The purpose of these transport flights was to supply China by air, and by doing so insure a close alliance between the U.S. and a Nationalist China run by Chiang Kai-shek. Given how that plan turned out, it is unsurprising that the remarkable service of these pilots, and the extraordinary theatre of war in which they operated, is little studied or known today. What pilots dubbed the Aluminum Trail of aircraft wreckage, however, remains strewn across the mountains and jungles of their old route.journey-inline-newsletterinline-newsletter