Aluminum Alley : Stackpole Books : 9780811772624 : 0811772624 : 02 May 2023 : After the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, Asia became an important theater of World War II-and because the Japanese had boxed in China, a key U.S. ally, and blocked the Burma Road out of India, the United States began looking for other ways to supply the war effort in China. In April 1942, the first American flights out of India launched in order to supply gasoline and other materiel to Allied fighting forces over the Himalayas and into China. Mountains over ten thousand feet. Unpredictable weather. Devasting crashes. Long odds. Perhaps the worst assignment for American pilots during World War II. For the next forty-two months, pilots-men including Gene Autry and Barry Goldwater-flew The Hump despite the difficulty of the terrain, the conditions, and the weather, throwing an important lifeline to the war in China, which helped bog down more than a million Japanese soldiers in China and ke