"The Hump Airline" in the Second World War was an all-weather airline cut in 1943 to 1945 by the US Air Forces and the "Flying Tigers" to help China out of the blockade of Japanese troops, which linked Kunming, Yunnan Province in China and Assam in northeastern India, over the eastern ranges of the Himalayas, the most imposing mountains in the world. The pilots and other crewmembers nicknamed the line "the Hump", as the shape of the air route looked like a hump.
"The Hump" was perhaps the most dangerous airline ever through the aviation history. It opened up a 500-mile air-range through one of the most perilous regions in the world, where turbulences and mountaintops posed great risks to the pilots, not to mention that they had watch out for the interceptions of Japanese planes and unexpected bad weather (both were common over there at that time). With the effect of turbulences, flying over "the Hump" was like jolting on the back of a camel, and the nickname of the airline attributed to this unusual phenomenon, too.
With the sacrifice of the lives of 1,579 American pilots and other crewmembers, and loss of 468 aircrafts, "the Hump" took up 81% of the transportation of strategic supplies in those three years, and helped China to gain the final victory that eventually supported the international anti-fascist war.
Sixty-one years have passed, but memories of "the Hump" will never fade. Recently, an airport still under construction in Tengchong, Yunnan Province, an important base of "the Hump", was named after it to commemorate the legendary.
"The Hump Airport" will be completed and put to use in 2008. With the handling capacity of 480 thousand passengers, it will surely bring a prime era to local tourism, which is famous for various natural landscapes, including nature reserves and hot springs.
(Chinanews.cn September 27, 2006 )
