Hump: America's Strategy for Keeping China in World War II

7. The Hump Becomes An Airline

✪ 195 7 T H E H U M P B E C O M E S A N A I R L I N E OCTOBER 1944 TO AUGUST 1945 China’s role in Allied planning waned from autumn 1944 until the end of the war. The decision to merge MacArthur’s and Nimitz’s twin drives at Luzon rather than Formosa meant that China would slowly recede in strategic importance and remain a factor in Allied planning only for three reasons. First, as with the PAC-AID deliveries scheduled throughout the end of 1944, China was seen as a lodgment for stores and equipment for future operations against the Japanese home islands, as Kyushu, the southernmost island, was only five hundred miles from Shanghai. Second, should the Soviets enter the war against Japan (something agreed upon in principle at the Tehran Conference in November 1943 and in specifics in Moscow a year later), U.S. planners deemed it important to consider a coastal invasion of China to meet up with Russian troops who would be driving south through Manchukuo. Third, China also had to remain part of U.S. planning if for no other reason than the unthinkable prospect of having to defeat the Japanese everywhere in the Empire rather than securing a recognized general surrender from Tokyo.1 Ironically, the diminution of China’s strategic value did not correspond to a reduction in Hump tonnage requests; rather, ICD deliveries soared to unbelievable proportions, with 75 percent of the Hump’s wartime total of over threequarters of a million tons being delivered in the war’s final year. The reasons CHAPTER 7 196 for this were twofold. First, despite the War Department’s tepid backing for the reopening of a land route from India, it still placed value on China’s location in view of the growing prospect of an invasion of Japan. The United States had invested millions of dollars of aid in Chiang’s government and was still holding out for a hopeful return on that investment, however meager the likelihood. Second , Hump tonnage would jump in the war’s last year as a result of an operational inertia made possible by the coupling of a mature air transport infrastructure with leadership bent on maximizing airlift efficiency. Brig. Gen. William Tunner replaced Hardin in September, inaugurating what the AAF’s official history calls “the era of big business” by building on the efforts of his predecessors.2 This was timely because the robust airlift would become more capable and flexible than all other means of supply. To get the newly renamed Stilwell Road (the merger of the Ledo and Burma Roads) to a place where it could deliver 60,000 monthly tons meant delivering 5,759 trucks and 56,500 support troops to the theater, when air transport promised the same tonnage with only the addition of 150 aircraft and 5,000 troops. These figures neatly reversed the orthodox belief that land transport using trucks was inherently more efficient than air transport. Plainly, given the rugged terrain and distances involved, air transport was significantly more efficient in this case.3 The investment of the previous two years would begin to pay off as an abundance of airfields, a steady supply of pilots, a revitalized maintenance system , and a mature airways structure put the ICD on par with any commercial air carrier of the 1940s. In short, the Hump airlift would become an airline capable of rivaling any contemporary competition in efficiency and capability. CBI STRATEGY IN AUTUMN 1944 In autumn 1944 four factors dominated the CBI’s landscape and served to shape the larger context of global strategy. These included the replacement of Joseph Stilwell with Lt. Gen. Albert Wedemeyer, Japanese success in the last months of the Ichi-go offensive, the disappointing impact of the Matterhorn B-29 attacks, and the introduction of a new airplane to the airlift. Stilwell’s recall from China in October marked the culmination of tensions between Washington and Chongqing. Chiang had suffered humiliation the previous April when the War Department threatened to withdraw aid unless the gen- THE HUMP BECOMES AN AIRLINE 197 eralissimo consented to order the Yoke-force across the Salween to attack the Japanese in northeast Burma. To his mind, Guomindang troops were squandered by Stilwell in the summer of 1942 during a period when southwest China...