Building Airstrips in China: "Great Floor" 1944 War Department WF-36; World War II Operation Matterhorn

more at http://quickfound.net/

'Great Floor by the Army Air Forces Combat Film Unit: shows the creation of a landing strip in China through the labor of 70,000 Chinese villagers using pre-industrial technologies under the direction of a small crew of American Army engineers.'

Originally a public domain film from the US War Department, slightly cropped to remove uneven edges, with the aspect ratio corrected, and one-pass brightness-contrast-color correction & mild video noise reduction applied.

The soundtrack was also processed with volume normalization, noise reduction, clipping reduction, and/or equalization (the resulting sound, though not perfect, is far less noisy than the original).

https://www.chinadaily.com.cn/world/2015victoryanniv/2015-08/26/content_21707038.htm

https://www.chinadaily.com.cn/world/2015victoryanniv/2015-08/26/content_21709225.htm

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Matterhorn

Wikipedia license: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

Operation Matterhorn was a military operation of the United States Army Air Forces in World War II for the strategic bombing of Japanese forces by B-29 Superfortresses based in India and China. Targets included Japan itself, and Japanese bases in China and South East Asia. The name comes from the Matterhorn, a mountain traditionally considered particularly difficult to climb...

Operation Matterhorn was developed by Brig. Gen. Kenneth B. Wolfe in October 1943 for implementation by the XX Bomber Command. Wolfe drew from an initial plan termed "Setting Sun" based on an outline drawn by President Franklin D. Roosevelt at the Casablanca Conference and from a counter-plan offered by Gen. Joseph Stilwell called "Twilight". (The primary difference between the two was that Chennault proposed that the B-29s be permanently based in India and forward-based in China.) The forward airbases in China would be self-sustaining, supplied out of India by flying materiel over the Hump using B-29s, a fleet of C-109 fuel tankers, 20 C-87 transports, and three C-46 bomber support squadrons. Under Setting Sun, the forward bases were to be in Guangxi in southern China, but because of intense Japanese pressure against the forces commanded by Stilwell and Gen. Claire Chennault, the Matterhorn plan moved the bases farther inland to Chengdu...

Advance Army Air Forces echelons arrived in India in December 1943 to organize the building of airfields in India and China. Thousands of Indians labored to construct four permanent bases in eastern India around Kharagpur. As well as construction or modification of airfields in Bengal, a fuel pipeline to Calcutta and expansion of the port there was proposed. Meanwhile, 1,000 miles (1,600 km) to the northeast, across the Himalayan mountains, about 350,000 Chinese workers toiled to build four staging bases in western China near Chengtu (where Chennault had already developed airfields) and new airfields near Kunming.

The original plan envisioned two combat wings of 150 bombers each, but in April 1944 the second of those wings had not been sufficiently organized, equipped, or trained, and XX Bomber Command was reduced to a single bomb wing, fatally crippling its ability to sustain itself by airlift. By April 1944, the four B-29 groups of the 58th Bombardment Wing were available in Asia, and eight operating bases had become operational...