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|strength2= |casualties1=594 aircraft lost, missing, or written off 1,659 personnel killed or missing |casualties2= }} The Hump was the name given by Allied pilots in the Second World War to the eastern end of the Himalayan Mountains over which they flew military transport aircraft from India to China to resupply the Chinese war effort of Chiang Kai-shek and the units of the United States Army Air Forces based in China. Creating an airlift presented the USAAF a considerable challenge in 1942: it had no units trained or equipped for moving cargo, and no airfields existed in the China Burma India Theater (CBI) for basing the large number of transports that would be needed. Flying over the Himalayas was extremely dangerous and made more difficult by a lack of reliable charts, an absence of radio navigation aids, and a dearth of information about the weather.〔 The task was initially given to the U.S. Tenth Air Force, and then to the AAF's Air Transport Command (ATC). Because the AAF had no previous airlift experience as a basis for planning, it assigned commanders who had been key figures in founding the ATC in 1941–1942 to build and direct the operation, which included former civilians with extensive executive experience operating civil air carriers. The successive organizations responsible for carrying out the operation originally referred to as the "India-China Ferry" were: the ''Assam-Burma-China Command'' (April–July 1942) and the ''India-China Ferry Command'' (July–December 1942) of the Tenth Air Force; and the Air Transport Command's ''India-China Wing'' (December 1942-June 1944) and ''India-China Division'' (July 1944-November 1945). The airlift began in April 1942, after the Japanese blocked the Burma Road, and continued daily to August 1945, when the effort began to scale down. It procured most of its officers, men, and equipment from the AAF, augmented by British, British-Indian Army, Commonwealth forces, Burmese labor gangs and an air transport section of the Chinese National Aviation Corporation (CNAC). Final operations were flown in November 1945 to return personnel from China. The India-China airlift delivered approximately 650,000 tons of materiel to China at great cost in men and aircraft during its 42-month history. For its efforts and sacrifices, the India-China Wing of the ATC was awarded the Presidential Unit Citation on 29 January 1944 at the personal direction of President Franklin D. Roosevelt, the first such award made to a non-combat organization. ==Background: the China supply dilemma== The Second Sino-Japanese War and Japanese operations in Indochina closed all sea and rail access routes for supplying China with materiel except through Turkestan in the Soviet Union. That access ended following the signing of the Soviet–Japanese Neutrality Pact in April 1941, and the Burma Road became the only land route.〔 The rapid success of Japanese military operations in Southeast Asia threatened this lifeline and China's continued participation in the war, which was tying down more than a million Japanese troops who might otherwise oppose future Allied operations in the Pacific, prompting discussion of an air cargo service route from India as early as January 1942. Chiang's foreign minister, T.V. Soong, estimated that 12,000 tons of materiel could be delivered monthly by air from India if 100 C-47 Skytrain-type transports were committed to an airlift. On 25 February 1942, President Roosevelt wrote General George C. Marshall that "it is of the utmost urgency that the pathway to China be kept open", and committed ten C-53 Skytrooper transports for lend-lease delivery to CNAC to build its capability to 25 aircraft. When the Tenth Air Force opened its headquarters in New Delhi in March 1942, it was assigned the responsibility of developing an "India-China Ferry" using both U.S. and Chinese aircraft. Although never given command authority over aircraft or personnel, the officer responsible for the India-China Ferry was Tenth Air Force chief of staff Brig. Gen. Earl L. Naiden, who held that responsibility until mid-August. From its onset, the air route was predicated on creating two branches, unofficially deemed "commands": a "Trans-India Command" from India's western ports to Calcutta, where cargo would be transshipped by rail to Assam; and the "Assam-Burma-China Command", a route from bases in Assam to southern China. The original scheme envisioned the Allies holding northern Burma and using Myitkyina as an offloading terminal to send supplies by barge downriver to Bhamo and transfer to the Burma Road. However, on 8 May 1942 the Japanese seized Myitkyina and this, coupled with the loss of Rangoon, effectively cut Allied access to the Burma Road. To maintain the uninterrupted supply to China, U.S. and other allied leaders agreed to organize a continual aerial resupply effort directly between Assam and Kunming. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「the hump」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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