal in March, resulted in assistance to the British that Hardin estimated reduced hump deliveries by 2,500 tons. The crisis occasioned by the Japanese attack on Imphal led Admiral Louis Mountbatten, the commander-in-chief of the Allied South East Asia Command, to request 38 C-47 aircraft to reinforce Imphal. Supposedly, not even Mountbatten could divert planes from the Hump, but he was backed up by two of the principal American commanders in the theater (Major General Daniel I. Sultan, the deputy commander of the CBI Theater and Major General George E. Stratemeyer of the Eastern Air Command (EAC), Air Commander for Mountbatten and air advisor to Stillwell). After the request was approved, ICW-ATC provided 25 C-46s as the equivalent of 38 C-47s. They were attached to the EAC Troop Carrier Command (commanded by Brig. Gen. William Old, who had flown the first Hump mission in 1942) to support the British and were used to fly the personnel and light equipment of the 5th Indian Division to Imphal and Dimapur, where it arrived in time to thwart the Japanese offensive.

The next month, to reinforce Stillwell's planned offensive into Burma, the ICW-ATC flew 18,000 Chinese troops west across the Hump to Sookerating, which resulted in a net reduction of another 1,500 tons.

However, the capture in May 1944 of Myitkyina airfield by American and Chinese troops of Stillwell's command deprived the Japanese of their principal fighter airfield threatening Allied aircraft flying the Hump. The field immediately became an emergency landing strip for Allied aircraft even though fighting continued in the nearby town until August 1944. Its capture also opened regular use of a second, more direct airlift route, designated Route Baker but unofficially dubbed the "Low Hump", by C-54s, which had ceiling limitations that precluded flying Route Able (the High Hump).

In October 1944, after Gen. Tunner took command of the India-China Division of Air Transport Command, increased numbers of C-54s, sometimes escorted by Allied fighters based at Myitkyina, greatly increased tonnage levels flown to China from India. The C-54, which could at ten tons carry five times the cargo load of the C-47 and twice that of the C-46, replaced both twin-engined transports as the primary lifter of the operation. The expansion of bases resulted in the formation of eastbound Routes Easy, Fox, Love, Nan, and Oboe, and of westbound Route King.