17daug 9/26/96 7:36 am page 95 supplying war war: interservice and interallied cooperation in...

Summer 1996 / JFQ 95

T he China-Burma-India (CBI) theater,perhaps the most political front inWorld War II, has been largely ignoredby students of military history. One

reason for this inattention is the bitter interser-vice as well as interallied friction that nearly ledto a collapse of cooperation between Great Britainand the United States in the southeast Asian the-ater of operations. The squabbles were over the

best strategy for defeating Japan, the commandand control of forces and resources in theater,postwar decolonization, and U.S. policy towardChina.1 Finally, CBI was a backwater, receiving lit-tle in the way of men and equipment despite theextent of the front and the number of Japaneseon the Asian mainland. Only through the doggeddetermination of those who fought there, and thebelated importance attached to CBI after the Tri-dent conference of May 1943, was the theatergiven resources for a three-pronged offensiveaimed at removing the Japanese threat to British-controlled India as well as driving them fromBurma, China, and Indochina.

Leo J. Daugherty III, a military historian and former Marine Corps intelligence analyst, currently serves as associate editor of MarineCorps Gazette.

Supplying War:

Interservice and Interallied Cooperation in China-Burma-IndiaBy L E O J. D A U G H E R T Y I I I

Supply Line in Kunming,China (November 1945)by Loren Russell Fisher.

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One vital aspect of fighting in the CBI theaterwere the efforts between December 1941 and June1944 by air and ground-based logistic forces tosupport the Chinese nationalist field armies underGeneralissimo Chiang Kai-shek, the British Four-teenth Army under General William Slim, and theFourteenth Air Force—formerly American Volun-

teer Group (AVG)—underGeneral Claire Chennault.This dimension of the war inCBI illustrates the complexi-ties of both interservice andinterallied cooperation thatexisted until the theater was

reorganized after the Trident conference and theAnakim decision to retake northern Burma. Muchof the bickering then can be traced to the failure ofboth the Combined Chiefs of Staff (CCS) and theJoint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) to agree on a sound pol-icy regarding CBI and the Japanese threat there.The U.S. inability to formulate a solid strategy ledto postwar breakdowns in policy whereby Alliedinterests gave way to “recolonization” instead of“decolonization.” Ultimately, failing to prioritizesupport for CBI as well as relegating the theater tominor importance was directly linked to the politi-cal and military failures in Indochina in 1946–54and again in 1965–73.

Students of World War II, Korea, and Viet-nam should not ignore the obstacle which facedAmerican and British planners in southeast Asiaas they fought both among themselves andagainst the Japanese, all in the name of joint andcombined operations. Thus, it is relevant to ex-amine not only the Anglo-American command—later Southeast Asia Command (SEAC)—but alsothe often acrimonious Army-Air Force relations insupplying China. The lessons of the airlift andmilitary assistance conducted in the CBI theaterto interservice cooperation serve as importantprecedents for jointness. The experiences of theArmy and the Army Air Forces in CBI, as well asbetween the United States and Britain, influencedpost-war joint and combined warfighting.

BackgroundBefore the United States entered the war in

the Pacific on December 7, 1941, China and Japanhad been fighting for four and a half years, withthe Chinese forces under Chiang Kai-shek beinggradually pushed inland by the Japanese army.With the attacks on Pearl Harbor and Malaya theUnited States and Great Britain were drawn intothe Sino-Japanese struggle. Even prior to theJapanese attacks on American and British forcesacross the south and southwest Pacific, however,U.S. lend-lease assistance had been flowing to em-battled nationalist Chinese forces for a year and ahalf. AVG volunteers, led by Claire L. Chennault, aformer Army Air Corps captain, at that time werefighting a desperate though successful air waragainst more experienced Japanese aviators. Chen-nault, an advocate of offensive airpower, accompa-nied the Chinese director of air operations, MajorGeneral Mao Pang-tzo, to Washington in Decem-ber 1940 to plead China’s case to PresidentFranklin D. Roosevelt and Army chief of staff Gen-eral George C. Marshall.

Along with a request from communist Chi-nese forces for 500 combat planes and crews, thenationalist Chinese government requested an ad-ditional lend-lease loan of $30 billion in groundforce materiel. Mao Tse-tung as well as T.V. Soong,the governor of the National Bank of China, alsoreceived a credit extension of $100,000,000 inlend-lease assistance of which 25 percent was forarmaments. Despite approval of this loan, the WarDepartment, which was strapped by its own re-quirements, replied that it could not totally com-ply with the request. But Mao’s plea for aircraftfared better. Stanley K. Hornbeck, who was on theFar East desk at the Department of State, and thePresident assured that no objections would beraised to a request for aircraft. The sale of 500 com-bat planes was dealt with by the War, State, andTreasury Departments without difficulty.

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96 JFQ / Summer 1996

experiences in CBI influencedpost-war joint and combinedwarfighting

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On the road to China.

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The first serious War Department effort todevelop a unified military policy for China camein July 1941 at the suggestion of the British mili-tary attaché to China, Major General L.E. Den-nys. Fearing a Soviet collapse and subsequent re-lease of thousands of Japanese troops inManchuria for duty in China proper, he urgedWashington to establish a military mission to co-ordinate lend-lease assistance. He argued thatsuch a mission could serve as the basis for a the-ater command should the United States becameinvolved in a war in the Pacific.

With Marshall’s approval, the American Mili-tary Mission to China was to serve as a liaison forstrategic planning and cooperation with China.Under Brigadier General John Magruder, the mis-sion would coordinate lend-lease with theChungking government to:

■ advise and assist in all phases of aircraft pro-curement, transport, and maintenance

■ advise and assist in the training, use, and main-tenance of weapons and equipment

■ when requested, assist the Department of Stateand other agencies in carrying out the Lend-Lease Actpertaining to China

■ help obtain prompt and coordinated adminis-trative action to ensure the orderly flow of war materielto Chinese forces

■ explore port, road, and railroad facilities with aview to establishing and maintaining an adequate lineof communications.2

Shortly after our entry into the Pacific war,Washington put the 500 planes promised Chinaon hold pending review largely because of imme-diate requirements by both the U.S. Army andthe Royal Air Force (RAF). The availability of 100of the latest P–40B fighters produced a tentativeagreement among Air Vice Marshal Sir RobertBrooke-Popham, Chennault, and the U.S. militarywhereby the former would transfer P–40s toChina while Britain would receive a similar num-ber of the new fighters. In addition, Brooke-Popham agreed to rearm the aircraft and offeredthe use of RAF airfields in Burma to train Chinesepilots and crews as well as logistical support.

Pre-war discussions between Washingtonand London on China or the CBI theater pointedto differences in Anglo-American strategy on thedefense of the vital natural resources of SoutheastAsia. As early as October 1941, the Americans andBritish, fearing further moves by the Japanese to-ward Burma and Southeast Asia, discussed form-ing AVG into an Anglo-American organization.China likewise grew in importance since Wash-ington and London saw the Sino-Japanese con-flict as a large holding action to delay Japanesearmies from being committed elsewhere in thePacific. Despite various attempts to make China a

Burma, 1944.

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major wartime front, its sig-nificance diminished withthe “Germany first” (Rain-bow 1) strategy once Americaentered the war.3

The Arcadia Conference Chiang Kai-shek, on the other hand, not sur-

prisingly believed that China and Asia should bethe Allied focal point. On the very day the Japan-ese attacked Pearl Harbor, he called a meeting ofAllied representatives in Chungking to discusscreating a council which he would chair to directthe war in that theater. Besides calling for sever-ing Japan’s lines of supply and communicationsthrough strategic bombing, he proposed that henow be given control “and priority” over all lend-lease equipment. The Generalissimo rightlythought Britain would try to “preempt the lend-lease arms that were piling up in Burma on con-signment to China . . . [and] wanted Americanleadership of the war council to keep the Britishfrom taking his goods.”4

Chiang’s “Asia first” strategy was quickly setaside at the first major interallied conference.

During the Arcadia meeting in December 1941,President Roosevelt and Prime Minister WinstonS. Churchill reaffirmed the “Germany first” strat-egy though both acknowledged the necessity ofdefending Burma and supplying Chiang’s belea-guered forces. They agreed, moreover, that CBIwas to remain solely defensive until Germany wasdefeated. Despite the low priority assigned toChina, Roosevelt believed it crucial to not permitit to either pull out of the war (as Chiang hintedseveral times) or side with the Japanese. He like-wise advocated that China be given great powerstatus and permitted to direct the war in Chinafrom Chungking (later Kunming) instead ofgranting General Sir Archibald Wavell overallcommand. Roosevelt also believed the British andFrench hold over Asian colonies would not sur-vive the war, and thus a strong China would beneeded as a “policeman” to arrest any Sovietmoves into the region. Churchill, who was in notin the mood to compromise Britain’s postwar po-sition in Asia, including India, told Roosevelt ineffect that what went on in British colonies wasnone of his business.



Supplying War in CBI: From Dockside in Calcutta to Airfields in China

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pilots dubbed the Hump the“aluminum trail” because of the3,000 aircraft that went down

Barge Route

Pipeline (6 inch)

Pipeline (4 inch)

Airlift to China

Major Airfields

Broad Gauge, Double Track Railroad

Broad Gauge, Single Track Railroad

Meter Gauge, Single Track Railroad

LEGEND

Source: Charles F. Romanus and Riley Sunderland, Time Runs Out in CBI. The China-Burma-India Theater. U.S.Army in World War II (Washington: U.S. Army Center for Military History, 1985).

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The Allied leaders nonetheless formulated astrategy that was purely defensive and would con-tinue supporting Chiang against Japan as well asholding the line against further advances intoBurma and India. China’s strategic and opera-tional importance was as a base to defend Burma,India, and the Malay-Java barrier and possibly asa “jumping off” point for retaking Indochina. Inorder to reduce the friction between Chiang andthe British (whom Chiang believed imperialistic),the War Department would take responsibility forChina while Southeast Asia Command assumedresponsibility for Burma. This separation ofBurma and China disrupted regular logistic chan-nels, leading to problems of command and con-trol in CBI that threatened the conduct of the waragainst Japan on the Asian mainland. It was atthis point that the questions of how to supplyboth China and British forces fighting in Burma,while also maintaining Chiang’s forces in thefield, arose. For Marshall and the War Depart-ment, the problem did not center on the need tosupply CBI but on how to do it with the limitedassets available during the first fourteen monthsafter Pearl Harbor.

By Land or Air?As long as Britain controlled Burma and the

vital “Burma Road” from Mandalay to Lashio andon into China, the Allies could supply both Chi-ang and Chennault. During Arcadia, Churchill infact had been pressured by Roosevelt to focusBritish efforts at defending the only land route toChina, much to the disgust of General Sir AlanBrooke, chief of the Imperial General Staff, whoconsidered the scheme wild and half-baked.Throughout early 1942, British, Commonwealth,and Chinese forces waged a rear-guard actionafter losing Rangoon to protect both the BurmaRoad and Yenangyaung oilfields and prevent theChinese from being cut off in the northeasternShan states.

Loss of Burma and the vital rail and roadnetworks into China would force the Americansto undertake an aerial resupply effort over the Hi-malayas in northern Burma. Lieutenant GeneralJoseph W. Stilwell, the War Department’s per-sonal emissary to Chiang, proposed that a newtruck route running through northern Burma,from Ledo to Myitkyina, be constructed after thearea was cleared of Japanese by a three-prongedAllied offensive. The British and Chinese saw theidea as time-consuming and wasteful. The Britishproposed instead a new offensive to recapture theport of Rangoon and reopen the old Burma Roadfrom Lashio to Kunming. To meet short termneeds the British and Chinese suggested a mas-sive airlift. The Combined Chiefs reached a com-

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promise: the Americans would undertake the air-lift even as Allied forces launched a series of of-fensives to retake Myitkyina, opening the way tobuild a new land route to China.

Getting lend-lease to China even before U.S.involvement in the war was not simple. Prior to

the fall of Rangoon inMarch 1942, ships car-rying lend-lease sup-plies would dock andunload at Rangoon,then be trucked via theLashio Road. The new

Burma Road was to stretch from Ledo, India,through Fort Hertz and Myitkyina to Lung-Ling inChina. Chiang optimistically believed it wouldtake only five months to build the road whileWashington estimated two and a half years. Sup-port nonetheless came quickly from Marshall andpresidential adviser Lauchlin Currie. In fact, Cur-rie told Roosevelt that building such a road underAmerican auspices would eliminate many of theproblems between Chiang and the British, permit-ting lend-lease to flow relatively uninterrupted toChinese forces. But as Chiang and the War Plans

Division hammered out planning for the road, aninterim route was found via Sadiya, India, andKunming over a rough and forbidding stretch ofterrain soon to be known as simply the “Hump.”

The Chinese foreign minister, T.V. Soong, es-timated that 100 C–47 Skytrains or Dakotas couldfly 12,000 tons of supplies into China everymonth. Despite Roosevelt’s concern that the un-armed transports would be easy prey for Japanesepilots, Soong assured him that “the supply routeto China via India can be maintained by air eventhough there should be a further setback in Ran-goon.” Though Soong promised air support,many transports flew missions under a constantthreat of attack. And much of the fighter coverprovided came from Indian based RAF squadrons.It was not until 1944 when Merrill’s Maraudersretook the Japanese airbase in Burma at Myitky-ina that the enemy air threat was eliminated.

Washington instructed Stilwell, appointed inJanuary 1942 to command U.S. personnel andlend-lease in China, to “set up the airline toChina even though the Burma Road was held.”



getting lend-lease to China evenbefore U.S. involvement in thewar was not simple

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Despite emphasis on building a land route, logis-tical and engineering problems as well as thedrain of manpower and materiel to other theatersdelayed construction, forcing the War Depart-ment to resupply the Allies with a massive airlift.This would establish a vital link with Chiang’sforces in China and set the stage for the retakingof Burma in 1944.

CBI, 1942–44Despite delays in building a road to China

and the shortage of men and aircraft because ofmore pressing needs, the Army inaugurated Pro-ject 7A which requisitioned 25 American Airwaystransports for the Assam-Burma-China FerryCommand. Its mission was to deliver equipmentand supplies to British, American, Chinese, andIndian soldiers as well as aiding fleeing refugees.

Despite Washington’s desire to placate Chi-ang, operations in Europe were a constant drainon transport aircraft for the Ferry Command.American strategy in China thus became hostageto the European theater with regard to JCS andCCS priorities on both men and materiel. Chiang,on the other hand, insisted that by August 1942“the monthly aerial support should be 5,000tons,” impossible given the build-up for Gym-nast, later renamed Torch, and Sledgehammer,the invasion of northwestern France. In fact,troop and support problems plagued Stilwell and

the American, British, Dutch, Australian SupremeCommand (ABDACOM) throughout the theater.These same problems caused acrimonious debatesamong the Anglo-American leaders and Chinaover strategy. Squabbling about who got whichshare of the little support reaching CBI strainedtenuous relations between the Americans andBritish as well as between British and Chineseforces in Burma.

From the outset the British sought to havethe airlift placed “at its disposal and under the airofficer commander in chief (India).” AlthoughJCS rejected this plan, Marshall personally as-sured Field Marshal Sir John Dill, the British liai-son in Washington, that the Tenth Air Forcewould be turned over to British forces in Indiawhen necessary. Stilwell, suspicious of the lack-luster British efforts in Burma and trying to pla-cate Chiang’s demands, drew up his own plansfor a limited air and ground offensive that wouldkeep the pressure on the Japanese and the Chi-nese fighting.

The center of Stilwell’s program in summer1942 was an air campaign to support a series oflimited ground offensives in China and Burma.While Chennault’s Fourteenth Air Force was toassist Chiang’s forces inside China, Tenth AirForce, flying from bases in India, was to “bombstrategic targets in Burma and China” when they

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could be supported there. India Air Task Force, ac-tivated in October 1942, supplemented India-China Ferry Command. Leading the airlift to CBIwas Air Service Command, under Brigadier Gen-eral Francis M. Brady. His task was to “receive andtrain crews for combat and transport operations”flying back and forth into China. Workingthrough Brady’s American Air Service Commandwas its own Air Service Command. The group,based throughout northern India (Agra, Alla-habad, Chakulia, Bangalore, Dinjan, and Chabua)and at Kunming in China, served as a mainte-nance and supply echelon. Directing the entireresupply effort for China was Major General Ray-mond A. Wheeler’s Service of Supply (SOS). De-pending on a 12,000-mile, four-month odysseyby ship from Los Angeles to Karachi and throughIndia’s vast interior to Assam on an antiquatedrail and road network, SOS performed a miraclein getting supplies to Stilwell and Alexander.

Over the HumpMissions across the Hump and into Burma

were long and dangerous. The Hump portion ofthe flight averaged over 600 miles from eitherAssam or Delhi to Kunming. It began on leavingMyitkyina where pilots with oxygen masks flew

at 17,000–20,000 feet. The transports, includingconverted B–24s, carried no armaments. Even ma-chine guns in the rear of B–24s were removed toadd room for cargo. “The old slow transports, notdesigned for such conditions, flew without aids tonavigation or arms against Japanese pursuit.”5

Pilots flew from 13 to 14 hours a day, roundthe clock, seven days a week, in all types ofweather. The only “down time” was during themonsoon from May to late October when onlylimited flights took place. The C–46s carried 500-pound bombs, 50-gallon drums of 100-octaneaviation fuel, small arms ammunition, and what-ever else Chiang or Stilwell required. Loaded byBritish, American, Indian, and Chinese groundcrews, the tightly-packed “gooney birds” flew offrunways made of steel mats or concrete andcrushed gravel on flights of up to five hours.

When flying through the monsoon and atnight, pilots relied on “AI,” or actual instrumentflying. Chinese and American technicians like-wise operated beacon radars to guide aircraft fly-ing on instruments to Luliang and Kunming as



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well as all major air installations in India. Pilotssimply came to know the approaches and landingsites by heart.

Most problems with flying the Hump, how-ever, were due to the weather. As one veteran,Lieutenant General William H. Turner, wrote:

Looking at the Hump weather on a year-round basis,it’s easy to see that it was no picnic any time of theyear. The combination of weather and terrain wouldhave made the Hump airlift a difficult one even if theroute had been over the middle of the United States.6

Pilots dubbed the Hump the “aluminumtrail” because of the 3,000 aircraft that wentdown over the four years the Army Air Force ranthe supply line, 85 percent of the losses due toweather.

Besides flying to Kunming and Luliang, 4th

Combat Cargo Group supported the advance bySlim on Rangoon, ferrying and inserting intoBurma radar teams and the long-range penetra-tion units. The group also transported Chinesesoldiers from bases in India and Burma to China.But the bulk of the flying before and after Tridentwas in support of Allied military operations inChina and Burma. Slim wrote of the latter:

There were, of course, some anxious moments: we hadsome over air supply. The American and British trans-port aircraft were proving too few to meet our increas-ing demands. . . . This difficulty was met by AdmiralMountbatten obtaining the permission of the Com-bined Chiefs of Staff to borrow aircraft from theHump. Twenty-five Commandos [C–46s] were lentfor three weeks, thus enabling Dakotas to be sent to[Orde] Wingate’s force [Chindits] to tide over thepeak demand.7

In fact what made “flying the Hump” all themore successful was the flexibility of respondingquickly to operational requirements which alsohas been typical of subsequent air relief opera-tions. During Slim’s advance down the IrrawadyRiver in April–May 1945, American C–46s keptBritish forces supplied by flying round-the-clockduring the battle for Kohima Ridge until reliefcame after two weeks of bitter fighting. Crewsbraved heavy antiaircraft fire by dropping ammu-nition, water, and food to the beleaguered Britishand Indian forces. Kickers pushed bundles frompallets onto drop zones usually designated byflares or coordinates. This system was repeatedduring the U.S. resupply of Chiang’s forces duringthe Chinese civil war (1945–49) and the first In-dochina conflict when American-hired transportcrews helped French paratroopers at Dien BienPhu in 1954.

AnakimThe pace of the war in both the Pacific and

the Mediterranean increased after the Casablancaconference in January 1943. As Trident and Quad-rant demonstrated, Stilwell’s and Admiral LordLouis Mountbatten’s theaters became ever moredependent on an ever dwindling pool of logisticaland air support. Even before Trident, JCS put fortha more aggressive plan, Anakim, for a series of of-fensives to reopen the Ledo Road into China. Mar-shall’s motive for backing it met serious resistancefrom both the British and Chinese. The Britishmaintained that any operation to open the BurmaRoad was a waste of resources that could better beused in the Mediterranean, for example. The Chi-nese, on the other hand, agreed to participate onlyif Britain provided adequate naval and air support.When Wavell informed the Generalissimo thatBritain could provide only a “limited amount,”the Chinese declined.

At Casablanca, Roosevelt and Churchill dis-cussed problems confronting the Allies in thethird full year of war. The President, aware thatboth the public and his chiefs wanted an ex-panded effort in the Pacific and China, sided withChurchill’s desire to first secure the Mediter-ranean basin and prepare for an eventual “secondfront” in Europe (Bolero) to remove pressure fromthe Soviet army on the Eastern Front. Althoughthey fought off suggestions for a major offensivein Burma, Marshall and Admiral Ernest J. Kingconvinced the President to approve a limitedBurma offensive for late 1943. Roosevelt and Mar-shall pledged that supplies expended in Burmawould be replaced immediately from Americanstockpiles to placate Churchill’s fears that CBIwould drain lend-lease.

Marshall’s desire for even a limited offensivewas twofold. His first goal was to reopen the lineof communications to China to secure bases foroperations against Japan’s home islands. The sec-ond, and more important to both him and JCS,was to obtain staging areas and airfields in northChina for bombers to launch a strategic bombingcampaign (Matterhorn) against Japan.

Despite Roosevelt’s approval for a limitedBurma offensive, Marshall and King stressed toStilwell that priority must go to rebuilding theChinese army into a credible offensive force. CBIwas to get only enough logistical support to pre-vent collapse. In the end, Chennault’s FourteenthAir Force and not Stilwell’s half-starved Chineseand American force received greater support dueto the belief on the part of Roosevelt and a reluc-tant Marshall that airpower would be a “quick-fix” alternative to Stilwell’s plan to refit 30 Chi-nese divisions. Despite this change of priorities inCBI, the impact of Anakim on SOS and Air Trans-port Command was immediate.

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During the Trident conference in spring1943, Roosevelt, Churchill, and their CombinedChiefs sought to finalize the agreements made atCasablanca the previous winter, particularly withregard to Anakim. Both Chennault and Stilwell,the latter representing Chiang Kai-shek, pre-sented their plans on how to best defeat Japan inChina. After a lengthy presentation by Chennaulton the efficacy of airpower, Stilwell discountedairpower and Chennault’s grandiose plan warn-ing that if compelled the Japanese had more thanenough power to march on both Chungking andKunming. Stilwell maintained that defeating theJapanese on the mainland required 120 Chinesedivisions.

The British, on the other hand, believed anyoffensive in Burma would divert manpower andlogistics just when the war in Germany was enter-ing its most crucial phase. In fact, Churchill andthe British chiefs advocated bypassing Burma asthe Americans were about to do in the south andcentral Pacific. The British favored a limited am-phibious campaign to retake the northern tip ofSumatra and reoccupy Singapore. They likewisethought it impossible to airlift sufficient suppliesover the Hump to sustain even a limited offensivein Burma given other priorities.

Supplying ChinaAny offensive to retake Burma or to assist

Chennault in his proposed air campaign againstJapan would demand flying increased tonnageover the Hump. Chennault based his requirementson 150 B–17 bombers; 32 B–24, B–25, and B–26medium bombers; air and ground personnel; and

2,500–3,000 tons of supplies not only to protectair routes to China but to strike the Japanese alongthe Chinese and Burmese coasts. Despite Stilwell’sopinion that airpower alone could not defeat theenemy, Marshall ordered the CBI commander inchief to give Chennault a “firm allocation” of1,500 tons a month regardless of Chiang’s needs.Stilwell complied and told JCS that Chennaultwould receive an added 1,000 tons per month.Chinese forces would still get 2,500 tons monthly,providing that in bad weather Chennault would“share equally with everyone else” no matter whatit did to air operations. Chennault saw Stilwell’splan as undercutting his efforts to launch the aircampaign against Japan. He not only insisted onpriority in Hump tonnage but that he get enough“to fly and fight.”

Aggravating Stilwell’s command problemswith Chiang and Chennault was interference bythe President in theater operations. Rooseveltoften circumvented the normal chain of com-mand in Washington—Marshall and JCS—to con-duct the war in the same ad hoc way that pre-warpolicy on China had been formulated. WhileRoosevelt’s aim was to assure Chiang that “Chinawas a full partner,” his meddling frequently sentconfusing signals, hampering the war effort.Moreover, his personal relationship with Chen-nault, which went back to 1937, hindered Stilwellin reforming the Chinese army into an effectiveforce. In fact, it inhibited the war against Japanand later in creating a working coalition with theChinese communists. Roosevelt’s insistence thatChennault receive a “guaranteed monthly mini-mum” not only reduced the chance of Stilwell ac-cumulating the requisite supplies, but forced a re-vision of the planned offensive into northernBurma. The decision to maintain the pressure onthe Japanese via an air offensive also impeded aneffective Chinese effort against the enemy inBurma and China.

Despite War Department pronouncements onthe bravery and fortitude of Chinese soldiers, in-terallied squabbling and British mistrust of Chi-ang’s pro-Indian sentiment slowed down effortsby Stilwell to build a Chinese army able to defeatthe Japanese as well as the Chinese communistsduring the civil war (1945–49). Interallied frictionover priorities, strategy, and operations likewisescuttled plans to resume the offensive in CBI in1943. Not until the Quebec conference (Quadrant)in August 1943 and Mountbatten’s appointmentwould the Allies resume a major offensive againstthe Japanese in Burma and China. In fact, Tridentset in motion both the reconquest of Burma andthe opening of the Burma Road in late 1944.



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Cooperation at Last The immediate result of the Trident confer-

ence was increased Hump tonnage reaching bothChennault and Stilwell in China. Chiang’s ap-proval of the Trident decisions meant that train-ing and equipping Y-Force (the 30 refitted Chi-nese divisions) had to go forward, and tacticalplans for Burma had to be updated. Decisions

reached in Washington by Roo-sevelt, Churchill, and CCS on alimited offensive into Burma setin motion plans for Slim’s re-conquest and opening theBurma-Ledo Road in late 1944.Trident also gave more emphasisto Chennault’s plan for an air

campaign. Roosevelt’s backing of Chennault di-verted resources from road construction to air-fields in India.

With the increase of Hump tonnage from4,000 to 10,000 per month came the expansionand reinforcement of Wheeler’s SOS. After Tri-dent, his first task was to get SEAC permission tobuild several airfields to enlarge the effort inChina and Burma. Wavell readily agreed and flewto Assam to survey construction of four mainbases: Chabua, Mohanbari, Sookerating, andJorhat. The British commander gave Wheeler’sengineers license to requisition materiel for theairfields. Mountbatten rushed trucks, steel mat-ting, and gravel crushers and rollers to Assam tocomplete the airfields in time for the plannedspring offensives.

Despite Anglo-American differences, CBIbegan to experience a steady influx of men andmateriel by mid-1943. Acting on Marshall’s re-quest for added aircraft for the China-Assam ferry,the War Department rushed 30 C–46 transportsto Wheeler. In order to not strip the planes fromSledgehammer, the Army requisitioned themfrom Trans World and Northwest Airlines. Mar-shall, recognizing that Roosevelt’s air campaigncould not be launched without more men andequipment, started to divert both from Britainand the United States to bolster Stilwell andChennault. By mid-1943 the theater was receiv-ing a quarter of all supplies coming off assemblylines at home.

By summer ACT had three more transporta-tion groups and four airway detachments, withmore personnel arriving monthly. Whereas beforeeach transport had one crew they now had two,permitting round-the-clock flights. By August1943, JCS had assigned 46 extra crews to the CBItheater, thus alleviating shortages in event oflosses. Despite the additional personnel and ma-teriel after Trident, it became clear that a goal of

10,000 tons a month would not be reached untilBritish and American engineers completed all air-fields and maintenance facilities then under con-struction and each one was fully manned bymaintenance personnel.

It was only at the Quadrant conference thatthe Combined Chiefs of Staff decided when andwhere to strike the Japanese in the Pacific. Whileapproving of the central Pacific drive by AdmiralChester W. Nimitz, the chiefs sanctioned a seriesof limited offensives which would not only linkIndia to China by a new road network but expelthe Japanese from all of Burma. The conferenceculminated two years of interallied and interser-vice disharmony over how to supply China whiledefeating the Japanese. It became apparent thatthe enemy would have to be defeated on theAsian mainland before the status of British andFrench colonies and U.S. policy toward Chinacould be resolved. It was only the persistence ofMarshall and Mountbatten that focused the Alliesto fight the Japanese instead of one another. TheChina-Burma-India theater provides an illustriouscase for the study of joint and combined opera-tions conducted under divergent and conflictingpolitical and military objectives. JFQ

N O T E S

1 The author based numerous depictions of opera-tional details on interviews with veterans who served inCBI during the events recounted in this article, includ-ing Platoon Sergeant Robert Boehm (Army Quartermas-ter Corps), Captain Ed Goodman (Army Air Force), andCaptain David C. Hall (4th Air Cargo Group Command).For a discussion of the controversy surrounding Alliedstrategy in the China-Burma-India theater, see “Graveof a Dozen Schemes,” by H.P. Willmott in Joint ForceQuarterly, no. 4 (Spring 1994), pp. 82–91.

2 Charles F. Romanus and Riley Sunderland, Stilwell’sMission to China. The China-Burma-India Theater. U.S.Army in World War II (Washington: U.S. Army Center ofMilitary History, 1987), p. 11.

3 Mark S. Watson, Chief of Staff: Prewar Plans andPreparations. The War Department. U.S. Army in WorldWar II (Washington: U.S. Army Center of Military His-tory, 1985), pp. 367–410.

4 Barbara Tuchman, Stilwell and the American Experiencein China, 1911–45 (New York: MacMillan, 1970), p. 234.

5 Ibid., p. 303.6 William H. Tunner, Over the Hump, (Washington:

Office of Air Force History, 1985), p. 75.7 William J. Slim, Defeat into Victory, 3d edition (Lon-

don: MacMillan, 1988), p. 242.

with the increase of Hump tonnage to 10,000 per month came expansion of Wheeler’s SOS

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