Word: transport
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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Lesson in Defeat. In the early days of the war the Air Ferrying Command grew spasmodically, constantly hamstrung by the demand for combat planes-and the general confusion. What air transport there was in battle zones was done largely by combat pilots in war craft, which were loaded to the last limit of safety. Not until July 1942, when the Air Ferrying Command became Air Transport Command, was there an organized effort to fly cargo regularly over established routes...
Most of the early planes carried only their crews and their own spare parts. Soon they were carrying U.S. mail pouches. Then an occasional military passenger hooked a ride. From these casual beginnings came the Army's international air transport. It was not until after Pearl Harbor that men and supplies were regularly carried by air. It was done then because it had to be done...
Pearl Harbor found the U.S. Army with no real air transport beyond its long-starved domestic system (for inter-airdrome deliveries of engines, propellers and other freight). In January 1942, President Roosevelt ordered two squadrons of the 7th Heavy Bombardment Group to Mac-Arthur's relief, via the South Atlantic, Africa and India. To a friend one of the pilots of a 7th Group Liberator wrote: "The total weight of my plane was over 60,000 Ib. [standard maximum, 56,000]. I believe that was the first time an air unit ever moved with all its equipment...
...Transport's Planes. Air Transport Command is still sadly short of the planes it needs. Beyond the old reliable DC-3, it must largely rely on Liberator bombers, converted to cargo craft and thus long on power and short on freight space. But planes are on the way. Douglas, besides turning out the veteran DC-35, is also producing the C-54, a four-engined mon ster with a payload of ten tons. Curtiss is turning out the powerful two-engined Commando ("Dumbo" to airmen) which made the mass flight to India...
Thereby a man named Lowell Yerex, a New Zealander who looms large in Central American air transport, realized a long-standing ambition. Two of his companies got CAB temporary operating certificates: British West Indian Airways, which he turned into a ferry for U.S. Army engineers and materials between Miami and Trinidad, and his principal enterprise, TACA, S.A., which covers six of the countries between Mexico and Panama. BWIA was authorized to fly passengers, mail and cargo between Miami and Port-of-Spain, TACA to fly between Miami and San José, Costa Rica...