Letters from Our Readers

"The plane hit clear-air turbulence over Myanmar's Irrawaddy River, causing it to drop almost two hundred feet in an instant. During the Second World War, U.S. Army Air Forces transport planes confronted the same weather system. Flying from northeast India, over "the Hump" of intervening mountain ranges, to southwestern China, pilots routinely encountered turbulence that dropped and lifted their aircraft not hundreds of feet but thousands."

"The C-46 pilot Thomas M. Sykes, for example, wrote that while travelling over the Salween River, near the Myanmar-China border, he experienced "extreme turbulence that caused altitude variations of 2,000ft up and down." The purpose of these transport flights was to supply China by air, and by doing so insure a close alliance between the U.S. and a Nationalist China run by Chiang Kai-shek."

"What pilots dubbed the Aluminum Trail of aircraft wreckage, however, remains strewn across the mountains and jungles of their old route. Given how that plan turned out, it is unsurprising that the remarkable service of these pilots, and the extraordinary theatre of war in which they operated, is little studied or known today."

A Singapore Airlines flight experienced severe clear-air turbulence over Myanmar in May 2024, dropping nearly two hundred feet suddenly. This phenomenon mirrors conditions encountered by U.S. Army Air Forces pilots during World War II flying supply missions over the Hump from northeast India to southwestern China. These transport pilots regularly faced turbulence causing altitude variations of thousands of feet. The supply missions aimed to support Nationalist China under Chiang Kai-shek and maintain U.S.-China alliance. Despite the pilots' remarkable service in this extraordinary theater of war, their contributions remain largely unknown today. Aircraft wreckage from these flights, dubbed the Aluminum Trail, still remains scattered across the mountains and jungles of their historical route.

Read at The New Yorker