Ledo Road

thumb|Burma Road and Ledo Road in 1944

thumb|Allied [[Line of communication|lines of communication in Southeast Asia (1942–43). The Ledo Road is shown at far right.]]

[[File:Stilwell.jpeg|thumb|There was a sign at the start of the Ledo Road listing the distance in miles (pictured American GIs at the sign circa 1945):

{| border="6" align="center"

| align="center" |Ledo Assam ||align="center" | 0

{| border="1" align="center"

| Shingbwiyang || 103

|Warazup || 189

|Myitkyina || 268

|Bhamo || 372

|Wanting || 507

{| border="1" align="center"

| Lungling ||560

|Paoshan ||652

|Yungping || 755

| ||876

|Tsuyung || 959

| align="center" | Kunming || align="center" | 1079

|}]]

thumb|Life-Line To China Re-Opened

thumb|164x164px|Ledo Road SSI

thumb|A [[United States Army|U.S. Army soldier and a Chinese soldier place the flag of their ally on the front of their jeep just before the first truck convoy in almost three years crossed the China border en route from Ledo, India, to Kunming, China, over the Stilwell road in 1945]]

thumb|"U.S.-built Army trucks wind along the side of the mountain over the Ledo supply road now open from India into Burma..."

The Ledo Road () was an overland connection between British India and China, built during World War II to enable the Western Allies to deliver supplies to China and aid the war effort against Japan. After the Japanese cut off the Burma Road in 1942 an alternative was required, hence the construction of the Ledo Road. It was renamed the Stilwell Road, after General Joseph Stilwell of the U.S. Army, in early 1945 at the suggestion of Chiang Kai-shek. It passes through the Burmese towns of Shingbwiyang, Myitkyina and Bhamo in Kachin state. Of the long road, are in Burma and in China with the remaining in India. The road had the Ledo-Pangsau Pass-Tanai (Danai)-Myitkyina--Bhamo-Mansi-Namhkam-Kunming route.

To transport supplies from the railheads to army fronts, three all-weather roads were constructed in record time during the autumn of 1943: the Ledo Road in the north, spanning three countries and connecting to the Burma Road to supply China; the Central Front road within India, from Dimapur to Imphal, which was critical to the campaign; and the southern road from Dohazari, south of Chittagong in British India, supporting the advance of troops to Arakan in Myanmar.

In the 19th century, British railway builders had surveyed the Pangsau Pass, which is high on the India-Burma border, on the Patkai crest, above Nampong, Arunachal Pradesh and Ledo, Tinsukia (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 northern Burma. British engineers had surveyed the route for a road for the first . After the British had been pushed back out of most of Burma by the Japanese, building this road became a priority for the United States. After Rangoon was captured by the Japanese and before the Ledo Road was finished, the majority of supplies to the Chinese had to be delivered via airlift over the eastern end of the Himalayan Mountains known as the Hump.

After the war, the road fell into disuse. In 2010, the BBC reported "much of the road has been swallowed up by jungle." to Mong-Yu road junction where it joined the Burma Road. From there trucks could continue on to Wanting on the Chinese frontier, so that supplies could be delivered to the reception point in Kunming, China. Stilwell's staff estimated that the Ledo Road route would supply 65,000 tons of supplies per month, greatly surpassing tonnage then being airlifted over the Hump to China. General Claire Lee Chennault, the USAAF Fourteenth Air Force commander, thought the projected tonnage levels were overly optimistic and doubted that such an extended network of trails through difficult jungle could ever match the amount of supplies that could be delivered with modern cargo transport aircraft.

The road was built by 15,000 American soldiers (60 percent of whom were African-Americans) and 35,000 local workers at an estimated cost of US$150 million (or $2 billion 2017). The costs also included the loss of over 1,100 Americans lives, as many died during the construction, as well as the loss of many locals' lives. The human cost of the 1,079 mile road was therefore described as "A Man A Mile". 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 section of the road in December 1942. The road followed a steep, narrow trail 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 , the road required the removal of earth at the rate of . Steep gradients, hairpin curves and sheer drops of , 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, 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 fuel pipe lines were laid side-by-side so that fuel for the supply vehicles could be piped instead of trucked along the road.

After the initial section to Shingbwiyang, more sections followed: Warazup, Myitkyina, and Bhamo, 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 from Ledo and finally at the Mong-Yu road junction, from Ledo, the Ledo Road met the Burma Road. To get to the Mong-Yu junction the Ledo Road had to span 10 major rivers and 155 secondary streams, averaging one bridge every .

For the first convoys, if they turned right, they were on their way to Lashio to the south through Japanese-occupied Burma. If they turned left, Wanting lay to the north just over the China-Burma border. However, by late 1944, the road still did not reach China; by this time, tonnage airlifted over the Hump to China had significantly expanded with the arrival of more modern transport aircraft.

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 rains. It became a highway stretching from Assam, India to Kunming, China length. On 12 January 1945, the first convoy of 113 vehicles, led by General Pick, departed from Ledo; they reached Kunming, China on 4 February 1945. In the six months following its opening, trucks carried 129,000 tons of supplies from India to China. Twenty-six thousand trucks that carried the cargo (one way) were handed over to the Chinese. However, the road complemented the airlifts. The capture of the Myitkyina airstrip enabled the Air Transport Command "to fly a more southerly route without fear of Japanese fighters, thus shortening and flattening the Hump trip with astonishing results." In July 1943 the air tonnage was 5,500 rising to 8,000 in September and 13,000 in November. After the capture of Myitkyina deliveries jumped from 18,000 tons in June 1944 to 39,000 in November 1944.

thumb|Image of Stilwell Road displayed in Coal Heritage Park & Museum, [[Margherita, Assam.]]

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)
236th Combat Engineer Battalion
1875th Combat Engineer Battalion

From the middle of April until the middle of May 1944 Company A of the 879th Airborne Engineer Battalion worked 24 hours a day on the Ledo Road, construction of their base camp and Shingbwiyang airfield, before deploying to Myitkyina to improve the facilities of an old British airfield recently recaptured from the Japanese.

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. Indeed, one of these African American units was assigned the task of improving the road that extended into China.

Since the beginning of the 21st century, the Burmese government focused on the reconstruction of the Ledo Road as an alternative to the existing Lashio-Kunming Burma Road. The Chinese government completed construction of the Myitkyina-Kambaiti section in 2007. Rangoon-based Yuzana Company constructed the section between Myitkyina and Tanai (Danai) which was already operational in 2011 as the company owns thousands of acres of land there for its multiple crop plantation including sugarcane and cassava. India's government, however, fears that the road may be useful to militants in North East India who have hideouts in Myanmar.

In 2010 the BBC described the road as such: "Much of the road has been swallowed up by jungle. It is barely passable on foot and is considered too dangerous to use by many because of the presence of Burmese and Indian ethnic insurgents in the area....At present the road from Myitkyina to the Chinese border – along with the brief Indian section – is usable." A post went viral in Philippines in 2019 which showed the current picture of 24-zigzag hairpin turns of Stilwell road on a mountain slope in Qinglong County in Guizhou province of China. It turned out to be a photo taken by Findlay Kember on his earlier trip.

In 2015, it was not possible to cross the border on the Ledo Road due to visa restrictions. In 2015, the section from Namyun to Pangsau Pass in Burma was a "heavily rutted muddy track" through the jungle according to a BBC correspondent.

thumb|300px|A display board at Stilwell Park in [[Lekhapani near Ledo marks the starting point of the Ledo Road.|left]]

thumb|300px|Zero Point at Ledo Road|center

thumb|300px|Memorial at Ledo|left

thumb|Stillwell Park in a state of disrepair, November 2022.|296x296px|center

Notes

References

Baruah, Sri Surendra. The Stilwell Road a historical review on the website of Tinsukia District in India.
Hindah, Radhe. (NIC Changlang District Unit), A profile of Changlang District: Stilwell Road, the website of the Changlang District in India. (a mirror) A History of the road and the proposed reopening as International Highway.
Moser, Don (1978). China, Burma, India Time-Life Books
Chapter XII: The Northern Front
Staff. US Mil In China-Burma-India on the website of the National Museum of the United States Air Force
Weidenburner, Carl Warren. Ledo Road Signs
Xu, Guangqiu. War Wings: The United States and Chinese Military Aviation, 1929-1949, Greenwood Publishing Group (2001), ,

External links

Legacy Of The Stilwell Road A Road Trip on the Stilwell Road
The Ledo Road. General Joseph W. Stilwell's Highway to China.

American Army units assigned to the Ledo Road

See also

Notes

References

Further reading

External links