The Army Air Forces in World War II, Vol. 1 (archived PDF)

A I R T R A N S P O R T A N D F E R R Y I N G
crews of Pan American Air Ferries, some were flown out by military
crews.1o2 Lend-lease A-20's for the Russians began to arrive in the
Persian Gulf area by water transport as early as January 1942,'03 but
not until the following October were the first deliveries of these
Douglas light attack bombers completed by air."
Following the collapse of the Allied effort in Java, urgent demands
for reinforcements came from Burma, China, and India, where the
American Volunteer Group, the newly established Tenth Air Force,
and the Chinese Air Force sought the means for a continued resistance
to the Japanese. Fifty P-4oE's had been allocated to the A V G in Jan-
uary, and during the same month thirty-three A-29 Hudsons had been
earmarked under lend-lease for the Chinese."' From beginning to
end, the A-29 movement was beset with trouble, vexatious delays, and
untimely accidents. T h e aircraft were in poor mechanical condition
when taken over by the ferrying crews and were overloaded with
medical and other supplies for China before arriving at Morrison
Field in late June for final staging. These factors, together with the
relative inexperience of many of the crews, were responsible for an
unusually high accident rate. Three planes were lost in crashes before
the project left the United States, and six others were similarly lost
in the course of the movement overseas. Because of Rommel's threat
to Egypt that summer, the A-29's were held up in the Middle East
for a time and might have been assigned permanently to General
Brereton's forces there had not the persistent demands of the Chinese
brought about their release. Of the thirty-three planes originally allo-
cated, twenty-two were turned over to the Chinese Air Force during
the summer and fa1l.lo6
While it was impracticable to ferry fighter aircraft over the whole
of the southeastern route, they were moved in large numbers under
their own power over the land route from West African bases to the
Middle East, India, and China. As early as 1940 the British had begun
shipping fighters and two-engine bombers by water to Takoradi,
where they were assembled and then ferried across Africa to Cairo.
Within a few months after Pearl Harbor, the United States also began
to make use of combined water and air supply lines in moving P-40's
to the American Volunteer Group in China, to the Tenth Air Force
in India, and during the summer of 1942 to American air units in the
* Seventy-one were delivered in October, sixty in November, and seven in De-
cember.
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