Whirlwind - Barrett Tillman [21]
However, it was not enough to build B-29 bases in China. They would require enormous logistical support, including infrastructure in theater. Therefore, Arnold’s headquarters in Washington dispatched an advance team to India in December 1943. The officers were to select the best Indian airfield sites and arrange for the human and matériel assets to accomplish the goal. The team settled on the Kharagpur region, sixty miles southwest of Calcutta.
Ken Wolfe was promoted from the 58th Wing to oversee the entire B-29 operation in the China-Burma-India Theater, designated XX Bomber Command. He arrived in India in January 1944, primarily concerned with base construction. It was a vast undertaking, far more complex than “merely” building eight heavy bomber bases (four each in China and India) plus others for transports and tankers. The support and supply challenges were considerable, and deeply complicated by geography.
The man who pulled it together was Brigadier General Alvin C. Welling, an engineer from the West Point class of ’33. His credentials were impressive: with a master’s from MIT, he had helped build the AlCan Highway across the Rockies, and the 1,000-mile Ledo Road from Assam, India, to Kunming, China.
American resources were scarce. At the time only four Army aviation engineer battalions were available for Matterhorn compared to fifteen deployed in the Pacific Theater. Work proceeded on a huge scale, largely with human labor. As many as 350,000 men, women, and children were drafted into building the Chengtu complex and perhaps as many more were employed in India. There was not enough machinery to accomplish the task, so much of the work was done manually: crushing rock, spreading it, and compacting it into usable runways.
Many Americans were astonished at the immense human effort involved in building the Asian bases—and the indifference to losses. Lacking enough tractors, GIs gawked at the sight of perhaps 550 peasants straining to tow a huge, spiked roller to compact a runway surface. Moreover, local cultural concerns occasionally infringed upon operational matters. At some bases pilots were instructed to ignore Chinese who might dash in front of a landing aircraft: peasants believing that the whirling propeller would sever “the devil” from their back. The theory held that if a prop cut a man in half, the steel blade would suffer no serious harm whereas evasive action could damage or destroy an airplane and perhaps harm the crew. As one pilot recalled, “Headquarters figured if a coolie got killed, there were plenty of replacements in the nearest rice paddy.”
Construction of XX Bomber Command bases has been likened to the works of the ancient Egyptians and Mayans in that each relied heavily upon hand tools and muscle power. Yet incredibly, the task was accomplished on time. By April 1944 the eight operational bases were sufficiently advanced to accept the nascent XX Bomber Command.
Around the World to War
The 58th Wing began leaving Kansas in late March 1944, bound for Calcutta 11,500 miles and half a world away. Plans for a second, India-based wing were canceled owing to difficulty in supporting four bomb groups, let alone eight.
By the time the 58th Wing departed for Asia, Ken Wolfe had been promoted to lead XX Bomber Command, overseeing all B-29 operations in the theater. Therefore, Brigadier General Laverne G. Saunders took the wing to India. Because no fighting airman could be addressed as “Laverne,” Saunders had long been called “Blondie.” He was an old hand, having fought the Pacific war from December 7, 1941, into early 1943 when he was recalled to the United States. There he worked closely with Wolfe to form the wing, which he took over in March 1944.
The globe-spanning voyage was epic in every way. From the central United States the Superfortresses flew to Newfoundland, Canada, then 2,800 miles southeast over the Atlantic