WINDHAM: Wartime toll high along the Aluminum Trail during WWII

I stood in an archive storage room at the Museum of Aviation staring at several very large boxes of note cards, manuscripts and various other research materials. Upon further investigation into what this massive amount of paperwork was, I realized it was the research of Gladys "Chick" Marrs Quinn. The name may not ring a bell with you, but for families around the country whose loved ones died flying through the treacherous skies over the Himalayas in the China-Burma-India Theater during World War II, Quinn was their connection to finding the dead.

Chick, as she was called, was married to a pilot, 1st Lt. Stuart Marrs Jr. He was sent overseas to be a part of one of the greatest airlifts in history. The area where he flew was called the Hump, which was a nickname for the eastern end of the Himalayas, which represented part of the journey for moving cargo from India into China.

The airlift from India, across Burma and into China was from 1942-1945. The purpose of the mission was to keep supplies going into China to fight the Japanese who had invaded China with great destruction. The supply route for the Chinese and the United States Army Air Forces based in China had been the Burma Road. The Japanese had blocked the road and did so throughout the war. Another way had to be found, and it was to transport everything by air. The airlift started in Assam, India, and ended in Kunming, China.

Flying over the Himalayas was very dangerous. The height of the mountains combined with terrible weather, clouds and fog, along with not very reliable equipment including the planes themselves, was a recipe for disaster. Then there were the Japanese fighters who claimed the lives of hundreds of airplane crews. The types of planes flown were C-46, C-47, C-54 and C-87, as well as others. They carried everything from fuel, weapons, ammunition and other daily needs for the troops. It is estimated that the Hump planes carried 650,000 tons of cargo.

Wartime air transportation was in its infancy in the early '40s. It was trial and error, and a lot of error when it came to setting up the airfields, having the right equipment or replacement parts or just having the right clothing for these pilots who had to fly dangerous routes.

Lt. Gen. William H. Turner, Commander, India-China Division of Air Transport Command wrote, "War was raging in China. Supplies had to get in or all would be lost. There was no other way but over the Hump. The airlift had to go. ... The tonnage mounted, but so did the accidents. ... It was safer to take a bomber deep into Germany than to fly a transport plane over the Rockpile from one friendly nation to another."

The toll across the CBI was heavy. So heavy, in fact, that the Hump was eventually called The Aluminum Trail for all the planes that had crashed and the aluminum of the planes being scattered from one end of the transportation route to the other. It cannot be known exactly how many people lost their lives in this great transport effort. The records are incomplete at best. Some say over 700 planes were lost and over 1,600 lives.

This brings me back to 1st Lt. Marrs, whose plane disappeared somewhere on the Aluminum Trail in 1945. His wife, Chick, was determined to find out what happened to him and in the process compiled a sought after book of hundreds of names of pilots and crews who did not make it home. She gave as much detail as she could find about each incident.

For 45 years Chick did not know the facts and details of her husband's crash. In her book, "The Aluminum Trail: How and Where They Died," she writes, "He was killed on his 56th round trip over the "Hump," on Feb. 27, 1945. He was flying a C-109 that was carrying 3,875 gallons of gasoline."

She wrote that she spent "9 1/2 years searching through over 60,000 pages of government documents." Picture Chick Marrs Quinn slumped over a small microfilm and microfiche reader with material that sometimes could barely be read. Why did she do all that work? She answers the question by saying, " I HAD TO DO IT."

Even now there are people who are searching in India and sometimes China to try to find more remains, more tail numbers, more answers for those left behind. Burma, now Myanmar, is closed to such searches.

The deepest drive of one person has led to the recovery of so many stories with sad endings. We honor Chick and her efforts and to those who now wander deep in the mountains to find the lost.

Marilyn N. Windham is a volunteer at the Museum of Aviation. Her email is mnwindham@aol.com.

This story was originally published October 20, 2015 at 3:19 PM with the headline "WINDHAM: Wartime toll high along the Aluminum Trail during WWII ."