Following 2ND LT. LUKE OPENED the leading secret orders and told the crew of the whole 3rd Combat Cargo Group's location, Sylhet, India, he then reluctantly informed them that for the 11th Squadron, alone, they had a final station at Dinjan Airfield in northern India close to the Himalayas.
Soon after spending the evening at Borinquin, they departed for Georgetown, British Guiana (Guyana), Belem, and then Natal, Brazil. From Latin America they flew more than water for 1,448 miles, an 8-hour flight to the tiny Ascension Island in the South Atlantic. Ascension was only 34 square miles and 1,000 miles from the nearest airfield close to Accra. Accra, British West Africa (Ghana), was reached, and each aircraft's navigator, on loan from the ATC, Army Transport Command, departed the convoy. From Accra and thereafter, Trevor acted as radio operator and navigator of his craft. He headed on to Kano, Nigeria, then to El Fashier, Egypt; and prior to leaving the Dark Continent they landed briefly in Khartoum, Egypt (Sudan).
Then in the Mideast they flew to Aden, South Arabia (Yemen), and Masira Island, off the coast of Oman. From Masira they traversed the Arabian Sea; and on April 1, 1944, the 3rd Combat Cargo Group arrived in Karachi, India (Pakistan) close to the northernmost of the mouths of the Indus River. Immediately after spending the evening in Karachi, they proceeded to Agra, India, exactly where they rested for two days. Throughout that time they had been in a position to tour the city and go to the breathtaking Taj Mahal. Trevor had by no means imagined such a majestic and stunning structure.
From Agra they flew on to Sylhet, India (Bangladesh), on the flood plain of the Ganges River; and flying from Sylhet, the 11th lastly rested at their final location in Dinjan, India. All the members of Trevor's crew have been in awe that they had just traveled halfway about the globe in 14 days.
By the end of the journey, 96 of the original one hundred C-47s arrived intact. Two of the craft had engine difficulty whilst on the ground, and the crew members ultimately have been transported to Sylhet in order to reinforce personnel. One aircraft of the convoy had mechanical trouble at the mouth of the Amazon River and violently crashed on one of the delta islands; all 5 crew members lost their lives. One more C-47 of the 3rd Combat Cargo Group was plagued with mechanical failures and went down in the Thar Desert amongst Karachi and Agra. All 4 members of that crew perished as effectively.
Upon Trevor's protected arrival at Dinjan Airfield, the 11th was billeted in bashas. These had been native-constructed huts created of bamboo walls with grass thatched roofs. The crewmen had two days to rest up and acclimate themselves even though their pilots winged with knowledgeable ATC flyers in order to understand the routes.
Please take into account my newest historical, Planet War II, inventive non-fiction book: Dismounted Liberty, under the pen name Chris Gregory. It really is now offered in paperback through Amazon or ask for it at your neighborhood book retailer. It really is also out there in kindle format from Amazon and can be simply obtained and study on your iPhone. Dismounted Liberty, in that eBook edition on Amazon, will quickly be cost-free for a handful of days.
You can study a lot more around Dismounted Liberty by going to http://www.BuckshotPie.com and, when there, you can click on the Amazon button or the Author's Web page hyperlink.
Have a content 2015!
No comments:
Post a Comment