Flying the Hump

The capture of the Burma Road by the Japanese during World War II forced U.S. airmen to fly hundreds of missions a day into China in an airlift of epic proportions. Having to fly over the towering Himalayan Mountains, the pilots came to know this route as 'flying the hump'. The Hump was a pioneering aviation operation that had just about everything working against it: the forbidding mountains, the worst flying weather in the world, deadly Japanese fighters, the crudest of navigational aids, unproven aircraft, and inexperienced flight and maintenance crews. Military commanders considered a flight over the Hump to be more hazardous than a bombing mission over Europe. More than 1,300 pilots and crew members were lost and more than 500 transport planes crashed trying to make it. Flying the Hump contains more than 170 original color photographs depicting the lives of the pilots and their planes during this dangerous operation. Many Hump pilots shared their personal recollections of rare photos and many untold stories to comprise this book of seat-of-the-pants flying.