World War II Database

Contributor: David Stubblebine

ww2dbaseThe Burma Road and the Hump actually describes three different truck-convoy ground transportation systems and one airborne transportation route. They all served the same purpose, however: to deliver large quantities of British and American supplies into western China in support of the Nationalist Chinese.

ww2dbaseThe Burma Road

ww2dbaseThe first line of supply used for this purpose was the Burma Road, a truck route from Lashio, Burma (now Myanmar) to Kunming, China. Supplies arrived by ship in Rangoon (now Yangon) in Burma and traveled by rail through Mandalay to Lashio. The trip from Lashio into China was too mountainous for a reliable railroad to be built in time to do China any good so a road was cut over the mountains instead. Burmese and Chinese laborers built the road with little heavy machinery under extremely primitive and deplorable conditions. Construction took place in 1937 and trucks started moving cargo into China in 1938. The road was closed down for two months in 1940 for diplomatic reasons but otherwise ran fairly continuously until the Burmese end was overrun by the Japanese in 1942. Cutting this line of supply was one of the primary reasons Japan decided to enter Burma.

ww2dbaseThe Kunming-Chungking Road

ww2dbaseThe overall purpose of the supply effort was to deliver goods to Chungking (now Chongqing), China's wartime capital. Chungking was where the supplies were redistributed to final destinations throughout China. The Burma Road was built into Kunming where it linked with another road that led to Chungking. This leg was still in the Himalayan foothills so it also had very mountainous sections. The famous series of tight switchback turns known as "24-turns" was on the Kunming-Chungking Road and not the Burma Road as is often thought. The Kunming-Chungking Road remained operational throughout the war, even as the changing fortunes of war forced the other legs to adjust how supplies were being delivered to Kunming.

ww2dbaseThe Hump

ww2dbaseThe loss of the Burma Road in 1942 necessitated a hasty arrangement to fly the supplies from airfields in the Assam Province of India to Kunming, China. From there, the supplies were still trucked to Chungking. This air route went over the eastern part of the Himalayan Mountains and so the route became known to the pilots as "The Hump." The airlift began as hastily thrown together arrangements but settled down into a very efficient and expansive air-freight operation. The Hump flights started with the venerable Douglas C-47 Skytrain but quickly shifted to give the Curtiss C-46 Commando its greatest glory days. The Commando could carry over twice the payload as the C-47, it could handle high altitudes better when fully loaded, and the double cargo doors worked out better for loading and unloading. By the end of the war, the primary airlift aircraft had shifted to the Douglas C-54 Skymaster. Even with the opening of an alternate ground route in early 1945, The Hump remained the principal supply route until after the war ended.

ww2dbaseThe Ledo Road

ww2dbaseWith the recapture of Myitkyina in northern Burma in 1944, a road from Ledo in Assam, India was opened through Myitkyina and reconnected with the old Burma Road at Mong Yu, Burma at the Chinese border. This reopened access to Kunming by truck in early 1945 and the recapture of Myitkyina also shortened and flattened The Hump air route. In terms of sheer tonnage moved, the new Ledo Road carried only about 10 percent of what was being flown over the Hump so the airlift remained China's primary supply option through to the end of the war and briefly beyond. Even though it carried less tonnage, the value of the Ledo Road was that it was the route used to lay a fuel pipeline from Assam to Kunming. Fuel pumped through this pipeline was fuel that did not have to be trucked or flown to China and was a very valuable addition to the system.

ww2dbaseThe Stilwell Road Name Change

ww2dbase"The Ledo Road" was the name of the road from Ledo to the intersection with the old Burma Road. Shortly after the Ledo Road opened, the road from Ledo through to Kunming, including the section of the former Burma Road, was formally renamed the Stilwell Road after United States Army General Joseph Stilwell, the Allied area commander. Portions of the road still bear that name today.

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