The Hump

[cardboard_killer]

[80 years ago today] "• Chinese pilot Xia Pu makes the first flight over “the Hump” in a DC-3 of the China National Air Corporation (CNAC). The flight would go from Lashio, Northern Shan States, to Northeast Assam; thence over Fort Hertz, the most northerly post in Burma territory; and thence to Chungtien in Yunnan, Likiang and Kunming. This meant that CNAC planes would have to fly over the roof of the world without weather forecasting and exposed to such terrible hazards as polar air masses which could assume the form of violent blizzards and 125 mile-an-hour crosswinds. By the time flights cease in November, 1945, 594 aircraft will be lost, missing, or written off and 1,659 personnel killed or missing. Pilots will refer to the route as “the aluminum trail” due to the large number of wrecks."