He flew "The Hump" - Few people appreciate it today, but for a period of more than three years during World War II, a force of mostly American airmen undertook one of history’s most complex — and deadliest — logistical operations, flying thousands of tons of supplies from India over the Himalayas into China in rickety, under-powered cargo planes. “The world’s first strategic airlift,” the U.S. Air Force calls it. These flights over “the Hump” were indispensable to China’s war effort against the Japanese, and thus a major factor in the Allies’ ultimate victory. But at a tremendous cost. No fewer than 700 Allied planes crashed or got shot down and 1,200 airmen died. “Every 340 tons delivered cost the life of a pilot,”
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