The memoirs of Lieutenant General William H. Tunner, a key leader in the development of military airlift from World War II through 1960. He recounts major challenges of his career: organizing the aircraft ferrying effort of World War II, flying the "Hump" route of supply from India to China, managing the Berlin Airlift in 1948 and 1949, and commanding the Combat Cargo Command of Far East Air Forces in the crucial early months of the Korean War. Photos.

Forfatteren, der i perioden 1941-1946 var amerikansk pilot, beretter om de livsvigtige transportflyvninger, der under 2. verdenskrig fandt sted med militære forsyninger og personel fra Indien og Burma over Himalaya-bjergene til Kina.

Chronicling the most ambitious airlift in history . . . Carried out over arguably the world’s most rugged terrain, in its most inhospitable weather system, and under the constant threat of enemy attack, the trans-Himalayan airlift of World War II delivered nearly 740,000 tons of cargo to China, making it possible for Chinese forces to wage war against Japan. This operation dwarfed the supply delivery by land over the Burma and Ledo Roads and represented the fullest expression of the U.S. government’s commitment to China. In this groundbreaking work—the first concentrated historical study of the world’s first sustained combat airlift operation—John D. Plating argues that the Hump airlift was initially undertaken to serve as a display of American support for its Chinese ally, which had been at war with Japan since 1937. However, by 1944, with the airlift’s capability gaining momentum, American strategists shifted the purpose of air operations to focus on supplying American forces in China in preparation for the U.S.’s final assault on Japan. From the standpoint of war materiel, the airlift was the precondition that made possible all other allied military action in the China-Burma-India theater, where Allied troops were most commonly inserted, supplied, and extracted by air. Drawing on extensive research that includes Chinese and Japanese archives, Plating tells a spellbinding story in a context that relates it to the larger movements of the war and reveals its significance in terms of the development of military air power. The Hump demonstrates the operation’s far-reaching legacy as it became the example and prototype of the Berlin Airlift, the first air battle of the Cold War. The Hump operation also bore significantly on the initial moves of the Chinese Civil War, when Air Transport Command aircraft moved entire armies of Nationalist troops hundreds of miles in mere days in order to prevent Communist forces from being the ones to accept the Japanese surrender.

Based on the true life exploits of a World War II pilot flying the dangerous route over the Himalayas, the book brings to light a little known facet of World War II. "Flying the Hump" was the name given by American pilots to flying over the treacherous air currents of the Himalayas during World War II. It was an extremely dangerous but necessary route American pilots traveled to bring vital material to Chinese troops in China, and American, and other Allied forces in the Pacific. The material transported, critical to the Allied war effort in the early days enabled the Allies to persist while the industrial might of the United States was retooling.--Publisher.

Lt. William Diebold served in the Army's Air Transport Command in the China-Burma-India theater of World War II and never fired a weapon in battle. Like many men who flew the Hump, he never saw on-the-ground combat, but he fought bravely by saving lives. Flyers who crossed the eastern Himalayas to keep the allied armies in China supplied with food, fuel, and weapons against Japan—preventing it from concentrating its power in the Pacific—often flew in zero-visibility, sometimes crashing into mountains or falling from the sky from Japanese Zero attacks. Those pilots who survived, Bill Diebold rescued. In Hell Is So Green, Diebold vividly describes the heat and stink of the jungle; the vermin, lice, and leeches; the towering mountains and roaring rivers. Rich with war slang, wisecracks, and old-fashioned phrases, his story reverberates with authenticity and represents the stories of many men that have never been told. After the author's early death, the manuscript was put away in an attic—until now. Here, from the shadows of that attic, comes a compelling story of courage under fire and heroism for the ages.

Operation Hump, the first major battle between the U.S. Army and the Viet Cong and North Vietnamese forces, took place November 5-9, 1965, in South Vietnam's War Zone D. Known as "The Hump," it would change the nature of the war, escalating it from a hit-and-run guerrilla conflict to a bloody contest between Communist main force units and American commands of battalion size or larger. This memoir of an Operation Hump survivor begins with the sequence of events leading up to the battle, from the French defeat at Dien Bien Phu in 1954. Drawing on official Army documents and the recollections of fellow combatants, the author not only describes the battle in detail but explains the war's basis in fabrications at the highest levels of the U.S. government. His experiences with PTSD after the war and his eventual return to Vietnam in the 1990s are included.