South Atlantic air ferry route in World War II

Overview

After the Fall of France in June 1940 and the evacuation of the British Expeditionary Force from Northern Europe after the Battle of Dunkirk, the next major land battle between the Axis powers and the United Kingdom erupted in North Africa in September with the Fascist Italian invasion of Egypt from Libya. The Italian offensive was halted and, in December 1940, the British made a counterattack. What started as a five-day raid turned into Operation Compass, resulting in massive losses for the Italian forces. The Italian's Axis partner, Nazi Germany, provided Afrika Korps, a contingent of ground and air forces, to prevent a total collapse, and Germany became the dominant partner.

The Italian-German threat to the security of the Suez Canal was critical to the British, and great efforts were made to collect sufficient transport ships to convey forces from Britain to Egypt to support the Eighth Army and the Desert Air Force. The British realized the strategic importance of maintaining control of the Suez Canal and Malta, while Hitler saw the war in North Africa as a diversion from his main goal of conquering the Soviet Union. With both Italian submarines and German U-Boats operating in the Mediterranean Sea, the only relatively secure method of transport was sailing south from Britain around the Cape of Good Hope and then north past Madagascar into the Red Sea.

At the August 1941 Atlantic Conference, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill pressed United States President Franklin D. Roosevelt for aid to support the Commonwealth forces engaged against the German Afrika Korps and set into motion a series of events that were to provide an American-pioneered, American-supplied and American-maintained trans-Atlantic air route between the United States and Africa. The air route was then extended across Central Africa and north to the Nile Delta in Egypt, providing a relatively fast method of resupply to the Commonwealth forces.

The job of getting Lend-Lease planes to the British was given the Air Corps, General Arnold found that neither military nor civilian crews with the necessary experience were immediately available. The few experienced Army crews could not be spared; and the country had long since been combed for civilian pilots and navigators for the North Atlantic ferrying service.

Rather than ship the planes by water, the ferrying job was turned over to Pan American Airways, whose experience in the development of commercial airlines through Latin America already had been turned to advantage in the effort to extend and strengthen Southern hemisphere defenses. As early as November 1940, Pan American had been made the agent of the United States government in carrying out the so-called Airport Development Program (ADP) for the construction and improvement of airports on foreign territory throughout the Caribbean area, Central America, and Brazil, as well as in Liberia. Ferrying operations over the South Atlantic route had begun in June 1941 when Atlantic Airways, Ltd., a Pan American Airways subsidiary corporation organized especially for the job, undertook to deliver twenty transport-type aircraft to the British in western Africa.

It was, however, just the beginning of a network of air routes that eventually encompassed two-thirds of the Earth.

Caribbean Air Route

With the spectre of War again in Europe in the late 1930s, hemispheric security became a paramount concern of the Roosevelt Administration. There were memories of German U-Boat activities in the Caribbean and near the Panama Canal in 1918. Two agreements with the British provided for significant United States force deployment to a number of British bases in the Caribbean area, the 1940 Destroyers for Bases agreement and the 1941 Lend-Lease act. As a result of these agreements, United States military forces moved into Bermuda, the Bahamas, Jamaica, Antigua, St. Lucia, Trinidad, and British Guiana. Military survey teams moved into these areas and construction proceeded in the expansion of existing British facilities and construction of new ones. The Trinidad and British Guiana bases became major stopping points for transient aircraft, bridging the 2,000 miles (3,200 km) that separated Puerto Rico from Belem, Brazil, the northernmost base in that country capable of handling heavy traffic. Other bases used principally for defense but provided emergency landing fields for transient aircraft were constructed through Pan American Airlines agencies in Cuba, Haiti, the Dominican Republic, and Venezuela.

The United States and Britain were interested primarily in the ferrying service. Thus, when President Roosevelt announced publicly on 18 August 1941 that the agreements with Pan American had been concluded, stress was placed on the importance of speeding delivery of aircraft to the British. Not until after the United States entered the war, and acquired thereby heavy military commitments of its own that the route went far beyond the prewar lend-lease obligations, did the South Atlantic transport service assume outstanding importance as a support to combat operations. At its inception, transport use of the route was considered merely an adjunct to ferrying.

South Atlantic Air Route

Military intelligence files in the late 1930s were filled with reports about German purchases of large tracts of land and plantations in Latin America. Further, the United States was faced with nations in Latin America with non-democratic governments that had strong ties to Germany. Without exception, all South American nations and some in Central America received arms supplies from Germany during the late 1930s, and some acquired modern German-made aircraft. In addition, a number of Latin American countries had large German immigrant populations, many of whom were prominent in economic and political matters. In Brazil, for example, entire regions were dominated by expatriate Germans, giving rise to fears that Germany would establish secret military facilities there.

These fears resulted in strenuous United States diplomatic efforts, involving both inducements and threats throughout Latin America to forestall military connections by these nations with the Axis powers. Under some pressure, almost all Latin American nations complied with these efforts, although in some cases not without serious internal political struggles, and in most cases only in exchange for military supplies to supplant those they would otherwise have received from Germany. This came at a time when the United States armed forces were struggling to arm themselves, not to mention those of Britain.

The main United States concern, was to develop a staging network of airfields in Brazil to allow the ferrying of aircraft from South Florida, to supplant already controlled facilities in the Caribbean. Negotiations with Brazil resulted in the use of a number of civil airports and the use of port facilities in the northeastern promontory. This was a case of Roosevelt's "Good Neighbor Policy" paying practical dividends, with Brazil permitting American aircraft of all types, whether manned by military or civilian crews, to fly over her territory or land at bases on her soil. Surveying teams from the United States were sent and assessed the availability of the existing facilities in terms of runway lengths, as well as repair and refueling facilities.

Panair do Brasil, a Pan American subsidiary, had undertaken at Belém and Natal the development with ADP funds of facilities destined to serve as major ferrying and transport bases along the South Atlantic route. With the opening of an air base on Ascension Island in July 1942, the ocean crossing was divided into two fairly easy stages and ceased to be a serious operational problem The base on Ascension Island was located on British territory.

The South Atlantic Division developed additional transport and ferrying routes within Brazil that ferried aircraft south along the Atlantic coast to Bahia and Rio de Janeiro. Transport routes also connected Montevideo, Uruguay and Asunción, Paraguay.

Central African Air Route

Related to the United States diplomatic activities in Brazil, United States military teams were active in Liberia to acquire staging airfields to transit ferried aircraft from Brazil through British Colonies in Central Africa en route to the Middle East. Liberia, having a long relationship with the United States, made available a number of airports and port facilities. Monrovia became a key staging point on the route from Brazil, which continued onto Egypt.

Central African Wing

Perhaps the most important link in the whole system of Pan American ferrying and transport services was the operation across Central Africa. In providing a transport service and in maintaining the bases, Pan American Airways-Africa supported the movement across the continent of aircraft arriving from both the United States and Great Britain. Terminal points were established by terms of the contract at Monrovia on the west coast and at Khartoum in Eastern Africa, but after 7 December 1941 the service was extended to Cairo and beyond.

The Trans-Africa route had been pioneered by the British in the immediate prewar years, and at the outbreak of the war Imperial Airways maintained a regular transport service over the run between Khartoum in the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan and Lagos on the Nigerian coast. Coastal bases had been constructed at Bathurst, Gambia, Freetown, Sierra Leone, and at Takoradi and Accra in the Gold Coast Colony. Across the waist of Africa, airfields had been cut from the jungle or laid out on the desert at Kano and Maiduguri in Nigeria, at Fort Lamy in French Equatorial Africa, and at El Geneina, El Fasher, and El Obeid in the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan. With the loss of the French fleet in 1940 and the growing activity in the spring of 1941 of German air forces based on Sicily, the British line of air and water communications with Egypt by way of the Mediterranean was virtually closed. Fortunately, the existence of the Trans-African air route enabled the British to avoid shipping aircraft by water all the way around Africa and up through the Red Sea to Egypt. A large base and an assembly plant were developed at Takoradi, and here fighter and bomber aircraft, waterborne from Britain, were assembled, tested, and then ferried across Africa to Cairo. Beginning in the fall of 1940, British ferry pilots began moving Hawker Hurricanes and Bristol Blenheims along this route. The ferrying operation demanded also a transport service for returning.

Initially, the 27th AAF Ferrying Wing, later the ATC Central African Wing, was responsible for moving aircraft, personnel and cargo from West African transport hubs over the Trans-Africa Route via Khartoum (Sudan) to Cairo, Egypt and to Aden, South Arabia and on to Karachi, India. This was discontinued when the route along the coast of West Africa from Dakar, Senegal to French Morocco became available in 1943.

Middle East Wing

At Khartoum on the Central African Route the route divided. Multi-engined long-range capable India-bound planes were sent either across southern Arabia by way of Aden to Karachi. Single-engined fighters were sent up through Cairo, RAF Habbaniya, and Basra to the Karachi gateway following a former British Imperial Airways route that was established in the early 1930s that linked India with Egypt.

Once in Cairo, Lend-lease planes for the Soviet Union were ferried from Cairo to Tehran, Iran where they were turned over to Soviet flyers for onward shipment to Russia via Baku. ATC later operated the Eastern Mediterranean Route via RAF Lydda in British-Mandated Palestine and Beirut, Lebanon, to Adana, Turkey. A ferrying route from Cairo was also established to Naples, Italy after its seizure from Fascist Italian forces, which allowed replacement aircraft to be ferried to Twelfth and Fifteenth Air Forces in the Mediterranean Theater of Operations. (MTO). The southern route to Karachi through Aden was closed in late 1943 with the opening of the North African route through French Morocco and Algeria, with units in Aden, Ethiopia, Arabia and Khartoum being reassigned to the Middle East Wing; Cairo and the stations on the Northern Route were reassigned to the North African Route.

Aircraft bound for India and China were sent south along a connecting route at RAF Habbaniya that linked Basara, Iraq with Karachi, India along the Persian Gulf coast. The initial B-29 Superfortress units in India were ferried along this route.

Although aircraft ferrying to India over the southern route was halted, the route between Cairo and Aden remained open as a transport route as part of the North African Division, and was also used to ferry aircraft to and from the Technical Services Command depot at Asmara, Ethiopia from Cairo. The facility in Ethiopia was originally set up in secret during 1941 to provide depot-level maintenance for Lend-Lease aircraft being used by the British in Egypt, however the location at the Horn of Africa allowed reconnaissance aircraft to monitor approaches into the Red Sea and spot any U-Boats or Japanese submarines operating in the Northern Indian Ocean south of Arabia.

Congo Transport Group

Beginning in 1943 the Central African Division also operated a transport route to Léopoldville in the Belgian Congo for the transport of uranium to the United States. This route was later extended to Pretoria, South Africa via Elizabethville, Belgian Congo for the transport of strategic minerals available in South Africa.

The Congo route, as it became known, also took the form of an alternate ferrying route into the Middle East with a connection into Nairobi, Kenya to Khartoum. In the dark days of 1942 this alternate route offered insurance against loss of the central African airway, but the rising fortunes of Allied military operations soon robbed it of value. Even before the fall of Tunisia in the spring of 1943, the Congo route no longer possessed military significance

North African Division

The Air Transport Command became involved in planning for the Operation Torch invasion of French West Africa and Algeria as early as 10 October 1942, four weeks before the launching of the attack.

French West Africa was by no means easy of air approach. From British bases in the north, General Dwight D. Eisenhower would move down most of the aircraft employed in the initial stages of the attack, but for several reasons this route was unsatisfactory for maintaining continued air communications on a large scale with the Allied forces. While it extended only 1,300 miles (2,100 km) from southern Britain to Casablanca and Oran, aircraft had to fly dangerously close to the German-occupied French coast and had to steer clear of the Spanish and Portuguese coasts. Enemy interception was a constant threat, foul weather was commonplace, and the Gibraltar air base, the only potential refueling point along the way for short-range craft, was too vulnerable to permit heavy aircraft concentrations there over any period of time. Finally, a large proportion of the planes and aircraft supplies moving from Britain into North Africa had first to be flown across the North Atlantic, a route all but closed to normal traffic during the winter of 1942-43.

Obviously, the main flow of aircraft, supplies and materiel had to come via the South Atlantic Transport Route and over one or more of three possible branches stemming from the established Trans-African route. By far the best approach, and the one that eventually became the main route, was along the string of coastal bases from Monrovia. After the Allied position in French Morocco and Algiers had been made secure, and several major airports were seized from the Vichy French. Casablanca and Marrakech in French Morocco, along with airports at Oran and Algiers in Algeria were quickly utilized to bring in reinforcements and to ferry aircraft to the new Twelfth Air Force established in Northwest Africa.

Negotiations were opened with Pierre Boisson, Vichy Governor-General of French West Africa, for the peaceful occupation of Dakar and the whole of that Vichy-held territory. On 7 December, General Eisenhower reached a broad understanding with Admiral Jean Darlan and Governor Boisson, which United States secured the use of airdromes, harbors, roads, and other facilities in French West Africa and the authority to construct a new airfield near Dakar. Dakar's location at the most westerly point in Africa made it a natural landfall on the airway across the South Atlantic to North Africa and Southern Europe. By taking the direct overwater route from Natal to Dakar, the distance was cut down to only 1,872 miles (3,013 km), nearly 1,400 miles (2,300 km) less than the route by way of Ascension Island, Accra, and Roberts Field, Liberia. The limited range of some aircraft made it necessary for them to take the longer route, but four-engine planes could easily make the jump direct to Dakar.

For several months after the invasion of northwest Africa the ferrying of combat planes for General Jimmy Doolittle's Twelfth Air Force continued to be the heaviest responsibility imposed on ATC by the invasion. Meanwhile, the approach of winter had caused the diversion of all ferrying from the North Atlantic to the South Atlantic route. By mid-December, heavy-bomber ferrying across the North Atlantic was also suspended. Until the northern route was again opened to traffic in the spring, all ferried aircraft going either to the Twelfth Air Force in North Africa or to the Eighth Air Force in Britain were dispatched by way of the southern route.

At Marrakech a link was also established with the air route joining North Africa and Britain, a route inaugurated during the initial phase of Operation Torch as bombers, fighters and loaded troop transports of the Allied air forces moved down from Britain to landing fields in the target area. Replacement aircraft continued to flow south from Britain until the very end of the Tunisian Campaign.

As the Allies advanced into Tunisia, this ferrying and transport route brought needed replacement aircraft and supplies to the ground forces pinning the Afrika Corps around Tunis. With the collapse of German forces in Tunisia in August 1943, a chain of airfields was established to Cairo, creating what would become the North African Air Route.

Aircraft being ferried over the North African Route also could be sent to Allied forces in Italy and other points in the Mediterranean Theater of Operations (MTO) from Airports in Algiers and Tunis, along with being ferried to the Soviet Union and India from Cairo. As a result, in October 1943, the Central African route from Liberia was discontinued to Khartoum, and aircraft were ferried around West and North Africa instead. The route to the Congo and South Africa from Monrovia, however, remained in use until early 1946.

India-China Air Route

Even before the United States entered the war, it was clear that China must be given enough aid to keep her in the war, if not for China's sake, then certainly that her soil might serve later as the base for a counterattack against Japan. But the outlook was gloomy. Japanese air and naval action in the South China Sea left seaborne reinforcement out of the question. The possibility of establishing a useful air route into China was under serious discussion as early as January 1942, and United States policy was clear that the pathway to China be kept open. Planning then contemplated building up the China National Aviation Corporation with a fleet of seventy-five two-engine transports.

Organized USAAF ferrying activities began in India with the Ferrying Command 1st Ferrying Group being activated on 3 March 1942. It departed the United States for India on 17 March, reporting to the Tenth Air Force Trans-India Ferry Command, which itself was activated on 6 April 1942. The 1st Ferrying Group operated a ferrying route between Karachi as western terminal and airfields in the upper Assam Valley as its eastern terminal.

The Assam-Burma-India Ferry Command, also under Tenth Air Force activated on 17 April with the 2d Ferrying Group. It merged with the Trans-India Ferry Command to form the 10th AF India-China Ferry Command on 16 July. The Trans-India Ferry Command was formally inactivated on 1 December 1942 when the Air Transport Command India-China Wing, (ICWATC) was activated.

Unlike the efforts to supply the British in North Africa or the Russians on the eastern front with aircraft, the primary mission of the ATC India-China Division was the movement of equipment and supplies across India to the combat forces in Burma, or to the Chinese from port facilities in Karachi, Bombay, Bangalore and Calcutta, where large ATC facilities were established. The ground transportation infrastructure in India prior to the war consisted of a string of primitive railroads of varying gauges and limited capacity. The air movement across India of aircraft being ferried to Tenth and Fourteenth Air Force along the route were flown from Karachi, was a tertiary mission.

Karachi became the western terminus of the India-China division, with Air Technical Service Command also operating an Air Depot there. It was chosen due to its relative safety from the Japanese, although it was 1,700 miles (2,700 km) away from the Assam Valley and 1,400 miles (2,300 km) from Calcutta. Calcutta, in eastern India with an excellent airport and port facilities, was so menaced by the Japanese in 1942 that relatively few supplies and men were sent there from the United States. The situation had changed by 1943, and the Calcutta docks was a major shipment destination, but it was still nearly 600 miles (1,000 km) from the Assam terminus of the Hump route, and the line of communication was tenuous.

From Karachi, aircraft bound for Tenth Air Force and United States Army units supporting British Forces in Burma were ferried east to the combat airfields, with China-bound aircraft for Fourteenth Air Force being sent to Chauba in the Assam Valley of northeast India. From several sub-fields provided by the RAF in the Assam Valley, both aircraft and supplies were ferried over "The Hump", a flyable route over the Himalayan Mountains, into Yunnan Province in southeast China, where several airfields were constructed to receive and turn-around aircraft, which then went on to Kunming, the major ATC facility in China.

By the middle of June 1942, ten C-53's had been delivered at Karachi for the use of either CNAC or the Chinese government. In addition, a total of thirty-nine Douglas planes for use by U.S. military crews had been flown to India. However, the situation changed when Japanese ground forces on 8 May took the Myitkyina, Burma airfield that was to have played a key part in the air supply of China. The loss of Myitkyina left only one means of keeping open a pathway to China—the grim prospect of direct flight from airfields in the eastern Assam Valley in Northeast India across the High Himalayas to Yunnanyi, Kunming, or other points in the Yunnan Province of China.

The most vital need was for airfields with hard-surface runways, hardstandings, and taxiways. The United States asked the RAF in India to provide three fields in Upper Assam, including one already being built at Chabua by native labor with primitive tools and methods.

During the war, additional Air Depots were constructed at Bombay, Bangalore and Calcutta which received aircraft sent by sea, assembling and ferrying them to Tenth or Fourteenth Air Force. In 1944, the first B-29s sent to the China-Burma-India Theater to support XX Bomber Command operations in eastern India were flown into Karachi and onto eastern India.

Project X

Project X, as the heavy bomber movement to the Far East was designated, became the first major foreign ferrying mission of the war and the first major overseas movement of tactical units. Not until the air echelon of the Eighth Air Force began its movement to Britain in June 1942 would the Army Air Forces face an overseas ferrying job of greater size and complexity. Although a total of eighty four-engine bombers were originally earmarked for the project, something less than that number actually left the United States and an even smaller number reached the Far East.

Project X comprised two separate echelons of heavy bombers. The first of these was made up of fifteen LB-30's repossessed from the British and manned by crews of the 7th Bombardment Group, a group whose air movement across the Pacific had begun on 6 December. Only six of these planes actually went through the South Atlantic, the others being ultimately diverted to California for movement to the South Pacific through Hawaii. Travel orders were issued on 19 December 1941, and within a few days aircraft and crews began to arrive at MacDill Field, Florida, to prepare for the long overseas flight.

The second and more important component was made up of a projected sixty-five B-17 bombers and crews. Most of the B-17's were yet to come from the factory and were to move out in small groups as they became available and after they had gone to the Sacramento Air Depot to be put in combat readiness. Orders were issued on 23 December for the transfer of the sixty-five bombers to the Philippines. Crews of both groups of bombers were ordered to proceed along the South Atlantic route through the Central African route to Cairo, then through the Middle East via RAF Habbaniya to Karachi. The B-17's were ordered to proceed as far as Bangalore, at which point they were to report by secret means via Singapore to General Douglas MacArthur and reinforce Far East Air Force in Java, Netherlands East Indies and in Australia via and await further orders. This route was of most immediate importance in the first weeks of the Pacific War, even though it had the marked disadvantage of stretching approximately two-thirds around the world.

The staging of Project X aircraft and crews at MacDill Field extended over a period of about two months. During that time some fifty-eight heavy bombers of the projected eighty departed for the Far East over the southeastern route. In spite of many delays along the way, forty-four of the sixty-six bombers were delivered to the Southwest Pacific Area over both routes by late February; some had served as a source of spare parts to put the others through. Four of the B-17's were lost completely either in crashes or over the Atlantic, another landed in a swamp at Belém, one was forced to return to the United States for repairs, and one was delayed in Africa awaiting repairs even as late as May 1942. Although none of the bombers reached the Philippines, most of them were put to use in Australia or on other fronts. It was a good record considering the pioneer nature of the job, the inexperienced and poorly trained crews, and the necessity for building a ferrying route organization through the South Atlantic and across Africa and India while the movement was in progress. In assuming the major share of responsibility for controlling the movement, the United States had gained much valuable experience that would prove useful as the ferrying job increased in scope with the growing intensity of the war in Europe and in the Pacific.

Immediately after the Pearl Harbor Attack, the Japanese had cut the central Pacific route from Hawaii through Midway and Wake Island to New Guinea and Australia; the route over which the Far East Air Force had received thirty-five heavy bombers in the fall of 1941. However, this route was also cut by advancing Imperial Japanese forces after the defeat of Allied forces in the Dutch East Indies campaign, Battle of Singapore and the withdraws of British forces from Burma during 1942, although some B-17s were flown back to Bangalore, India from Broome, Western Australia via Ceylon fitted with internal fuel tanks after the route was closed. These aircraft were flown to Egypt where they were used in combat by the U.S. Army Middle East Air Force against German forces in the Western Desert Campaign.

After February 1942 all aircraft flight-delivered to the Southwest Pacific were staged at West Coast United States bases and flown out by way of Hawaii and the chain of new island steppingstone airfields in the eastern and central Pacific extending down to Australia. The initial number of planes delivered for a time was small, but steady progress was made in the construction or improvement of bases and in the installation of weather and communications facilities. This route became the South Pacific Route and was the fourth major Air Transport Command route established.

Legacy

After the war, many United States military personnel returned home and demobilized, and Air Transport Command shut down operations of many of these wartime airfields and civil airports. The airports were returned to civil control, with the improvements made by the Americans making them more valuable than they were prior to the war. Almost all were utilized by the governments of the nations where they were located as civil or international airports of their country.

The routes established were used by international airlines. As aircraft were developed with jet engines, longer ranges and higher capacity, some of the airports became secondary. Today most remain in existence, even six decades later showing clear evidence of their wartime past.