Page 205

Chapter 8: Traffic Homeward Bound

Throughout all its career, down to the eve of victory in 1945, the Air Transport Command was principally preoccupied with the outbound movement of aircraft, men, and materiel from the United States to overseas theaters or to points where aircraft and materiel could be transferred to friendly powers. That there should be some homeward-bound traffic, however, was inevitable. Mail proceeded in both directions; ferrying pilots, in the system early adopted by the Ferrying Command, had to be returned to their home bases; scarce materials of strategic value in the war effort were flown to American ports on ATC transports; thousands of sick and wounded soldiers flew homeward on ATC planes equipped for air evacuation; and aircraft no longer needed in the theaters were ferried back home. After V-E Day under ATC direction vast numbers of planes and men flew home for redeployment to the Pacific or separation from service.

As early as 1942, pilots of the Ferrying Division after delivering new aircraft to destinations overseas were on occasion directed to ferry war-weary aircraft back to the United States. Thus in November 1942, several ferry pilots who had delivered new P-40’s to the Eleventh Air Force at Elmendorf Field, Anchorage, Alaska, were ordered to return old P-36’s and P-38’s to the United States.1 The loss of one P-36 from a mechanical failure, and the narrow escape of its pilot, gives some indication of why more of such planes were not returned. Overseas air bases were reluctant to expend on discarded aircraft the amount of maintenance required for a safe trip home. Ferrying crews, on the other hand, were even more unwilling to fly back a plane in a questionable state of repair.2 Only a small fraction of the planes which had gone out to the theaters were ever returned in this

Page 206

fashion. During the twelve-month period extending from 1 April 1944 until 31 March 1945, some 842 military aircraft were ferried back to the United States, as against 22,144 delivered overseas.3

Throughout 1942 and the early part of 1943, with enemy submarine action continuing to take a large toll of waterborne shipments, air transportation of a minimum of strategic materials was essential to certain aspects of war production. The Board of Economic Warfare on behalf of the War Production Board, which decided on needs, procured and stocked backlogs of such essential materials at airports on the ATC routes. Such materials included high-quality block mica from Karachi and South America and quartz crystals from South America (both products indispensable in the manufacture of radio parts and equipment). Tantalite, used in producing radio and radar apparatus, and special alloy steels required for cutting tools were flown from Brazil and the Belgian Congo. Beryl, which in the form of an alloy was used in manufacturing a variety of delicate instruments, came also from Brazil, while rotenone-bearing roots and powder for use in insecticides were brought from various parts of South America. For a time in 1942 rubber was carried when other inbound cargoes were not available. During the twenty-week period between 6 December 1942 and 24 April 1943, the Naval Air Transport Service, ATC, and the contract carriers working under their direction together flew from the east coast of South America to the United States a total of 970.9 tons of such strategic materials. In the first quarter of 1943 ATC aircraft also lifted some 985 tons of strategic cargo from China to India, while Chinese National Aviation Corporation planes brought out 1,038 tons. The largest elements in this tonnage were tungsten, tin, silk, hog bristles, and mercury. The need for these commodities from China was not usually great enough, however, to justify their shipment west of India by air.4

Air Evacuation

A far more significant phase of the ATC’s homeward-bound traffic consisted of the air evacuation of sick, wounded, and injured men from some point outside the United States to another and from various foreign bases homeward. This service the Ferrying Command early provided on an informal and spontaneous basis, utilizing a fleet of transports moving along its several routes. From many places sick or injured could be moved to adequate hospital facilities only by air.

Page 207

Patients, whether belonging to the Ferrying Command or not, were thus moved by Ferrying Command aircraft as a matter of course.5 When the Ferrying Command was reorganized in June 1942 as the Air Transport Command, its formal statement of mission contained no definite reference to air evacuation. On the other hand, its general responsibility for “the transportation by air of personnel . . . for all War Department agencies, except those served by Troop Carrier units as hereinafter set forth,”6 could certainly be construed to include the air transportation of sick and wounded personnel upon the request of any agency of the War Department. The responsibility was made more specific when on 28 August 1942 Brig. Gen. Thomas J. Hanley, Jr., Assistant Chief of the Air Staff, A-4, directed General George to

make available in transport airplanes the necessary aircraft equipment to facilitate air evacuation of personnel casualties to the United States from such bases as Alaska, Canada, Newfoundland, Greenland, Labrador, the Caribbean and other theatres wherever practicable and in accordance with priorities and approved plans of the Air Surgeon.7

No special airplanes were to be provided for this evacuation, which was to be conducted in connection with the routine operations of transports.8

The Air Transport Command accepted this instruction as an amplification of its mission, and a series of conferences attended by medical, operations, priorities, and traffic personnel was held to explore its implications. Little was known about the problems involved. The conferees discussed such detailed questions as the number of patients which various types of transports could accommodate, methods of fastening litters in place, the optimum levels for evacuation flights, oxygen and cabin heating for high-level flights, the medical personnel and supplies required, the priorities to be granted those personnel as well as their patients, and hospital facilities at ATC’s domestic terminals.9 Meanwhile Troop Carrier units assigned to the active theaters had already flown large numbers of casualties from airstrips close to the front to points of relative safety. Military Air Evacuation squadrons, consisting of medical officers, flight nurses, and medical department enlisted technicians, were trained at Bowman Field near Louisville, Kentucky, and assigned to the theaters.10

In March 1943, AAF Headquarters outlined the procedures which ATC should follow. As yet its service was “on a small scale for exceptional and selected cases.”11 Thus, in January 1943, the first month for which any pertinent records are available, ATC flew eighty patients

Page 208

from one foreign base to another and brought thirty-three patients home to the United States.12 Progress was slow. Transport aircraft were still quite scarce, and bottlenecks developed in selecting and installing for the air evacuation program suitable equipment which would not hamper the use of the planes for other purposes. As late as 28 September 1943, a forthright ATC officer reported to his immediate chief, Col. Ray W. Ireland, Assistant Chief of Staff, Priorities and Traffic, that “the Air Transport Command is not prepared to transport such wounded.”13

By that time, nevertheless, the number of air evacuations by the ATC was increasing. From the 113 listed in January 1943, the figure rose gradually to 1,332 in October and 2,160 in December. Meanwhile Military Air Evacuation squadrons were assigned to the ATC and dispatched to some of the critical points along the overseas airways.14 As experience with air evacuation was accumulated, and more of the transports were equipped with litter supports, the demand for the service increased, and it became an increasingly significant part of the ATC’s mission. In December the Commanding General, AAF, was made “responsible for the development... and operation of air evacuation” not only “between overseas theaters and the United States” but also “within the United States.” This last was an additional task, and, like the rest of General Arnold’s responsibilities for air evacuation, it naturally devolved largely upon ATC. As the Ferrying Division contained the ATC’s most reliable source of military flight crews, it seemed the logical organization to handle the command’s new duties. In April 1944, accordingly, the Ferrying Division carried out its first planned domestic flights for moving patients from one hospital to another within the Zone of the Interior.15

The growing importance of air evacuation by ATC planes is most readily suggested by the following table:–16

Number of Patients Evacuated by ATC

Total* Domestic Foreign to Foreign Foreign to U.S.
1943 8,767 - 5,507 3,260
1944 117,151 38,320 47,060 31,771
1945 212,819 76,230 50,182 86,407

* An individual patient may well appear three times in this tabulation, first, for instance, as an evacuee wounded, say, in the battle for Saipan, and flown from Kwajalein to Hickam Field on Oahu (3rd column, “Foreign to Foreign”); next, ordinarily after an interval of treatment, from Hickam Field to Hamilton Field, California (4th column, “Foreign to US.”); and, finally, from that base to the domestic general hospital nearest his home or best suited for the treatment which he required.

Page 209

The number of sick and wounded men which ATC was called upon to transport depended, first, upon the number of combat casualties; second, upon the requests of theater commanders for air evacuation. If those commanders or their staff surgeons doubted the wisdom or value of moving casualties by air, and had any alternative at their disposal, they might make few requests. Thus, as late as the first half of 1944, only a few patients were evacuated by air from Northwest Africa.17 Even when the commander thought well of air evacuation, he or his priority board had always to balance the need against other requirements for limited air transport space and to remember that the return to station of medical evacuation personnel would require space which might otherwise be devoted to priority cargo moving toward his theater. On the other hand, the patient, whether evacuated by air or sea, lightened supply requirements by the ten tons needed every three months to sustain him and his attendants in an overseas hospital.18

In 1942 and 1943 a seemingly disproportionate share of the ATC’s air evacuation flights originated in the Alaskan Wing, in much of whose territory there was no ready alternative for moving patients.19 During the early months of 1944, the India-China Wing led all ATC Wings in the number of air evacuations. Relatively few of the patients involved, however, were flown all the way from China or even Assam to the United States. Most of the India-China Wing’s air evacuation flights were intratheater operations which theoretically should have been carried out by theater troop-carrier planes. But since the local troop-carrier command professed inability to do the job and asked help, the wing assumed the responsibility. The early 1944 peak of the wing’s air evacuation activities reflected particularly the casualties resulting from the Japanese attack on the Imphal area and from the severe fighting in Burma.20 From June 1944, however, until the end of hostilities in ETO, the Southwest Pacific Area and the Pacific Ocean Areas supplied ATC with most of its overseas air evacuation traffic.21

By the summer of 1944 the techniques of moving sick and wounded men by air had been standardized and ATC had acquired a large fleet of C-54 transports, its only aircraft suitable for long, overwater evacuation flights. In the Pacific areas ten or more of these planes had already been equipped to carry from twenty to twenty-eight litter patients, arranged in tiers, four litters high. On the North Atlantic route, where only one C-54 had previously been so equipped, additional aircraft were now supplied with the Evans-type litter supports,

Page 210

in preparation for the flow of casualties which would follow the Normandy invasion.

Even in advance of the cross-Channel landings, a substantial number of patients was sent home by way of the North and Middle Atlantic routes in an effort to clear United Kingdom hospitals for the inevitable wave of invasion casualties. This served to test the detailed procedures which the North Atlantic Wing had worked out for the heavy task ahead.22 On 22 June the first invasion casualties to return homeward by way of the North Atlantic airway left Prestwick; two days later they landed at Mitchel Field, New York. On 29 June the first plane exclusively loaded with invasion casualties, ten litter and four ambulatory cases, reached Mitchel Field.23

Theater surgeons selected patients for air evacuation, and such theater agencies as troop-carrier aircraft and surface vessels brought them to the point of aerial embarkation. There flight surgeons assigned to the ATC screened them to determine whether they could make the journey without harm. The conclusion was ultimately reached, however, that most patients who could be moved at all (some exceptions were detailed in an official ATC memorandum) might safely be moved by air. The death of patients in the course of ATC evacuation movements was extremely rare. The basis on which theater officers selected patients for air evacuation varied somewhat from time to time and from theater to theater, but generally the following categories were chosen: (1) those who needed treatment which could not be given in the theater; (2) patients who were expected to undergo a long convalescence and could not be returned to duty for a long time, variously estimated at from 30 to 180 days; (3) those who were expected to die but could be sent home without lessening their chances of survival. The need for emptying forward area and intermediate hospitals was mixed with humane consideration for the patients and their families.24

Fork lifts, inclined ramps, and teams of litter-bearers working at different levels were used in loading litter patients into the lofty cabins of C-54 aircraft and in unloading them at their destination. Ordinarily, one or two flight nurses, specially trained in air evacuation, and a Medical Corps enlisted technician accompanied an aircraft fully or partly occupied by patients. At intermediate points in a long flight, the medical air evacuation team was often replaced by another; when not relieved, the team, however weary, had to carry on for another

Page 211

leg of the trip. The condition and behavior of the patients varied greatly, of course, but the usual report was that the men were generally reluctant, even if able, to call for care or assistance and that attendants had to watch them closely to detect their needs. The long flights were tiresome, especially to men already weakened by injuries, but the knowledge that the end of the trip would bring them to the homeland had a therapeutic value. This was true even of psychotic patients, who at a rate of five in a planeload were evacuated in considerable numbers from Southwest Pacific Area hospitals. Medical officers concluded, finally, that the speed of air evacuation made it at once the cleanest and the most comfortable method of evacuating patients.25

The Air Transport Command’s share in air evacuation from the European theater was in one sense a static operation, though routes and techniques changed as the months passed. For the first half-year after the Normandy landings, virtually all patients were placed on board at Prestwick. Only in December 1944 did the command begin to load wounded at Paris.26 In the Central and Southwest Pacific areas, however, there was constant shifting both of routes and of pickup points. The procession of victories made yesterday’s battleground tomorrow’s port of aerial embarkation. The early casualties of the Tarawa campaign, moved by Navy surface vessels and troop-carrier planes to Funafuti in the Ellice Islands, were flown by ATC crews from Funafuti to Hickam Field. Tarawa in turn became the loading point for men wounded in the campaign for Kwajalein. That island secured, it was used to start those wounded at Saipan on their flight to Hickam Field, Next, Saipan served as pickup point for men wounded, not only on the other islands of the Marianas, but also on Leyte. Shortly thereafter, in November 1944, ATC craft pushed into the combat zone itself and began loading casualties on Leyte for transportation both to Saipan and to Biak. Casualties from Iwo Jima were picked up, beginning in February 1945, at Guam and Saipan. On 8 April, D plus 7, the Pacific Division began removing casualties from Okinawa, though conditions there were still very primitive and the struggle for the island was far from won. Manila became a starting point for air evacuation flights on 8 June, a week after Nichols Field was opened to regular C-54 traffic.27

In 1944 a fifth of all the patients brought back to the United States flew by ATC aircraft.28 The program made a strong appeal to the imagination of a generous and sympathetic people, eager to do what

Page 212

they could for the boys. Air evacuation duty was not easy; the nurses and technicians who cared for the evacuees during the long hours of overwater flight bore more responsibility than their counterparts at work in nonmobile hospitals. But there was a peculiar satisfaction in the job, derived in part from the gratitude of men who appreciated the swift passage from combat or a field hospital to Oahu, or, even better, to the United States. One soldier who had just reached Hamilton Field from Saipan expressed the reaction of many: “It’s just like dying and going to Heaven when you first get here. I tell you it’s a wonderful feeling.”29 What it meant to the parents, wives, and sweethearts of the wounded or ailing men requires no rhetorical embellishment and no conventional documentation.

Redeployment of Aircraft

Operating under a basic war plan which provided for disposing of the European adversary before turning to direct a final blow at the enemy on the other side of the globe, the American high command was obliged to plan far in advance for the day when men and weapons might be transferred from one theater of war to the other. Each echelon of command in Washington developed such plans for redeployment. Those framed at ATC headquarters were begun well over a year before V-E Day.30 In September 1944 the Chief of the Air Staff outlined a general division of responsibility in connection with such redeployment between the several assistant chiefs of the Air Staff, other Air Force agencies, and the Air Transport Command. Emphasis thus far was placed upon the flight of aircraft and their crews from the European or Mediterranean theaters to the Pacific.31 Such a movement would provide reinforcements needed for victory against Japan, would scale down U.S. air forces in England and on the Continent to essential garrison units, and would give veteran aircrews a welcome trip home during the move from Europe to the Far East.32

During the summer of 1944, ATC endeavored to gain control of, and improve the facilities of, necessary staging bases in California in anticipation of the increased flow of ferried aircraft across the Pacific.33 Other aspects of the problem were considered, too, and by September ATC headquarters was ready to distribute to the commanders of the several divisions concerned a top-secret plan for the movement from the European and Mediterranean theaters to the United States. The divisions, in turn, made detailed plans for their

Page 213

share in this program. The project as a whole was for some reason still classified as top secret on 30 April 1945, but, when ATC headquarters on 5 May 1945 issued its revised instructions to the field, the classification had been reduced to “restricted.”34

The Air Transport Command’s task, designated WHITE PROJECT, involved the return to America of some 2,825 heavy bombers from the European theater, and 1,240 from the Mediterranean theater. These, with varying numbers of passengers, were to be flown to the United States by full combat crews. All three major Atlantic routes were to be utilized. One version of the plan called for fifty or sixty aircraft a day to fly the North Atlantic route from Valley in Wales through Iceland; twelve a day from the European theater and from five to twenty from MTO were to follow the Central Atlantic route through the Azores. Some twenty-five bombers a day were to fly home by the lengthy South Atlantic route.35

Meanwhile in April the eastward flow of aircraft for the European war ground to a halt. First to be held up were all four-engine bombers (B-24’s and B-17’s) not equipped with radar; then, all heavy bombers; and, finally, on 28 April 1945, other types of aircraft. This allowed almost a month’s lull in which to prepare for the reverse ferrying movement. WHITE PROJECT got under way on 20 May 1945, when seventy-one bombers took off from Valley and a smaller number from Marrakech, Morocco, for the long-awaited homeward trip.36

Originally planned to last only through August, the WHITE PROJECT was extended to 31 October 1945. The westward flow of heavy bombers had hardly started when ATC received instructions to assume comparable responsibility for the homeward flight of an estimated 1,000 twin-engine bombers and transports from ETO and MTO.37 It was taken for granted that crews which had flown a given type of aircraft in combat or in troop-carrier service should fly it home. At the same time there was no disposition to challenge the established principle that aircraft and crews en route east or west should be subject to the control of ATC, one of whose specialties was the direction of the overwater ferrying of aircraft.38

There were difficulties, of course. ATC officers in the field had to co-ordinate WHITE PROJECT flights not only with the regular ATC transport flights in each direction and with some ferrying of new transports eastward to the India-China Division but also with the parallel and enormous GREEN PROJECT for the return of personnel

Page 214

to the United States. When it was decided to make Bradley Field at Windsor Locks, Connecticut, the principal domestic terminus for planes flown home under North Atlantic Division control, division officers feared that the First Air Force base would not be able to handle the daily traffic. Actually, Bradley Field carried its part most successfully. So did Hunter Field (Third Air Force) at Savannah, Georgia, the normal port of debarkation for aircraft redeployed over the southern route.39

Processing of the aircraft for redeployment was the responsibility of the theater air forces. All planes were to receive 100-hour inspections, to be tested for fuel and oil consumption, and to be equipped with the safety devices required by ATC. Pilots were to hold a current instrument card or to be certified as qualified for instrument flying. Celestial navigators were to undergo a six-hour refresher course. Individual health certificates and baggage examinations were to be completed before personnel were cleared to ATC. Officers were allowed only forty pounds of personal baggage; enlisted men, thirty. Aircraft in flight from staging areas to ATC acceptance points remained under the operational control of the theater.40

At acceptance points the ATC saw that each aircraft and crew met necessary safety requirements for the projected flight, briefed the crews, checked the aircraft for weight and balance requirements, and dispatched the flights. At the ports of debarkation in the United States, crews and passengers underwent initial processing by base personnel, were transported to the ASF staging facilities at Charleston, South Carolina (from Hunter Field), or at Camp Myles Standish, Massachusetts (from northern bases). After further processing, they received orders giving them thirty days at their respective homes for what was ponderously termed “rehabilitation, recovery, and recuperation.” At the aerial ports aircraft passed briefly into the custody of the base, then were released to the Ferrying Division, which flew them, as directed by the Aircraft Distribution Office, either to Air Technical Service Command depots (there to be reconditioned for service in the Pacific) or to Reconstruction Finance Corporation storage fields as surplus.41

The operation involved little that was new to the ATC of 1945. Still it was not easy to maintain a completely steady flow of redeployed aircraft through the air channels used. The air forces from which the planes came did not prepare them at a regular rate. Weather

Page 215

delays were inevitable. Maintenance en route was time-consuming, especially for those planes which were more war-worn than had been contemplated. Maintenance personnel carried by the planes proved unable to perform as much of the maintenance along the way as had been expected, for gunners and clerks were all too often sent forward in the guise of maintenance men. Especially among the surplus aircraft was the need for maintenance a substantial burden. Minor annoyances included crews without health certificates, baggage well in excess of the authorized limits, forbidden pets, and weapons smuggled aboard. On the North Atlantic route there was a small epidemic of ditchings, inspired by faulty fuel gauges.42 The total accident rate was extremely low, however. By and large, the movement was successful, though the early Japanese surrender made it a homecoming and little more. No unit flown home for reassignment to the Pacific ever served in that theater.43

Most of the planes from Europe or North Africa had completed the passage by the end of August. During the course of the project, 5,965 aircraft made the westward crossing of the Atlantic (some 4,000 from ETO and more than 1,900 from the Mediterranean theater), all but 521 by the close of August. Most of the 4,182 heavy bombers made the homeward flight in June or July. The passage of two-engine aircraft began in June and was substantially completed during July and August. The last large contingent consisted of 43 3 Flying Fortresses, which came home in September and October via the South Atlantic airway.44

In all, some 3,224 aircraft came by way of the North Atlantic, as against 2,282 which followed the South Atlantic route via Dakar, Brazil, and the Caribbean Islands. Some 459 heavy bombers flew the Middle Atlantic route through the Azores. Most heavy bombers traveled the North Atlantic airway, however, as did nearly all the 212 C-46’s. All the 348 returned B-25’s, most of the A-26’s, and a substantial majority of the DC-3 type transports took the South Atlantic route.45 In spite of delays caused by en route maintenance, most of the planes moved swiftly on the homeward way.46

The WHITE PROJECT became more of a personnel movement than had been expected. In addition to 50,764 crew members, an average of more than 8 to a plane, the planes brought home an additional 33,850 passengers, many of them aircrew men. In all, the returnees numbered over 84,000, a substantial figure by any standard.47

Page 216

The WHITE PROJECT required little more than a reversal of the direction of the flow of aircraft whose control had long been a major function of ATC. More revolutionary in its demands upon the ATC organization was the GREEN PROJECT, a parallel program for flying some 50,000 passengers a month from Europe to the United States. Even that was a logical extension of one of the ATC’s basic responsibilities, the transportation by air of passengers for War Department agencies. In this case it was the War Department itself which was to be served. The original purpose was to fly home for rest leave troops whose services would shortly be required in the war against Japan. ATC, which in March had flown about 12,500 passengers from the European and Mediterranean theaters to the United States, was now directed to fly home from those theaters approximately four times as many each month. To make this possible, ATC strength was suddenly augmented by the transfer of some 33,000 men, most of whom had formerly been assigned to combat bomber groups, theater troop-carrier groups, or their supporting organizations. At the same time ATC received some 256 troop-carrier C-47’s, in addition to the previously planned increment of C-54 aircraft.

The new transport assignment fell into the lap of the ATC in mid-April. Directed to study the feasibility of flying some 50,000 passengers a month from ETO and MTO to the United States, ATC on 12 April transmitted to AAF Headquarters a plan for the substantial fulfillment of this mission.48 The plan was approved orally by the Air Staff and OPD, and a formal directive came down from OPD to General Arnold, 17 April. The Air Staff passed the directive on, three days later, with the characteristic proviso that it should involve “no reduction ... in the currently scheduled buildup of air lift from India to China.”49

The Air Transport Command had never been unduly modest in its requests for the construction of facilities which might assist in the fulfillment of its assigned mission, but now the demands were deliberately kept down, except in the North African Division, where additional billeting, messing, recreational, maintenance, and other needed facilities, at an estimated cost of $311,119.77, were ordered at Cazes Air Base near Casablanca, at Port Lyautey, and at Dakar.

Page 217

The timely withdrawal of the Fourth Fleet from the Atlantic made available to ATC at Belém and Natal, in Brazil, Navy quarters and supplies which largely obviated the need for new construction there. To house troops debarking at Miami until their movement by rail to an ASF installation, some 285 hutments were moved from Atlantic Beach, near Jacksonville, Florida, and set up at the Miami base.50 On the other hand, there was nothing modest, and nothing unreasonable either, about the command’s personnel requirements. To meet them, OPD directed the transfer to the ATC of five heavy-bomber groups and four troop-carrier groups, each with four flight squadrons, plus the normal supporting organizations – service groups, air engineering squadrons, air maintenance squadrons, quartermaster and medical supply platoons, and quartermaster truck companies. The aircraft of the bomb groups were not needed, but those of the troop-carrier outfits were. Based and inspected at Waller Field, Trinidad, the transports were to provide a major portion of the airlift from Natal to the southern port of debarkation at Miami.51

Early plans were changed somewhat, both before the movement began officially on 15 June and thereafter. ATC was directed to raise its monthly airlift westbound from Europe gradually to 50,000 passengers in July, using all the Atlantic airways to capacity. The project was expected to continue until March 1946.52

The planners decided to send 40 per cent of the airlift via the circuitous South Atlantic route, 50 per cent by the mid-Atlantic routes from Orly or Casablanca through the Azores, and only 10 per cent along the North Atlantic airway. One obvious reason for this division was the fact that the North Atlantic route was already pretty well saturated by the westbound flight of WHITE PROJECT bombers. Another argument derived from balancing the passenger capacity of C-54 aircraft and the gasoline load required for various hops across the Atlantic. A C-54 which could carry only twenty-two or twenty-three passengers westward against the head winds on the Prestwick-Stephenville route could take forty from Casablanca to Dakar, and again from Dakar to Natal. From Natal to Miami a succession of relatively short hops and an abundance of base facilities made it possible to utilize the abundant C-46’s and superabundant C-47’s, carrying thirty and twenty passengers, respectively, thus saving the C-54’s for the war against Japan.53

The North African Division, relatively close to the source of manpower,

Page 218

was quickly supplied with its reinforcement of approximately 7,000 men. The South Atlantic and Caribbean Divisions were not quite so fortunate. The air echelons of the troop-carrier groups began arriving at Waller Field 19 May 1945, following by six days a portion of the advance echelon which had arrived on ATC transports. The pilots and co-pilots were checked and in many cases found to fall short of ATC’s requirements. The Caribbean and South Atlantic Divisions put them to school and ultimately accepted most of them as meeting basic requirements. The ground echelons moved slowly by water. The General Gordon, carrying 3,578 such troops, docked at Port of Spain, Trinidad, on 27 May. The General Richardson, with 5,053 men, followed within a week, and the Admiral Aberle brought 3,182 more on 17 June. During six weeks of confusion personnel officers and enlisted men of the Caribbean and South Atlantic Divisions hastily screened the newcomers and divided them between the two divisions, with as much impartiality as was possible in the matter of wanted skilled workers and unwanted high-point men, eligible for early discharge. The interdivisional allocation duly made, the men were assigned to their respective bases. As the support personnel moved out to their several stations, nearly 5,000 remained at Waller Field, where “one of the largest line maintenance bases in existence” was suddenly created* to care for the entire fleet of C-47’s.54

Although the South Atlantic and Caribbean Divisions received the number of additional “bodies” required for the task at hand, they can hardly be said to have acquired an equivalent number of “souls.” Morale of the new men, both there and in the North African Division, was exceedingly low. Through a typical “foulup,” some of the bomber groups designated for transfer to ATC were senior in months of overseas service to some whose men they were called upon to speed homeward. Furthermore, the ATC had no use for many of the specialties which men of the combat groups had acquired, so that many enlisted men of high grade had either to be retrained in a new specialty, declared surplus, or assigned to relatively nonskilled duties as truck drivers, guards, or minor clerks.55 Finally, the transfer was all too complete. Many of the bomber and troop-carrier squadrons had been allowed to understand, all erroneously, that they were to preserve their separate status, assist the ATC for a few months as

* At the beginning of the project ATC strength at Waller Field included only eleven officers and eighty-three enlisted men.

Page 219

units, and then fly on homeward. Instead the groups and squadrons were disbanded, and the men transferred as individuals.56

Col. Thomas D. Ferguson, Commanding Officer of the South Atlantic Division, in an attempt to boost the morale of these men stated: “You are not working for the ATC – you are the ATC and you are working for Uncle Sugar and a one-way trip to the States and your families.”57 But no one was convinced by this slogan. It was small comfort to the homesick airmen, proud of their old outfits and long accustomed to sneer at ATC personnel as “Allergic to Combat,” or to dub them the “Army (or “Association”) of Terrified Civilians.” On the other hand, veteran ATC propeller specialists and electricians were not inclined to genuflect before men of like SSN who had won battle stars for service at a bomber base far removed from the scenes of aerial combat. In spite of friction and frustration, the wearers of battle stars went to work at Natal and Fortaleza, Dakar and Casablanca, Waller Field and Borinquen, as directed. But the problem of morale persisted as long as the GREEN PROJECT lasted. Something approaching a strike among the men assigned to aircraft maintenance took place at Waller Field, 30 July-2 August. When Colonel Ferguson heard officers of his major base, Parnamirim Field, Natal, enlivening an officers’ club dance with their rendition of a song whose principal theme was “To Hell with the ATC,” he felt obliged to direct the base commander, Col. John M. Price, one-time commanding officer of the 460th Bombardment Group, to prevent a repetition of the episode.58

At the beginning of the project, the North Atlantic Division, the Ferrying Division, and the several contract carriers (Pan American, TWA, American Airlines, and American Export Airlines) together were operating some 165 C-54’s on the North Atlantic and Middle Atlantic routes. The North African Division, commanded by Brig. Gen. James S. Stowell, had received by 12 August some 87 Sky-masters. To fly these planes, some of the division’s C-46 pilots were upgraded, but the NAFD also received some fifty-five first pilots from the discontinued Central African Division and a number of full crews from the Caribbean and Ferrying Divisions.59

In planning, ATC had made a distinction between normal passenger traffic and GREEN PROJECT passengers. The latter consisted of persons (with their baggage) specifically designated by the theater. They carried no tickets, but instead each man wore a green-colored

Page 220

tag. Similar tags identified his baggage. Even the instruction pamphlet distributed by ATC to all “GREEN” passengers at ports of aerial embarkation was printed on green paper. The “Green Manifest” passengers, specially handled and processed by the theaters before their delivery to ATC, were expected to require a minimum of processing from the ATC. On arrival in the United States they were turned over almost immediately to Army Service Forces. “Normal traffic,” cleared through established priority channels and handled on an individual basis, included “individuals traveling to the United States on temporary duty, leave or furlough from the theater to return to the theater; civilians; foreign nationals; medical evacuees, and Air Transport Command personnel.” Once the GREEN PROJECT got under way, an attempt was made to carry normal transatlantic traffic in general on contract carrier C-54’s of the North Atlantic Division, based in New York and Washington, or on the Ferrying Division’s C-54’s, based at Wilmington.60

A few hundred passengers handled in accordance with project procedures flew homeward in May, and nearly 2,500 men of the GREEN PROJECT reached the United States during the first fifteen days of June, before its official beginning. How the project developed in relation both to normal traffic and the targets set up for it is summarized in the table which follows:61

The Green Project

Accomplishment
Month 1945 Original target (total passengers, westbound) Revised target Green Manifest Air Evacuees Other “Normal Traffic” Total
May 16,000 - 695 7,468 12,219 20,382
June 27,500 - 13,649 5,876 10,589 30,114
July 36,000 43,760 37,704 6,127 6,683 50,514
August 50,600 50,600 36,682 5,578 5,714 47,974
1–15 Sept. 25,300 17,500* 12,378 1,382 3,315 17,075
Total - - 101,108 26,431 38,520 166,059

* Target as reduced about 10 August 1945.

Though the CBI theaters, Persian Gulf Command, and Africa-Middle East theaters together supplied over 10,000 GREEN PROJECT passengers, the overwhelming numbers came from the European and Mediterranean theaters. Indeed, from May through September ETO provided a clear majority both of the Green Manifest travelers and of the normal traffic.62 But Orly Field near Paris, and

Page 221

Prestwick, the major European ports of aerial embarkation for westward flight by ATC craft, handled only a lesser fraction of the Green Manifest passengers. Casablanca, take-off point for virtually all South Atlantic, and most Middle Atlantic flights, was the hub of the system. Converted B-17’s belonging to the Eighth and Fifteenth Air Forces, and operating entirely outside the ATC organization, brought the men from staging areas at Istres Airport, Marseille, and at Pomigliano and Pisa airports in Italy, to the Port Lyautey Naval Air Station or to the Cazes Air Base, Casablanca. At these points the men came under ATC control and boarded a C-54 for the first stage of their transatlantic flight, either to the Azores or to Natal by way of Dakar. In August the use of Port Lyautey was abandoned, and all the traffic was concentrated at Cazes. At the peak of the movement, 8 August, that base dispatched 1,775 GREEN PROJECT men southward or westward in a single day.63

GREEN PROJECT C-54’s normally made the flight from Casablanca to Dakar in seven and a half hours. With a scheduled stop of an hour at Dakar, the big transports, backed by the trade winds, pushed on to Natal, eight hours and fifty minutes away.64 Two of the ranking commissioned or noncommissioned officers assigned to ride on each C-54 had usually been trained as plane group leaders, to maintain cabin discipline and cleanliness, and to take charge of the passengers if it should be necessary to ditch the ship.65 At Parnamirim Field, Natal, the travel-weary passengers came into the jurisdiction of the ATC’s South Atlantic Division. There, usually after an interval for rest and refreshment, they might be transferred to one of the C-54’s operated by Caribbean Division crews on the Natal-Miami run, or one of the twenty C-46’s flown largely by Eastern Air Lines personnel for that division. More commonly, however, their planeload of forty was divided into two equal groups, each headed by a plane group leader, and loaded on a pair of C-47’s, flown by military pilots, late of a troop-carrier group and now flying for the ATC. The crews, including a navigator only if the flight was at night, took the transports from Natal to Belém, nearly six hours northwest. After a change of crews, the plane went on to Atkinson Field, British Guiana, five and a half hours farther on. The C-47 fleet was so scheduled that regular 25-hour inspections fell due at Atkinson Field for planes northbound. Long before the four-hour task was accomplished, however, the passengers took off on another plane which had arrived

Page 222

earlier and whose inspection had been completed. At Atkinson, too, a fresh crew, from the Caribbean Division, took over. A last stop at Borinquen Field, Puerto Rico, six hours and forty minutes out of Atkinson, was a virtual repetition of that at Belém. Still another crew took over for the final six-hour run to Miami. On an average, the returning soldiers had been en route seventy-two hours from Casablanca. Those who took the more direct route, via the Azores, commonly reached Miami, La Guardia Field (New York), Washington, Presque Isle, or Wilmington, within thirty-six hours after their departure from Casablanca.66

There were numerous chances for delay along the way, quite apart from a long wait at or near the port of embarkation. One unavoidable cause, even in summer on the relatively favorable South and Middle Atlantic routes, was weather. In August tropical hurricanes in the Caribbean twice virtually stopped all homeward-bound traffic on the Natal-Miami route.67 If for any reason, such as a breakdown in maintenance, enough serviceable transports failed to reach such critical points as Casablanca, Lagens, Natal, or Atkinson Field, a backlog would pile up. To take care of such situations as well as weather delays, ATC used what was known as “Station Block Control.” That is, each base, as its backlog approached capacity, was entitled to call a halt to flights from the next point east and to ask help from division headquarters in the form of extra sections on established schedules. This system worked tolerably well, yet the rate of flow was never completely steady. On the other hand, passenger backlogs never became completely unmanageable.68

From the start, it was clear that ATC could not furnish this mass movement of troops all the refinements of passenger service which had lately become common on the best of its regular transport runs. Still the intent was to make the homeward journey of the GREEN PROJECT men as pleasant as possible.69 Serious effort was directed toward this end; the service improved as the servers gained experience and as their superiors increasingly stressed the importance of consideration and hospitality in dealing with the passengers. At Natal hot meals were served around the clock to the returning soldiers, who also had an opportunity to exchange dirty clothing for clean. Elsewhere steps were taken to improve the quality of transient messes. Careful planning, based on experience, cut to a minimum the time lost in assigning arriving planeloads to their billets. A spot check at

Page 223

Natal on 6 July showed that only thirty-five minutes elapsed between the time a load of passengers from the east deplaned and their arrival at their individual bunks in the transient area. Medical dispensaries were set up on the flight lines, so that passengers’ minor ailments could be quickly treated and their fitness for further flight determined, but passengers seemed to shun this service lest perchance it might delay their homeward passage. Post exchanges were stocked with a liberal array of souvenirs and other articles which the transients would be likely to purchase, such as Natal boots or silk stockings and perfume for the folks at home. At Natal a package-wrapping room was set up, and free movies were available. Reading matter was provided on board planes and on the ground. The South Atlantic Division, and later the Caribbean Division, supplied their customers with booklets telling them something of the division’s organization and of the land and water over which they were to fly.70

After some early passengers had suggested it, planes were supplied with blankets to soften bucket seats or to keep the passengers warm at high altitudes. When the backlog at Natal fell so low for a time that men had no opportunity to stop there for a good rest, the South Atlantic Division tried installing eight or nine litters on northbound C-47’s, so that passengers might take turns sleeping in modest comfort. The Caribbean Division objected, however, on the ground that the weight of the litters, even though not enough to top the permissible gross weight limits, lessened the margin of safety.71

This last was a prime consideration. Elaborate precautions were taken. A string of seaborne vessels, British, American, and Brazilian, stood watch on the surface of the Atlantic under the airways. B-17’s equipped to drop boats and amphibious aircraft took station at critical points along the routes. Before emplaning, passengers saw films instructing them in safety precautions and ditching procedures.72 Care paid off, for the whole project was completed without the loss of a life. The worst accident of the entire movement occurred on 24 June, when a C-47 on instruments between Belém and Atkinson Field, flew into two thunderstorms, and in the turbulence fifteen passengers were injured, four enough to require treatment at the Atkinson Field station hospital.73

At the ports of debarkation Green Manifest passengers bypassed the usual customs and quarantine procedures and were quickly taken to billets to await the arrival of surface transportation which took

Page 224

them out of the control of the ATC and delivered them to the Army Service Forces. Thereafter they were sent either to a separation center or to their homes for thirty days of temporary duty prior to receiving a new assignment.74

At the end of their air journey, passengers were given an opportunity to record their impressions or criticisms. It must be remembered that many of ATC’s ranking officers were on leave from civilian airlines and that they were interested in converting potential American passengers to air travel. Comments on the GREEN PROJECT were predominantly favorable. There were complaints and suggestions, of course. Some men thought that they should have been issued summer uniforms for travel through the tropics, others naturally complained of delays experienced, particularly at European staging centers, where some men claimed to have been held as long as six weeks. Many would have appreciated maps of the countries over which they had flown and more information about those regions. But the large majority responded gratefully to the efforts which had been made for their comfort, to the apparent advantages of air travel, and to the efficiency and dispatch with which they had been handled at the Air Transport Command bases en route. One infantryman wrote: “I have enjoyed my trip . . . and would like to see everyone in the ETO get the chance to fly home. . . .” Another was impressed by the consideration shown the passengers: “The air crews are very courteous regardless of rank, and being a private myself, I know.”75

Like much of the other planning in the spring of 1945, the GREEN PROJECT was predicated on the belief that the war against Japan might not be concluded before the following spring. But early in August, as the Japanese surrender became imminent, new commitments to the Pacific forced ATC to transfer to its Pacific routes eighty-two C-54’s, most of which were then in use on the GREEN PROJECT.* As a result, by 10 August GREEN PROJECT goals had been cut from 50,000 to 35,000 a month.76 By 22 August some seventy of the C-54’s so hastily withdrawn from the Atlantic routes and ten more from new production had reached the West Coast.77

With the end of all hostilities, ATC once more restudied the GREEN PROJECT. On 23 August General George recommended that the westbound passenger lift across the Atlantic be reduced to

* See above, p. 200.

Page 225

10,000 persons a month. Since surface shipping capable of moving about 350,000 monthly was operating between the United States and Europe, continuation of the airlift at the current rate for another seven months could speed the end of demobilization from Europe by only fifteen days. Cutting back the project to 10,000 persons a month would enable the ATC to release approximately 150 of the GREEN PROJECT C-47’s operating on the Natal-Miami line, about half of the 227 C-54’s still in service on the project, and some 30,000 officers and enlisted men then assigned to bases in the Caribbean, South Atlantic, and North African Divisions. Likewise, the four bombardment groups still delivering passengers to the ATC at Casablanca might be relieved.78 Within four days, General Marshall approved this recommendation, and orders presently went out to terminate the GREEN PROJECT on 10 September and to cut the transatlantic lift to 10,000 westbound passengers monthly.79 The special procedures for handling passengers continued in use until the end of September. By that time the remnants of the project fleet had brought home from North African, South Atlantic, and Caribbean bases a major portion of the men whose labors had made possible the air journey homeward of over 166,000 of their fellow soldiers.80

When the GREEN PROJECT goals were reduced in mid-August, fifty C-47’s, formerly based at Waller Field and used on the Natal-Miami circuit, together with their crews and some maintenance personnel, were transferred to Morrison Field, West Palm Beach, Florida. After the crews had received instruction for flying within the Zone of Interior, they were put to work, 20 August, flying PURPLE PROJECT* support personnel from Miami to the Charleston Army Air Field, South Carolina. By 4 September 1,671 men had been moved. Before this, part of the fleet had been withdrawn to provide the air transportation from Miami to San Antonio, Texas, of Brig. Gen. Ray L. Owens’ AAF Redistribution Center. Between 30 August and 7 September, 2,029 of Owens’ men moved out in a total of 112 C-47 flights.81

Meanwhile, on 27 August, at the request of the War Department, ATC inaugurated still another project which reflected the end-of-the-war wealth of aircraft available. This was the TRANSCON PROJECT, designed to carry first 25,000, then 40,000, troops monthly between the East and West coasts, in order to relieve some

* See above, p. 200.

Page 226

of the extremely heavy pressure on rail transportation produced by the monthly return of hundreds of thousands of troops from overseas. Soldiers transported under this new project were to carry ASF orders designating them as TRANSCON passengers. Ferrying Division supervised the whole movement, and its Military Air Transport Service C-47’s ultimately carried a major share of the passengers. Four contract carriers, American Airlines, Northwest Airlines, United Air Lines, and Transcontinental and Western Air, Inc., also shared in the movement. Each of the contract carriers employed in the project fifteen new C-47B’s, specially delivered, and pilots released for this purpose from military service. In December American Airlines received twenty-two C-54’s to be used for TRANSCON. When the job was finished, 1 April 1946, 171,579 troops had been afforded coast-to-coast transportation.82

With victory in the Pacific achieved, and the heart of the Japanese empire under American occupation, a final homeward movement, the SUNSET PROJECT, developed. Inaugurated 27 September 1945, it called for the return to the United States of B-29’s from the Eighth and Twentieth Air Forces, and B-24’s from the Far East Air Force, as well as some two-engine bombers and cargo craft not required by the occupational forces. Like the WHITE PROJECT planes, those of the SUNSET PROJECT were accepted by ATC for overseas flight, after inspection at Manila, Okinawa, and various B-29 bases in the Marianas. They were flown by combat crews operating under ATC control and carried passengers assigned as extra crew members, all being eligible for separation from service. The returning aircraft passed through the Marianas, Kwajalein, Johnston Island, and John Rodgers Field (Oahu) to Mather Field, California. The flow continued through the rest of the year and on into 1946. By New Year’s Day, 653 B-29’s and 601 B-24’s had made the homeward journey, though the discharge of hundreds of experienced aircraft mechanics left the Pacific Division hard pressed to perform the necessary maintenance en route. In all, 1,308 very heavy and heavy bombers returned to the United States under the original SUNSET PROJECT designation.83

Of all the aerial redeployment programs of 1945, the GREEN PROJECT was the most impressive. It illustrates the capacity of the War Department, and particularly of the mature Air Transport Command, to plan an air transportation operation of tremendous

Page 227

magnitude and to carry it out in a completely effective fashion. At a Word from Washington supplies of every kind were procured and transported to the points where they would be needed. Several thousand men were moved by air and water and were put to work again, often, at entirely unfamiliar assignments, thousands of miles from their previous duty stations. It is no wonder that the mimeographed Standard Operating Procedures prepared for the project in several of the participating divisions ran to over seventy-five pages. It was a tremendous demonstration of the mass airlift of manpower, certainly the most striking of those marking the end of the war. Within less than five months, over 166,000 passengers – 50,514 in a single month – were flown across the Atlantic without a single fatality. Nothing like it had happened before. What its sequel might be – for peace or war in a day of larger, more efficient air transports, was a challenge which demanded little of the imagination of the men who had had a part in it.

Page 228

The South Atlantic Route

The South Atlantic Route

Page 229

African Air Routes

African Air Routes

Page 230

North Atlantic Air Routes

North Atlantic Air Routes

Page 231

China-Burma-India Airway

China-Burma-India Airway

Page 232

Air Route to Alaska

Air Route to Alaska

Page 233

South Pacific Airways

South Pacific Airways

Page 234

Southwest Pacific Airways

Southwest Pacific Airways

Page 235

Central Pacific Airways

Central Pacific Airways

Page 236

Blank page