Air Cargo Took Off Above The Himalayas

     When The Burma Road was closed in 1942, the only way to move oil, av-gas, troops and supplies from Assam India, to the American Volunteer Group (AVG) pilots in China better known as The Flying Tigers, (who were fighting the Japanese) was over the rugged Himalaya Mountains.
     The AVG base was in Kunming, China.
     The airplane of first great air cargo movement in history, was the Curtiss C46 Commando with its "double bubble" fuselage (a double tube was how early aircraft builders accomplished pressurization).
     The Curtiss Commando was built in Buffalo, New York right alongside the Curtiss P-40 fighter, which was in service in China.
     If you want to know exactly what and when was the defining time and activity that led to the development of air cargo in the 20th Century, just cast a line back sixty-one years ago to 1942 and discover that modern air cargo was born in India and China.
     Today as air cargo’s future is increasingly connected to these two ancient countries, it can also be said that what’s old is new again.
     Early in World War II, President Roosevelt asked Army Air Force General Hap Arnold to devise a method for supplying Chinese and American troops and aviators fighting in China.
     Americans were aiding the Nationalist forces of Chiang Kai Shek while the American aviators were part of an all-volunteer group known as the AVG under the command of Claire Chennault operating P40B fighter aircraft supplied by the U.S.
     Later the world would come to know this pilot group as the legendary Flying Tigers.
     As the enemy closed in, military planners decided that an air route across some of the most rugged territory in the world—the Himalayan Mountains would be sustainable in any event.
     Very quickly the route gained a name that has immortalized the effort and heroism of that first great air cargo movement, which kept freedom and hope alive for millions during the darkest days of the conflict.
     “The China-India-Burma Hump (CBI)” describes for succeeding generations a journey that created an aerial lifeline from the Assam Valley in India to Kunming, China.
     China-India-Burma Hump operations took off after the Japanese closed down the overland truck route called The Burma Road, as Rangoon and the country fell in early 1942.

		The First Great Air Cargo Movement

      To look at it today, that vaunted and somewhat mysterious Burma Road is/was little more than a mostly unimproved artery hacked out often in serpentine form from the rugged mountains.
     But as breathtaking as some of the sheer cliffs were to passengers and drivers of vehicles inching along the Burma Road, that experience was nothing when compared to the adventure between take off and landing of first-generation, all-cargo aircraft operating back and forth between India and China.
     The Himalayas are rugged mountains some as high as 14,000 feet that lay square between the Assam Valley and Kunming.
     Since the Japanese controlled everything else there was no right or left about it either.
     The only way to journey between the two cities was the relatively short 500 air mile, but truly hellish flight up over the mountains.
     Although today aircraft routinely fly over the Himalayan Mountains, as World War II raged, the otherwise picturesque snow-capped remote peaks were a daunting challenge to airmen and their twin-engine aircraft.
     Flights from Assam to Kunming often took several hours.
     Unpredictable weather and wind currents were a constant challenge extending the journey for additional hours as aerial charts were drawn and redrawn directing flights around fierce storms.
     Often their bodies stressed to the limit, as engines beat ominously against an unforgiving sky, aircraft would encounter up and down drafts, falling and rising thousands of feet in almost an instant.
     At another moment without warning, an airplane would be flipped over by wind currents or whipped side to side.
     As a result the run quickly gained the ominous moniker “aluminum alley.”
     During the three plus years of Hump operations, more than 167,285 trips were completed, delivering 760,000 tons of air cargo.
     But the price was paid by 792 lives lost aboard 460 aircraft and in 701 major accidents.
     Incredibly still today in 2006 sixty-four years later, remains of Hump pilots and their downed aircraft are being recovered.
     As example in late 2003, an expedition scaled an 18,000-foot peak bringing back fragments and other remains of a 1944 air cargo flight that went missing and was never heard from again, until someone spotted it from the air in 1999.
     Not enough can be said of the heroism and sacrifice that was made by the early military air cargo pilots.
     They were a select and intrepid breed with lion-sized courage and determination.
     Everyone connected in any fashion to aviation and especially air cargo owes the Hump pilots, who founded our great industry, a debt of gratitude that we should never forget.
     The first flights over “The Hump” carried Avgas and oil earmarked to support The Doolittle Raid on Tokyo in April 1942 and as mentioned Flying Tigers P40B fighter operations.
     Those first DC-3 all-cargo flights were accomplished with passenger aircraft that were conscripted into the effort from China National Airlines (CNAC, a working partner of Pan Am) and others.
     Even more amazing were the pilots, who as American aviators had been sipping coffee in the cockpits of DC-3s a few weeks earlier at home in the U.S. as they flew between places like Chicago and Albuquerque for the commercial airlines.
     The outstanding airplane to emerge from Hump operations was the C-46A Curtiss Commando.
     Called “Dumbo” by its pilots and crew after the 1941 Disney movie as an endearment, the Curtiss C46A was an airplane that was out of place almost everywhere else but in the CBI Theater.
     But at CBI, the Commando lifted twice as much cargo as the DC-3 up into the sky upon wings that were actually four feet wider than the B-17 heavy bomber of the era.
     The Commando had better manners at high altitude and could haul twice the load of the DC-3.
     The Commando’s “double bubble” fuselage offered more room and stability aloft, and in some cases pressurized high altitude operations at its service ceiling of 21,000 feet.
     But as many veterans of the CBI recall, Dumbo was no push over.
     Almost every flight was an adventure.
     Serving the theater it was destined to define, the Curtiss Commando flew its last CBI Hump flight in November 25, 1945.
     In total more than 3,100 Curtiss Commandos were built serving in every theater of World War II.
 After the war several carriers converted the wartime transports to civilian tasks for air cargo and passenger usage.
     The Commando made a brief comeback during the Korean War but quickly was replaced in air cargo and other applications by the newer C-119 Flying Boxcar.
     As late as the 1980’s more than 300 Curtiss Commandos were still in service.
     Today, with the exception of South America and several air museums, a public that continues its love affair with the more popular Douglas DC-3 mostly forgets the Commando.
     For the record, the first Hump airlift delivered 30,000 gallons of Avgas and 500 gallons of oil.
     Aerial deliveries continued aboard what in August 1942 was named the India -China Ferry Command.
     By December 1942 with some 29 aircraft, the cargo service flights were folded into the newly formed Air Transport Command (ATC).
     Volumes of air cargo that were moved across The Hump formed an ever increasing supply tide which eventually contributed to Allied victory.
     An indication of how great an impact Hump operations had on the fortunes of the Allies can be seen by tracking shipments numbers.
     In July 1942, 85 tons were moved. In July 1943, 2,916 tons flew above the Himalayas. In 1944, 18,975 tons of air cargo flew. In 1945, the last year of operations more than 71,042 tons of war materials were delivered.
     Make no mistake those shipment numbers and a wealth of DC-3s and Curtiss Commandos made available at cheap prices after the war fueled aviation’s imagination as to a future role for air cargo.
     As the war ended, returning GI’s once again took up their civilian lives. Pilots and soldiers would become entrepreneurs.
     Aircraft that were once used to move gasoline and oil, people and tungsten, green tea, hand grenades and Hershey Bars were sold off as war surplus, as more than 100 air cargo companies including one outfit called The Flying Tiger Line went into business in the United States and elsewhere in the world between 1945 and 1947.
     Later in 1948, the Russians in a political power play they were destined to lose, surrounded Berlin not allowing any vehicular or rail traffic to access the inland city located in the Russian Zone of post-war occupied Germany.
     The success of the China-India-Burma Hump air cargo operations recalled, Air Transport Command now a full time branch of the U.S. Army Air Force, brought air cargo to the world’s attention as The Berlin Airlift saved a city of three million.
(Geoffrey Arend)