by Otha C. Spencer
It is impossible to overestimate the value of the China National Aviation Corporation CNAC) in pioneering and developing Hump routes from India to China and in its conscientious cooperation in helping the army learn to fly the dangerous territory The army was constantly trying to take over the operations of this civilian carrier. Stanley K. Hombeck, an advisor on political relations in China, wrote to the secretary of state in 1943 concerning a dispute when the army tried to take over CNAC: “CNAC pioneered .,. the practicality of flying freight between Assam and China . . . the U.S. Army has tried hard to absorb CNAC rand] finding itself unable to . is seeking to starve CNAC out of existence.
“Man for man and plane for plane, . . - CNAC will continuously equal or top the best work of the Army (which is improving) in carrying freight between Assam and China. - . . it is good for the Army to have competition.’
After ATC had been flying the Hump for just a few months, operations officers discovered that their most threatening problem was weather. In summer, the 1-lump routes were plagued by the hot Indian monsoon winds, which lifted moisture over the mountain range and created turbulence, unprecedented ram, thunderstorms hail, zero visibility, and icing. Mount Everest’s famous “plume” is caused by hurricane-like winds blowing snow from the top of the 29,029-foot peak. At flight altitude, pilots often ran into 100-MPH winds
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The summer monsoons—evil winds that brought heavy rains— were a phenomenon that American airmen had never experienced. The Indians say that the monsoon ‘bursts.” Moist winds pouring in from the flax’ of Bengal bring more than seventy-five inches of rain each mend’ from June to October. In Assam, from 425 to 500 inches of rain jell annually with over 100 inches each month during June., July, and August Throughout every day in the summer it rained— hard, driving rain that were hard to believe. The rains came quickly and stopped just as quickly but they always came, and flight operations were curtailed. During the heavy monsoon rains, air bases in Assam were closed, with runways, taxiways, and parking hardstands under water.
Danniel S. Dennis, pilot from Roosevelt, Utah, described monsoon flying am Lal Hat: “ The monsoon created its share of challenges. For two to three months at Lal-Hat it never stopped raining., day or night, and the ceiling was fifty to one hundred feet much of the time. We used to fly a regular let-down pattern coming over the radio at four hundred feet, descending and hoping to break out in time to make a landing. If we missed the runway, we would fly a box pattern at one hundred feet, going out ninety degrees for thirty seconds, turn parallel for one minute, another ninety degrees for thirty seconds and turn onto final approach. This usually worked out all right if you didn’t get too low and clip the trees on the turn. One plane with passengers did clip the trees and we lost them all.”
In the spring of 1943, Colonel Alexander wrote his headquarters, in a bitter understatement, “The weather has been pretty awful. The icing level stats at 12,000 feet. Today a C-87 went to 29,500 feet on instruments.. - and could not get on top of the overcast. It has rained about seven and a half inches in the past five days. All aircraft are grounded”
The world’s most violent weather comes into Asia because it is the meeting place of three turbulent air masses: low pressure from the west moves along the main range of the Himalaya between Tibet and India to the Hump, where warm, wet high pressure systems from the Bay of Bengal clash with frigid low pressure from Siberia. The polar vonex, and the heat rising from the jungles of Burma, intensify the weather movement.
Winter brought the best weather, except for the absence of ground fog, which was always a smooth flight experience. From November to March were the best flying conditions in India and Burma, but in China there were freezing rain and typical winter conditions. In late January, one cold front after another brought snow to the mountains and ice to the clouds. Winter would give way to the thunderstorms of early spring arid the start of another cycle of bad weather. The drama of the Hump was weather—a battle of men and their planes against wind, shattering turbulence, ice, and below-zero temperatures.
In 1944 Gen. Williani Tunrier came to India to try to reduce the terrible losses of the Hump. As he personally flew the Hump, he expenenced weather changes from minute to minute and mile to mile, trom the low steamy jungles 0f India; to the mile-high plateau of Westem China ... a law unto itself . . . thunderstorms building out ot nowhere ... icing . - . turbulence greater than I have ever seen elsewhere in the world winds of as much as one hundred miles an hour. piling onto the steep barren slopes, would glance ofi to create updraits over the ridges and down drafts over the valleys .. planes could drop at the rate of five thousand feet a minute, then suddenly be whisked upward at the same speed.”