SUPPLY DROP IN BURMA, spring of 1944. Men can be seen waiting to recover supplies dropped by parachute; note small stockpile in center foreground. From October 1943 to August 1944 food, equipment, and ammunition was supplied largely or entirely to the some 100,000 troops involved in the fighting by air—either air-landed, or by parachute or free drop.
BURMA
DOUGLAS C-47 TRANSPORT taking off in a cloud of dust from an airstrip near Man Wing, Burma. Air supply operations were maintained by both British and American troop carrier squadrons, flying night and day from bases in the Brahmaputra Valley to points of rendezvous with Allied ground troops in Burma. Air supply made the Burma campaign possible.
BURMA
U.S. SERVICES OF SUPPLY TRUCK CONVOY starting across a temporary ponton bridge just after its completion in 1944. Built across the treacherous Irrawaddy River, this bridge was approximately 1,200 feet long and served as a link in the Ledo Road for the combat troops and supply vehicles. When the torrential rains ceased a permanent structure was built to handle the tremendous loads of the convoys going to China.
BURMA
PIPELINES showing the manifold valve installation on the pipeline near Myitkyina, Burma, September 1944. Engineers were to build two 4-inch pipelines for motor fuel and aviation gasoline starting in Assam, paralleling the Ledo Road, and extending through to Kunming, China. By October 1944 one of the lines reached Myitkyina, a distance of about 268 miles; 202 miles were completed on the other line by this date. Another 6-inch pipeline for gasoline was built in India from Calcutta to Assam.