Few people appreciate it today, but for a period of more than three years during World War II, a force of mostly American airmen undertook one of history’s most complex — and deadliest — logistical operations, flying thousands of tons of supplies from India over the Himalayas into China in rickety, under-powered cargo planes.
“The world’s first strategic airlift,” the U.S. Air Force calls it.
These flights over “the Hump” were indispensable to China’s war effort against the Japanese, and thus a major factor in the Allies’ ultimate victory.
But at a tremendous cost. No fewer than 700 Allied planes crashed or got shot down and 1,200 airmen died. “Every 340 tons delivered cost the life of a pilot
