A brief encounter with a Douglas C-47 recently reminded me of a group of unsung heroes who continue to influence aviation today. While it is now taken as natural that armies and victims of natural tragedies can be provisioned by airlifts, the concept was unknown when, in the spring of 1942, the Japanese army occupied Burma and sealed off the only ground supply route from British-held India to China. In order to provide supplies to the Chinese and American armies commanded by Gen Chiang Kai-shek as they engaged a force of more than one million Japanese troops, the world's first 'air bridge' was created across the toughest terrain imaginable: the Himalayas. Perhaps in an attempt to talk down the risks, the crews referred to their 500-mile route across the world's greatest mountain range merely as 'the Hump! They routinely flew aircraft with a maximum altitude capability of just 16,000ft, through ranges of mountains in excess of 20,000ft high. They faced winds of over 125mph, ferocious turbulence and, for a quarter of the year, monsoon conditions in the air and on the ground. Radio facilities were basic, navigation aids non-existent and most of the mountains and the surrounding dense jungle were uncharted.
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