Flying The Hump
In 1937, the Japanese closed off all land routes going into China from Burma and India, including the Burma Road, China’s main supply route. When Japan closed the Burma Road, the route to China was by a 530-mile long passage over the Himalayas, the world’s tallest mountain range. The “Hump,” was the name given to the route.
China was one of our allies and the U.S. needed China to help fight the Japanese; but in order to accomplish this, the U.S. had to routinely keep them supplied along with Gen. Chennault’s “Flying Tiger” that were based there.
In April 1942, pilots started flying the “Hump,” and continued flying the Hump until 1945, when the Burma Road was finally reopened.
Japanese fighter planes sometimes attacked the U.S. aircrews flying The Hump, but the most threatening problem with flying over the hump was the weather. In summer, monsoon rains made the mountains hard to see. On the ground, there was heat and humidity. During the six-months annually monsoon seasonal period, 200 inches of rain fell on the airbases in India and Burma. In winter, thick fog almost down to ground level, fierce storms, and heavy icing knocked the planes out of the sky. Pilots struggled to get their heavily laden planes to a safe altitude; there was always extreme turbulence, thunderstorms, and icing.
Mount Everest’s famous “plume” is caused by hurricane-like winds blowing snow from the top of the 29,029-foot peak. At flight altitude, pilots often ran into 100-MPH winds.
It has been reported that more than 400 U.S. aircraft carrying nearly 1,400 troops have vanished during the war while flying the Hump. There are also British, Canadian and Chinese aircraft missing along that route.
There are nearly as many missing U.S. troops along the Hump as there are missing in Southeast Asia. For decades, no one tried to recover their remains, but now 2 men, Clayton Kuhles, a businessman from Prescott, Arizona and Gary Zaetz, a computer expert are fighting the government to bring those missing home.
On December 7, 2006, Clayton Kuhles, found U.S. airplane wreckage sites while mountain climbing the Himalayas. After returning home from his expedition Kuhles read up on The Hump and the missing U.S. flyers; and thought about the number of families who still didn’t know about their missing loved ones. He decided climbing just for the sake of bagging another difficult peak began to lose its luster. He now had a way to feed his hunger for adventure, but also do some good.
In June of 2007 Gary Zaetz booted up google from his home computer and on a whim typed “1st Lt. Irwin Zaetz” in the search field. Up came Kuhles’ website with photos of scattered wreckage, the GPS-measured longitude and latitude of crash sites.
One of the missing flyers is Gary Zaetz’s uncle, Irwin Zaetz, the planes’ navigator, who has been missing for 63 years along with the rest of an 8-man crew.
The missing plane, a B-24 called “Hot As Hell” by its crew, has been located by Clayton Kuhles and positively identified by its serial number and by the crew’s manifest. Kuhles has since positively identified 8 other plane wrecks and has at least 14 more solid leads to investigate.
Clayton Kuhles is paying for his campaign and has asked the government about helping to fund expeditions, but to no avail.
Zaetz is at the keyboard hunting for surviving relatives of the other 7 missing crewmembers. He googled genealogy experts and asked for their help in searching census records for the flyer’s siblings and relatives and he has goggled contacts at libraries in the crew member’s hometown and the town’s newspapers searching the missing men’s obituaries. The relatives of the missing flyers are now joining the effort in the search. Zaetz and other members of the crew’s families began appearing at monthly meetings for MIA families; and they joined forces with a group that is pressing the government to put more emphasis on recovering the missing from World War II.
The immediate family members of the missing are quickly dying off most are in the late 80’s or early 90’s.
The heat is on government officials and the Pentagon from nieces, nephews and grandchildren of the missing from World War II. The Pentagon has said it would probably be 2009 before they can send personnel to first assess and then plan subsequent recovery missions . . .
Non-fiction
William J. Thibodeaux
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