
The Hump Route: The Deathly WW2 Airspace Above the Himalayas (The Flying Tigers, Part 3)
The third part of this Flying Tigers series turns to the aerial supply line pilots called the Hump, the route over the eastern Himalayas that kept China supplied with fuel, weapons, and ammunition after the Japanese cut off overland access through Burma. Archival footage and expert narration lay out why the mountains themselves, not just enemy fighters, made this one of the deadliest transport routes of the Second World War: unpredictable weather, extreme altitude, and unmapped peaks brought down aircraft with grim regularity, and crews who bailed out often faced days of survival in the jungle before rescue. The film traces how the Flying Tigers, based in western China, depended on this lifeline to keep fighting Japanese air power at a moment when China's defenses were otherwise stretched thin. It sits within a four-part account of the unit's operations, and this installment makes the case that the men flying cargo, not just the fighter pilots, paid one of the war's highest costs in the China-Burma-India theater.