Army & Navy – OPERATIONS: The Big Lift

Ever since the days of the Flying Tigers, it had seemed to the embattled Chinese that when a miracle had to be worked, U.S. aviators were the men to work it. At war’s end, Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek asked the Army Air Forces to work one more. To implement the policy of getting National Government troops to places where they were needed to take Jap surrenders, the A.A.F. took over a massive task: to fly several armies to the east and north.

The A.A.F. had already lifted China’s Sixth Army twice, with its 25,000 men, 2,178 horses and mules, more than 1,500 tons of gear. Now it was time again to pick up the Sixth, which claims to be “the most airborne army in the world.” It was a bigger job than ever: at Chikiang the Sixth had been swollen to more than 33,000 men. The Tenth Air Force’s 443rd Troop Carrier Group loaded 45 to 50 of the men into each of its C-46s, flew them over central China’s great blue lakes to reoccupy Nanking, where Japan’s puppets had reigned. It was all done in 22 days. In the same period, the Air Transport Command, loading 80 Chinese into each of its larger C-54s, carried 26,000 men of the Ninety-fourth Army to Shanghai. Soon the Ninety-fourth was on the wing again. This time it was bound for Peiping. At the same time, the Ninety-second Army was flown to Peiping from Hankow.

Going Home. The U.S. flyers broke all records for such operations. The bright autumn sky over ancient Peiping drummed with the 20th-Century roar of twin-engined aircraft as the planes swept down on the airfield, hour after hour. They disgorged their human cargo, taxied to gas pumps manned by Hopeh coolies, hopped off and were on their way south again within 50 minutes.

The job took nine days, instead of the scheduled month. An A.A.F. officer explained the speed : “You see what the boys can do when they’re going home.” Sometimes Chinese military passengers turned up at airports with wives & children, or with concubines, hoping to take them along, but most showed good military discipline and resigned themselves to discomfort. The crowding was so great that they jampacked the floor in a sitting position, each man’s back against another’s bent knees. Because ground troops have a tendency to airsickness, an open barrel in the middle of the cabin was standard equipment.

One C-54 with 80 Chinese passengers and a crew of four Americans crashed near Hangchow, killing all the occupants — the greatest loss of life in any U.S. plane any where. A C46 struck a radio tower at Peiping and crashed. There were other casualties when superstitious Chinese walked across the runways in front of whirring propellers, hoping that the blades would chew up the evil spirits which they believed were following them. Some propellers missed the shadows but devoured the substance. But loss of life was amazingly small in proportion to the magnitude of the undertaking. Army airmen again had reason to point to the achievement as the greatest ever, of its kind. All that remained for them this week was to fly themselves and the few remaining U.S. units out of China.