[News]World War Two: When 600 US planes crashed in Himalayas

[Arunabh.ly__]

Pilots called the flight route "The Hump" - a nod to the treacherous heights of the eastern Himalayas

 

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.

Some 600 American transport planes are estimated to have crashed in the remote region, killing at least 1,500 airmen and passengers during a remarkable and often-forgotten 42-month-long World War Two military operation in India. Among the casualties were American and Chinese pilots, radio operators and soldiers.

Has India's contribution to WW2 been ignored?
The operation sustained a vital air transport route from the Indian states of Assam and Bengal to support Chinese forces in Kunming and Chunking (now called Chongqing).

The war between Axis powers (Germany, Italy, Japan) and the Allies (France, Great Britain, the US, the Soviet Union, China) had reached the north-eastern part of British-ruled India. The air corridor became a lifeline following the Japanese advance to India's borders, which effectively closed the land route to China through northern Myanmar (then known as Burma).

The US military operation, initiated in April 1942, successfully transported 650,000 tonnes of war supplies across the route - an achievement that significantly bolstered the Allied victory.

 

This operation sustained a vital air transport route from India to support Chinese forces in Kunming and Chunking

 

Pilots dubbed the perilous flight route "The Hump", a nod to the treacherous heights of the eastern Himalayas, primarily in today's Arunachal Pradesh, that they had to navigate.

Over the past 14 years Indo-American teams comprising mountaineers, students, medics, forensic archaeologists and rescue experts have ploughed through dense tropical jungles and scaled altitudes reaching 15,000ft (4,572m) in Arunachal Pradesh, bordering Myanmar and China. They have included members of the US Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency (DPAA), the US agency that deals with soldiers missing in action.

The forgotten Indian soldiers of Dunkirk
With help from local tribespeople their month-long expeditions have reached crash sites, locating at least 20 planes and the remains of several missing-in-action airmen.

It is a challenging job - a six-day trek, preceded by a two-day road journey, led to the discovery of a single crash site. One mission was stranded in the mountains for three weeks after it was hit by a freak snowstorm.

"From flat alluvial plains to the mountains, it's a challenging terrain. Weather can be an issue and we have usually only the late fall and early winter to work in," says William Belcher, a forensic anthropologist involved in the expeditions.

 

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