The British were already flying these missions before we arrived and as a result someone thought it a good idea for each of us to fly co-pilot with a British pilot to see what it was like before we began our flights.  My flight was with a former fighter pilot who undoubtedly had little is any instrument training and when we encountered a thunderstorm he really put a scare on me.  I was ready to ask him to let me fly when we broke out.  This reinforced the reason for so much emphasis being placed on us in instrument training.

     The troops together with Burmese civilians would make a small opening in the jungle in which we would drop the needed supplies.  We actually were the only means of supply to these troops because there were no roads leading to supply bases in this area.  Food and ammunition made up the bulk of our cargo but medical supplies, clothing, mule feed, and other items might be included. All the combat was being done by the infantry and the distances between the two sides was sometimes measured in feet rather than miles.  In this dense jungle we had to be careful on our drops to keep the Japanese from getting the supplies which they needed even worse than our troops.  The confiscated everything the Burmese had that they could use including all their trained elephants and when we spotted elephants along the battle lines we knew where the Japanese were located.

     We received briefing before each sortie and had maps indicating where the drop zones were located but in many cased they were not too accurate.   As the lines of combat moved back and forth it was difficult to always be sure where the should be made.  Radio contact with something resembling a walkie-talkie was used to communicate when over the drop zone but they were not always reliable.   We also used green or red flares, lights using Morse code or maybe sheets with crude printing on them to provide communication.

     The Japanese had a few anti-aircraft guns, flew fighters into these areas on occasion, and used small arms fire from troops to cause us as much loss as they could.  All of these methods were successful to a limited extent but our loses were minimal considering the hundreds of sorties we were flying.  We protected ourselves from all these perils by flying at tree top level while in the drop zone areas.  Fighter planes including American P-47's & P-51's and British Spitfire flew cover for us.  Occasionally a Japanese Zero might slip in and get a few shots at some of us down on the deck, which was difficult flying for them.  They just did not stand a chance against our fighters.  They were not designed that way, but in Burma at this time a fighter pilot attempting to shoot one of us down often became a suicide victim.

     We on many occasions returned from missions with holes in our planes made by small arms fire.  One comment often made was that we should write home for Sears Robuck Catalogues on which we could sit and protect some highly prized body parts.

     We continued flying these missions into Burma primarily from Imphal, India for a couple of months.  Imphal was a large base which served as home field for fighter squadrons in addition to the transport planes flown by both us and the British.  The runway was over two miles long and many times each end of the field was used independently without causing problems.

     This long field came in handy for one of our crews when after dropping their cargo, they headed up a small river bed to gain speed before climbing to make another drop run when suddenly and very unexpectedly saw a steel cable stretched across the river.  The Japanese had observed how we had been using this method in making our drops and believed they could probably cause at least one crash. The pilot dove to avoid the cable by trying to go under it but the cable still cut all the antennas off the top of the fuselage and much of the vertical stabilizer.  Even with this damage he flew the plane about two hundred miles over a small mountain range back to Imphal.  Steering by use of changing power on the engines he not only was able to fly from Burma, but due to the long runway was able to ease it to a landing without further damage.  Our CO. was very complimentary of this accomplishment and when everything settled down he told the pilot that what he really wanted to know was how he able to lose most of the tail of the airplane without encountering any enemy fire.

     In November 1944 we kept hearing rumors and finally began seeing an occasional B-29.  This was the newest, fastest, and largest of our long range bomber planes.  We were tying to speculate why this bomber was in this theater of operations when so many bombers seemed needed in both European and the Pacific Theaters.