Air Transport Command | ATC, North African Division and novelty nude issues

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Air Transport Command | ATC, North African Division and novelty nude issues

 

The 1st Ferry Group moved to the Assam Valley in August of 1942 where several bases were still under construction for the Hump operation. Initially these operations were conducted on sod and steel mat airstrips. On December 1, 1942, the Air Transport Command (ATC), formed on 7/1/1942 from the Ferry Command, established an India-China Wing, also headquartered in New Delhi. This ATC Wing was then assigned the primary mission of flying supplies over the Hump route to China. The first Wing commander was Colonel (later Brigadier General) Edward H. Alexander. The aircraft and support personnel of the 1st Ferry Group were transferred to this Wing.

 

The ATC was a world wide Command that reported directly to the War Department in Washington, DC rather than to Theater Commanders. The Wing assigned the immediate responsibility of flying the Hump to the Assam-China Group, headquartered at Chabua Air Base in the Assam Valley, under the command of Colonel Tom Rafferty, former commander of the 1st Ferry Group. In the fall of 1943 the Wing was divided into Sectors with the East Sector, based at Chabua under the command of Colonel Thomas O. Hardin, continuing with the responsibility for the Hump operation. Colonel Hardin shortly afterward implemented an all-weather, around the clock Hump operation. On October 15, 1943, command of the Wing was transferred to Brigadier General Earl S. Hoag. On January 21, 1944, Colonel Hardin was promoted to Brigadier General and on March 15, 1944, assumed command of the India-China Wing. At this time the Wing became the ATC India-China Division and the Sectors became Wings. Concurrently the Division Headquarters office was moved to the Hastings Mills complex in Calcutta. On September 3, 1944, Major General William H. Tunner became the fourth and final commander of the India-China Division.

 

Northern Burma was largely uninhabited except for wild native tribes. In addition to mountains, it was covered by tropical rain forest with trees reaching over 150 feet in height. River gorges of the Salween, Mekong and Yangtze Rivers exceeded 10,000 feet in depth. Uncivilized headhunter tribes existed on the southern rim of the main Himalayas in China. Severe weather existed on the Hump almost year around. The monsoon season, with heavy cloudiness, fierce rain and embedded severe thunderstorms with turbulence severe enough to damage aircraft, existed from around May into October of each year. The late fall and winter flying weather was better with many VFR days. However, heavy ground fogs, with ground visibilities down to zero/zero, occurred almost nightly during the early winter, and severe thunderstorms still occurred over the route on an irregular basis. Winter winds aloft were extreme, often exceeding 100 MPH. Most night flying had to be done by instruments from takeoff due to lack of any ground or horizon references, until well into western China.

 

The men who flew the Hump (including a young lieutenant named Barry Goldwater) did, simply, what they thought they must do. They flew in the beginning against clouds, against the Japanese, who dominated the air in 1942, and against the Himalayas. They flew an old DC-3s, who service ceiling was so low they must fly the passes in sunlight, which exposed them to the Japanese; or fly through clouds, where the Himalayas might poke up crags to bring them down. Casualties were so high that the DC-3 was replaced by the C-87; but those four-engine planes could not be maintained. The Hump command then accepted the whale-bellied C-46s, fresh from the factories, not yet test-flown and tried, and they test-flew and tried them in the Asian mountains. They made their own maps of uncharted peaks, bases and landing fields.

 

Early flights were basically daylight operations that were often forced to the northern portion of the Hump due to the presence of Japanese fighter aircraft to the south flying out of Myitkyina, Burma. Terrain heights in this area generally averaged around 15,000 to 16,000 MSL (mean sea level). This was the high Hump.

 

The Hump initially contained few enroute navigational aids. Enroute communications were poor, and air traffic control, except for local control towers, did not exist. Aeronautical charts were very unreliable and weather reporting was very poor. These conditions slowly improved after the arrival of the U. S. Army Airways Communications Service (AACS) in August 1943. Homing beacons existed at each airfield in India and China. These homers were severely affected by weather, night effect, and static electricity that built up on aircraft. Airport instrument approaches were normally conducted to airports on homing beacons and were non-precision approaches.

 

Living conditions in the Assam Valley were primitive. Personnel generally lived in tents or bamboo bashas. A few lived in tea plantation bungalows or in bungalow outbuildings. During the monsoon season bases were seas of mud. Sidewalks and tent foundations had to be elevated to stay above standing water. Temperatures during the monsoon season were extremely hot with very high humidity. Clothes and shoes mildewed within days. Food was government issued C-ration. Personnel did not eat off base for sanitary reasons. Malaria and dysentery were prevalent diseases. Water could be consumed only after purification by iodine.

 

The charts at the end of the war carry the designation of a landing field called Dumbastapur. All the other bases of the Air Transport Command renamed for the points on the British Indian Survey maps, but Dumbastapur was named for an episode during the Japanese raid on airstrip laid out on a British tea plantation. An American Col. named Gerry Mason noticing his ill-prepared colleagues, saw his men in the open, gazing at the planes overhead, some with hands in their pockets, placidly watching an incoming Japanese air raid—barked at them, “Take cover, you dumb bastards!” Thereafter, headquarters became known as “Dumbastapur.” The airstrip was officially charted on the maps as Dumbastapur, India. An Officers Club soon opened, ostensibly for the purpose of playing cards, gambling and drinking, called the Dumbastapur Club.

 

Regular Hump operations began in May, 1942, with 27 aircraft (converted U. S. airline DC-3s, C-39s & C-53s) and approximately 1,100 personnel from New Malir Air Base, a British base located in the Sindh Desert about 20 miles east of Karachi in western India. The aircraft and personnel were members of the First Ferry Group, provided by the U.S. Army Air Forces Ferry Command. Loads over the Hump grew slowly until the arrival of Consolidated C-87s (converted B-24s) in December 1942 and the Curtiss C-46 in April 1943. The C-46 was a large super-charged twin-engine aircraft capable of flying faster, higher and carrying heavier loads than the C-47. The C-87, and its C-109 tanker modification, was a supercharged four engine aircraft capable of flying higher and faster but with smaller loads than the C-46. With these aircraft loads over the Hump reached 12,594 tons in December, 1943. Loads continued to increase in 1944 and 1945, reaching its maximum capacity in July 1945.

 

There was a wide variety of ATC insignia, both "official" and novelty. According to the Hump Pilot Association, the novelty patch was an unofficial issue. The design appeared in various publications and locations, and was used by the Dumbastapur Club, whose charter and membership certificates were emblazoned with the "Nudie".

Lineage:  Constituted in the Regular Army as the Air Corps Ferrying Command and activated 29 May 1941 at Washington, DC. Redesignated 4 July 1942 as the Air Transport Command. Transferred to control of the United States Air Force per the National Security Act of 26 July 1947.

 

Emblem:  On a silver disc a white globe with dark blue gridlines; overall a symbolic aircraft in red and dark blue; on dexter border from upper edge of globe to upright wing of aircraft Morse code dots and dashes of varying significance in red, white, and blue for letters ACFC (Air Forces Ferry Command),  AFATC (Air Forces Air Transport Command or ATC (Air Transport Command).

 

Symbolism: The badge represents aircraft being transported from the West to the East which refers to President Roosevelt's directive to the command that aircraft be transported "with the greatest possible speed". A "Morse Code sequence" spells out the Command initials.

 

Bullion

 

 

Air Corps Ferrying Command | "ACFC"

 

Morse Code sequence is dot dash (in red): dash dot dash dot (in blue): dot dot dash dot (in red): and dash dot dash dot (in blue). Code interpretation yields the letters ACFC.

 

Solid embroidered

 

 

 

Embroidered on wool

 

 

 

Armed Forces Air Transport Command "AFATC"

 

Morse Code: dot dash (in red): dot dot dash dot (in blue): dot dash (in red): dash (in blue): and dash dot dash dot (in red), with a decoding of AFATC.

 

Multi-piece leather with embroidery

 

 

 

Silkscreened on leather

 

 

 

Overseas cap insignia

 

Solid embroidered

 

 

 

ATC North African Division

 

Painted leather

 

 

 

Decal on leather

 

 

 

Silkscreened on leather | backpatch size

 

 

 

Novelty Patches

 

The novelty patches incorporated the basic ATC design but the compass points are replaced by a reclining female nude.

 

Chain-embroidery on gray cotton

 

 

 

Multi-piece leather

 

 

 

Hand-painted leather

 

 

 

 

 

Dumbastapur Club

 

 

 

 

Sources

ASMIC. The Morse Code Series. Trading Post. July-September, 2001. ASMIC. pp 35-37.

Castner, Peter. Image of Debastapur Club Charter, via eBay.

China-Burma-India Hump Pilot's Association, Inc. China Airlift - The Hump.. Dallas. 1980. Vol 1. p 12.

Maguire, Jon A. & Conway, John P. American Flight Jackets. Schiffer 2000. pp 72-78.

White, Theodore H. In Search of History. A Personal Adventure. Warner Books. 1978. p 221.

White, Theodore H. "The Hump. The Historic Airway to China was created by U. S. heroes." Life Magazine. September 11, 1944.