Ledo Road
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The Ledo Road was built during World War II so that the Western Allies could continue to supply the Chinese after the Japanese cut the Burma Road. It was renamed the Stilwell Road in early 1945 at the suggestion of Chiang Kai-shek. After Rangoon was captured by the Japanese and before the Ledo Road was finished, the majority of supplies to the Chinese were delivered via an airlift over The Hump.
In the nineteenth century British railway builders had surveyed the Pangsau Pass, which is 3,727 feet (1,136 meters) high on the India-Burma border, on the Patkai crest, above Nampong, Arunachal Pradesh (then part of Assam). They concluded that a track could be pushed through to Burma and down the Hukawng Valley. Although the proposal was dropped, the British prospected the Patkai Range for a road from Assam into north Burma and British engineers had surveyed the route for a road for the first eighty miles. After the British had been pushed back out of most of Burma by the Japanese this became a much more important priority.
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Building the Ledo Road
On the December 1 1942, British General Sir Archibald Wavell, the supreme commander of the Far Eastern Theatre, agreed with American General Stilwell to make the Ledo Road an American NCAC operation. It was built under the direction of General Stilwell from the railhead at Ledo (Assam, India) to Bhamo on the Burma Road so that supplies could reach the railhead at Mogaung. It was built by 15,000 American soldiers, (60% of whom were African-Americans), and 35,000 local workers at a cost of US$150 Million. 1,100 Americans died during the construction and many more locals. As most of Burma was in Japanese hands it was not possible to acquire information as to the topography, soils, and river behaviour before construction started. This information had to be acquired as the road was constructed.
General Stilwell had organized a 'Service of Supply' (SOS) under the command of Major General Raymond A. Wheeler, a high profile US Army Engineer and assigned him to look after the construction of the Ledo Road. Major General Wheeler in turn, assigned responsibility of base commander for the road construction to Colonel John C. Arrowsmith. Later, he was replaced by Colonel Lewis A. Pick, an expert US Army engineer.
Work started on the first 103 mile (166 km) section of the road in December 1942, followed a steep, narrow trail through territory from Ledo, across the Patkai Range through the Pangsau Pass, nicknamed "Hell Pass" for its difficulty, and down to Shingbwiyang, Burma. Sometimes rising as high as 4,500 feet (1400 m), the road required the removal of earth at the rate of 100,000 cubic feet per mile (1800 m³/km). Steep gradients, hairpin curves and sheer drops of 200 feet (60 m), all surrounded by a thick rain forest was the norm for this first section. The first bulldozer reached Shingbwiyang on 27 December 1943, three days ahead of schedule.
The building of this section allowed much needed supplies to flow to the troops engaged in attacking the Japanese 18th Division, which was defending the Northern area of Burma with their strongest forces around the towns of Kamaing, Mogaung and Myitkyina. Before the Ledo road reached Shingbwiyang Allied troops, (the majority of whom were American-trained Chinese Divisions of the X Force), had been totally dependent on supplies flown in over the Patkai Range. As the Japanese were forced to retreat south so the Ledo road was extended. This was made considerably easier from Shingbwiyang by the presence of a fair weather road built by the Japanese, and the Ledo road generally followed the Japanese trace. As the road was built, two 10 cm (4 inch) fuel pipe lines were laid side by side so that fuel could be piped instead of trucked along the road.
After the initial section to Shingbwiyang, more sections followed: Warazup, Myitkyina and Bhamo, 372 miles (600 km) from Ledo. At that point the road joined a spur of the old Burma road and although improvements to further sections followed the road was passable. The spur passed through Namkham 439 miles (558 km) from Ledo and finally at the Mong-Yu road junction, 465 miles (748 km) from Ledo, the Ledo road met the Burma road. To get to the Mong-Yu junction the Ledo road had spanned 10 major rivers and 155 secondary streams, averaging one bridge every 2.8 miles (4.5 km). For the first convoys, if they turned right, they were on their way to Lashio 100 miles (160 km) to the south through Japanese-occupied Burma, if they turned left Wanting lay 60 miles (100 km) to the North just over the China-Burma boarder.
In late 1944, barely two years after Stilwell accepted responsibility for building the Ledo Road, it connected to the Burma Road though some sections of the road beyond Myitkyina at Hukawng Valley were under repair due to heavy monsoon water, and it become a highway stretching from Assam, India to Kunming, China 1,079 miles (1736 km) length. On January 12 1945, the first convoy of 113 vehicles led by General Pick from Ledo reached Kunming, China on February 4 1945. Over the next seven months 35,000 tons of supplies in 5,000 vehicles were carried along it.
There was a mile sign at the start of the Ledo Road with the following information
| Ledo Assam | 0 | ||||||||||||||||||||
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| Kunming | 1079 |
When flying over the Hukawng Valley during the monsoon, Mountbatten asked his staff what was the name of the river below them. An American officer replied, "That's not a river, it's the Ledo Road."
After India and Burma became free the road fell into gradual disrepair. The last recorded vehicular journey from Ledo to Myitkyina and beyond (but not to China) was the Oxford-Cambridge Overland Expedition which in 1955 drove from London to Singapore and back. The expedition book written by Tim Slessor reported that bridges were down in the section between Pangsau Pass and Shingbwiyang. At present the Nampong-Pangsau Pass section is passable in 4WD vehicles. The road on the Burmese side is reportedly fit for vehicular traffic. Donovan Webster reached Shingbwiyang on wheels in 2001, and in mid-2005 veterans of the Burma Star Association were invited to join a 'down memory lane' trip to Shingbwiyang organised by a travel agent, so the 'immense difficulties' reportedly faced by Mike Jenkins (cf Jenkins' article in OUTSIDE magazine cited below in external links) in getting there seems largely of his own making.
American Army units assigned to the Ledo Road
The units initially assigned to the initial section were:
- 45th Engineer General Service Regiment (An African-American Unit)
- 823rd Aviation Engineer Battalion (EAB) (An African-American Unit)
In 1943 they were joined by:
- 848th EAB (An African-American Unit)
- 849th EAB (An African-American Unit)
- 858th EAB (An African-American Unit)
- 1883rd EAB (An African-American Unit)
Work continued through 1944 in late December it was opened for the transport of logistics. In January 1945, four of the black EABs (along with three white battalions) continued working on the now renamed Stilwell Road, improving and widening it.
The British strategic view
Winston Churchill called the project "an immense, laborious task, unlikely to be finished until the need for it has passed".
The British General William Slim who commanded the British Fourteenth Army to whom the American General Joseph Stilwell reported during the campaign to liberate North Burma, during which the first and most difficult section of the Ledo road was built, expressed the British view on the building of Ledo Road in the definitive book on the Burma Campaign called 'Defeat into Victory, He writes at the start of CHAPTER XII: THE NORTHERN FRONT
- The Northern was the most isolated of the Burma fronts. To reach it by rail - there was no road - you left Dimapur and continued your seemingly interminable journey through the tea-garden area of Assam. As you crept northward, it was impossible to avoid a growing feeling of loneliness, which even the sight of the increasingly busy airfields of the Hump route, strung along the line, failed to dissipate. At last Tinsukia, the junction for the Assam oilfields, was reached and your train turned wearily into the branch for Ledo. Ledo, in December 1943, seemed rather like the end of the world. Instead, it was the start of the road to China, the road that, if it were ever built, would replace the one from Rangoon, so effectively closed in early 1942.
- Many people at this time, Americans no less than British, doubted if the Ledo road could be built. They doubted if the Chinese divisions would ever be able to drive back the Japanese and clear the route. They doubted if the Ledo railway would carry and maintain the troops, labour, equipment, and material required. They doubted if any road builders could overcome the monsoon climate combined with the extreme difficulty of the terrain. Many, even of those who believed it possible, did not think that the Ledo road would ever repay the expenditure in men and resources that would have to be devoted to it. Indeed, at this time, Stilwell was almost alone in his faith that, not only could the road be built, but that it would be the most potent winning factor in the war against Japan. His vision, as he expounded it to me, was of an American, trained and equipped, Chinese force, of some thirty divisions to begin with, maintained, except for what was available in China, by the road from Ledo. This new model army, under his command, would drive through China to the sea and then with the American Navy strike at Japan itself.
- I agreed with Stilwell that the road could be built. I believed that, properly equipped and efficiently led, Chinese troops could defeat Japanese if, as would be the case with his Ledo force, they had a considerable numerical superiority. On the engineering side I had no doubts. We had built roads over country as difficult, with much less technical equipment than the Americans would have. My British engineers, who had surveyed the trace for the road for the first eighty miles [130 km], were quite confident about that. We were already, on the Central front, maintaining great labour forces over equally gimcrack lines of communication. Thus far Stilwell and I were in complete agreement, but I did not hold two articles of his faith. I doubted the overwhelming war-winning value of this road, and, in any case, I believed it was starting from the wrong place. The American amphibious strategy in the Pacific, of hopping from island to island would, I was sure, bring much quicker results than an overland advance across Asia with a Chinese army yet to be formed. In any case, if the road was to be really effective, its feeder railway should start from Rangoon, not Calcutta. If it had been left to me, on military grounds, I would have used the immense resources required for this road, not to build a new highway to China, but to bring forward the largest possible combat forces to destroy the Japanese army in Burma. Once that was accomplished, the old route to China would be open; over it would flow a much greater tonnage than could ever come via Ledo, and the Allied forces in Burma would be available for use elsewhere.
See also
- Northeast Indian Railways during World War II. The Allies had problems supplying the depots at Ledo with all the logistics needed by the Northern Front and the Chinese National Army.
- South-East Asian Theatre of World War II
- South East Asia Command
- Changlang
References
- A 51 minute documentary called Stilwell Road (1945), narrated by Ronald Reagan, describes why and how the Ledo Road was built.
- "The Burma Road: The Epic Story of the China-Burma-India Theater in World War" by Donovan Webster; Farrar, Straus and Giroux (US), Hardback (2003), ISBN 0374117403
- "The Burma Road, The Epic Story of One of World War II's Most Remarkable Endeavours" by Donovan Webster; Pan (UK), Paperback (2005), ISBN 0330427032
- "Burma: The Longest War 1941-1945" by Lewis Allen
- "First Overland" by Tim Slessor