Great story & thanks for posting. The story didn't mention a release from their CO. I remember meeting a couple of servicemen that served in that theater during the war. One flew transports over the "hump". The other, unfortunately got stung by one of the native insects that left him paralyzed from the waist down for the rest of his life.

Nice story. I do have to agree with Canyon though.

Would make an interesting movie.

My fraternal grandfather was sent to the CBI in 1944 after he re-enlisted into the Army. (Was dicharged from 5th Cav Regiment in 1940).

Trained recruits on tank destoyers at Forth Hood. US sent new M-18's to the Brits in India he was sent with them to train the Brits on them. Was sent to Burma attached to the British 14th Army. The M-18's never left the port in India. He served in a tank maintenance unit that traveled up the Burma Road servicing Brit tanks.

When the war was over, he told the M-18's were dumped into the ocean along with crates of brand new P-51 and other American aircraft.

He stayed in India until 1946 working as a Refrigeration repairman. He had a C-46 with crew at his service as he flew all over SE (Iran, India, Burma and Malaya) working on huge refrigeration plants.

When I was a kid, I heard stories of war material being dumped all over the world, at war's end. I suspect part of it was that it would cost more to ship home than it was worth.

A lot of the old timers thought it was to preserve the post war economy. If all the keeps and trucks came home, it would depress the auto market for a decade.

The worst story I read in a book about the Lighting fighter, was that 100s of new P-38s "had their backs broken" by bulldozers in South Korea. This was to prevent the South Koreans from attacking the North.

Oops.

Reminds me of the stories of buried military equipment in the US, particularly in Louisiana as mentioned in this article. If memory serves, part of the rationale was to prevent the flood of these materials and equipment into the US economy post-war.

https://www.theadvocate.com/baton_rouge/entertainment_life/wwii-vehicles-planes-may-be-in-containers-buried-under-kisatchie-national-forest/article_603ed69c-c979-5b13-96ac-429d6a7564a8.html

Supposedly an Army installation in East Texas buried enough arms and ammo to equip a brigade, including tanks. It was in a book I have on Texas mysteries, but I'm away from the house now

Million Dollar Point off the coast of Vanuatu in the Pacific Ocean





Kwajalein - Aircraft dump

There were several reasons for the large surplus of material in the Pacific. The expected build up of troops from Europe who never came, the discharge of troops returning to the U.S., and no combat losses yet supplies still arriving. There was a lack of warehouse space back in the U.S. as well as shipping. The government then figured out how much surplus could be sold to civilians American or foreign. Bases in remote locations had a much harder time getting rid of surplus since buyers could get what they wanted at closer bases such as in Australia or the Philippines. We also demanded payment in dollars. At Guadalcanal about 75% of the surplus was sent back to the U.S. and the remaining was either burned, buried or dumped in the sea. One thing funny I read is that at one location the quartermaster corps handled 9 times the tonnage in one month than they did previously. They really wanted to get home.

I worked with a guy, or should I say I worked for a guy, when I was a student worker at A&M that often told stories about his brother in WWII. His brother had been in either an Army Engineering outfit or maybe a Sea Bee outfit. I honestly can't remember. But at the end of the war he was somewhere in the Far East or maybe the Pacific and most of his contemporaries or coworkers really wanted to get back stateside but there was still a lot to do be done apparently. As he was single and had no kids he was offered a job supervising the contracted disposal of a bunch of stuff, but the hitch was he had to stay on until finished in order to get a final lump bonus sum or something like that.

Bill, the guy I worked with, told stories of his brother pushing planes, bulldozers, and all kinds of things off of cliffs, burying them in trenches and what not. Prolly in the 2 years I worked for him he related stuff maybe 4 or 5 times. Several folks, myself included, called BS on exaggeration and what not.

Bills brother ended up moving to an assisted living place and Bill and his wife went to his home to help sort things out. Upon returning Bill brought in a photo album filled with all kinds of pics taken abroad by his brother. My gosh, it was true about them/him destroying bulldozers and planes. We didn't know where the pics were taken, but it appeared that Bill's brother served out of the country until early 1947. And there were pics of thousands of planes, multitudes of tanks, bulldozers and other equipment buried or scrapped or pushed off cliffs into the water. It was beyond impressive. Bill said the only reason there was photos is that they had to take pics of the proof.

He said his brother was able to send several nice radios and some other hand held stuff back to his family in the states. But to my dying day I will remember seeing those pictures and it blew me away.

Where the topic of conversation came up was that we worked in the ME/CE machine shop and being the student worker I was the defacto gofer. About once a month or so I would have to go to the Riverside campus and pick up 2 gallon tin jugs of some kind of rancid animal grease that was labeled "industrial lubricant", we used it on the manual lathes and when they would heat up they would burn this stuff and it smelled terrible. Well those jugs had dates from the 40's and the 50's on them and were army surplus. And there was cases and cases of them, and this was 1987/88. At one time Bill said that Riverside campus had a ton of stuff out there of all kinds of things.

CanyonAg77 said:

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I understand what was going on, but what a waste

And small typo, those are P-38s

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Thank you.. I do know the difference.. (said while hanging my head in shame as an aircraft aficionado)

US produced 296,000 - 200,000 combat (31,000 Heavy Bombers and 99,000 fighters) and 95,000 support (58,000 trainers)

Of that 96,000 were produced in 1944. (15,000 heavy bombers, 38,000 fighters and 10,000 transports).
2,500 B-29's and another 21,000 fighters in 1945

Produced more trainers than the entire aircraft production of the Axis air forces combined.

It's mind boggling.

Which is why I assumed fat fingers rather than ignorance