Ledo Street

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Badge of the construction crews for Ledo Street

The Ledo Road ( english Ledo Road , also called " Stilwell Road ") connects Ledo in the Indian state of Assam with the Chinese city of Kunming in the province Yunnan . It was built during the Second World War between December 1942 and January 1945 to replace a section of the Burma Road captured by Japanese troops and was used to deliver supplies to the Chinese national troops by the Western Allies . In early 1945 it was renamed from Chiang Kai-shek to Stilwell Street (Engl. Stilwell Road ); after General Joseph Stilwell , Chiang Kai-shek's chief of staff and the highest-ranking US officer in the theater of war Burma / India / China.

course

Burma and Ledostrasse (1944–1945)
A section of Ledo Street

The Ledo Strait runs from Ledo in India, then on Burmese territory via Myitkyina to Mongyu. There she meets the Burma Road, which continues to Kunming in China. The district division below is based on the building units allocated for the construction of the individual sections:

The length of the road between Ledo and Mongyu, where it meets the Burma Road, is 748 km. Its highest point reaches 1400 m at Pangsau Pass, which also by the workers because of the great difficulties in the construction Hell's Pass was called. The road crosses 10 major and 155 minor rivers.

Background and planning

Burma was part of the Empire of India until 1937, when it was declared a British Crown Colony . During the Second Sino-Japanese War , the British and Americans supplied the Chinese national troops via the supply and supply lines that ran across the eastern foothills of the Himalayas . On July 17, 1940, under massive diplomatic pressure from the Japanese, the British closed the Burma Road, which was considered to be the most important supply line. However, they began again on October 18 to send new supply convoys on their way to China, since there were no further peace efforts between Japan and China .

From May 1942, troops from Thailand, allied with Japan, invaded eastern Burma ( Shan State ) and fought with Chinese troops under the command of American General Joseph Stilwell. The onset of the monsoon and supply difficulties led to the abandonment of the Japanese offensive operations in June after important transport hubs in northern Burma had been captured, Lashio and Myitkyina. After the Japanese had occupied all of Indochina on July 23, 1941 and interrupted the railway connection to Yunnan in September, no more supplies from there could reach western China either.

Stilwell and his units withdraw from Burma to India in May 1942

The loss of the Burma Road from Lashio to Kunming prompted Brigadier General John Magruder to instruct the US lend-lease administrator in China, Major John E. Abroad , to look for an alternative route for the supplies in northern Burma. Abroad, a railway engineer by trade , reported to Magruder shortly afterwards that the terrain was very impassable. In particular, he mentioned the Patkai Mountains along the Indian border, which would make it extremely difficult to build a railway line.

As the highest-ranking American general in personal union, he was chief of the general staff of the Chinese national troops, commissioner of the American President Roosevelt for the supplies to China, commander in chief of the airlift “The Hump” and the commander in chief of the US air force units in the Burmese-Chinese theater of war. Together with the British General William Slim , he developed plans for an offensive with the aim of pushing back the Japanese. Lieutenant Colonel Frank D. Merrill , Stillwell's executive officer, made the proposal to build a connection road to Burma Street. He suggested Ledo as the starting point, since this is where the railway line from Calcutta ended. The road followed an old caravan route to Mongyu. There, shortly before the Chinese border, she meets the Burma Road that leads to Kunming. Until this could be completed in early 1945, however, the Allies had to rely on air transport to support China (→ The Hump ).

On December 1, 1942, British General Archibald Wavell and General Stilwell agreed to hand over the construction of Ledo Street to the Northern Combat Area Command (NCAC). General Claire Lee Chennault , commander of the American Volunteer Group (also known as Flying Tigers), which operates in China , doubted that the possible amount of 65,000 tons of supplies per month indicated by Stilwell could be transported via Ledo Strait. Chennault suggested expanding the airlift. Stilwell continued the airlift, but also massively advocated road construction.

construction

With the Japanese not occupying northeast Burma, Stilwell established his base in Ledo and placed the supplies under the command of Major General Raymond A. Wheeler . Wheeler, who had experience in road construction, began building the road with his units on December 16, 1942. A number of bulldozers had been organized as construction vehicles , with which one unit prepared the way in advance and other units that followed paved the road with crushed stones and stabilized so that it is not washed away in bad weather. Since the surrounding conditions had not been explored in advance, this had to be done at the time of construction and the measurement of the curves to be created took additional time. Construction work came to a standstill, especially when the heights of the Patkai Mountains were reached. When the Pangsam Pass had to be blown up in February 1943 and the demand for dynamite increased, the supply of supplies also stalled . Nevertheless, the road reached the Burmese border on February 28.

General Merrill (far left) monitors his troops on the Burmese border

In March, a Chinese unit joined the construction workers and initially only supported them with pure manual labor. When the supply of construction vehicles arrived, the unit developed into one of the best-equipped construction crews on the road.

The Japanese initially reacted to the road construction by building up a second army that tried to advance north into the impassable terrain. But due to the bad monsoon weather, Allied air attacks and supply problems, they withdrew again south. Thereupon Stilwell was able to order the 38th division of the Chinese into the Hukawng valley in order to secure the road construction to the south.

Due to the strong monsoon up to May 1943, the road could only be built about 6 km further. In addition, due to the lack of spare parts, two thirds of all construction vehicles and almost half of the trucks required were no longer operational. Only when more experienced construction units were assigned to build the road and the replenishment situation could be defused with the construction of an airfield in India, the work continued more quickly. The reorganization of stocks and warehousing was pushed ahead and after the end of the rainy season a 24-hour shift work was reintroduced, which had been neglected until then. Colonel Lewis A. Pick , who had joined the work in October 1943, began laying the necessary drainage and was commissioned by Stilwell to build a military road to Shingbwiyang by the end of the year. On December 27th, Ledo Street reached Shingbwiyang. In the Hukawng Valley, the Chinese 38th Division encountered strong Japanese resistance from their 18th Division at the beginning of 1944, and it took until the first week of February to push the Japanese back south of the Tanai River. Only then could work on the road be resumed at the usual speed. The new deliveries of larger shovels for the clearing vehicles and other organizational measures also contributed to this.

Meanwhile, Stilwell was preparing his troops to attack the main Japanese base in Myitkyina. The newly arrived unit, the 5307th Provisional Composite Unit , named by war correspondents as Merrill's Marauders after their newly appointed commanding officer, Frank D. Merrill, operated from Walawbum to to keep the southern Hukawng Valley free from Japanese. They were supported by two additional Chinese divisions and a smaller armored unit. On March 9, they were able to drive the Japanese 18th Division from Walawbum. The Japanese withdrew to the Mogaung Valley . The southern Hukawng Valley was now ready for the road to continue, and Stilwell ordered as many kilometers as possible to be completed before the onset of the monsoon season. For this purpose, large and small rivers in the valley had to be spanned with bridges. Among other things, the technology of the Bailey Bridge, newly developed by the British, was used for this purpose. The construction of girder bridges and H-20 bridges was also considered, with Colonel Pick opting for the latter.

After heavy fighting for Myitkyina, in which the fronts were shifted several times, the city finally fell to the Allies on August 3rd. In mid-October construction began on a bridge over the Mogaung River and in November 1944 the Ledo Street near Mongyu was connected to the Burma Street. As a result, the old Burma Road in the direction of the Chinese border was paved and expanded in the same way as the Ledo Road. On December 6th, a 366 m long pontoon bridge over the Irrawaddy River was completed. The entire connection to Yunnan was then released on January 27th after construction work on a bridge over the Shweli River at Wanting had been completed.

Trucks on Ledo Street

The first convoy started from Ledo on January 12, 1945 and reached Myitkyina on January 15. There the convoy was stopped until January 23 for security reasons related to the tactical situation. The 113 vehicles reached Wanting on January 28, where the convoy was received by the Chinese Foreign Minister. The vehicles arrived in Kunming on February 4, 1945. The road was built in three years by 15,000 American soldiers, most of them African-Americans , supported by around 35,000 local workers. Construction costs are estimated at $ 150 million. 1,100 Americans were killed while building roads. The death toll among local workers is unknown but will not be less than approximately 4,000.

credentials

  1. ↑ Map from The Ledo Road by Leslie Anders, University of Oklahoma Press under: [1]
  2. ↑ James W. Dunn, The Ledo Road , US Army Corps of Engineers - Engineer Pamphlets, Publication Number: EP 870-1-42, Builders and Fighters: US Army Engineers in World War II, December 18, 1992 - page 327 ( Memento of the original of July 24, 2009 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / 140.194.76.129
  3. ↑ Stillwell's Misson to China Part I, The United States and China Become Allies (page 47) under: [2]
  4. ↑ James W. Dunn, The Ledo Road , US Army Corps of Engineers - Engineer Pamphlets, Publication Number: EP 870-1-42, Builders and Fighters: US Army Engineers in World War II, December 18, 1992 - page 330 ( Memento of the original of July 24, 2009 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / 140.194.76.129
  5. ↑ James W. Dunn, The Ledo Road , US Army Corps of Engineers - Engineer Pamphlets, Publication Number: EP 870-1-42, Builders and Fighters: US Army Engineers in World War II, December 18, 1992 - page 335 ( Memento of the original of July 24, 2009 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / 140.194.76.129
  6. ↑ James W. Dunn, The Ledo Road , US Army Corps of Engineers - Engineer Pamphlets, Publication Number: EP 870-1-42, Builders and Fighters: US Army Engineers in World War II, December 18, 1992 - page 344 ( Memento of the original of July 24, 2009 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / 140.194.76.129

literature

  • Leslie Anders, The Ledo Road: General Joseph W. Stilwell's Highway to China , University of Oklahoma Press, 1965, ISBN 978-0-8061-0646-5

Web links