A I R T R A N S P O R T A N D F E R R Y I N G
Life Line to the Middle and Far East
Ferried aircraft departing from southern Florida bases for flight
over the southeastern route stopped first either a t Borinquen Field,
Puerto Rico, or a t one of the bases on the island of Trinidad. Piarco
Field on Trinidad, a Pan American base, was used for some months
after Pearl Harbor or until Waller Field, a purely military installa-
tion, was opened for traffic in February 1942. The Waller Field site
had been secured from the British in the destroyer-base lease agree-
ment, as was the site for Atkinson Field in British Guiana, the next
major staging base to the south. From Waller Field or Atkinson Field
aircraft were usually ferried to the base at Belem in northern Brazil
and thence to Natal on the Brazilian bulge, although some use was
made of alternate landing fields along the way. The two bases a t
Belem and Natal, built with airport development program funds by
the Pan American organization, were opened for traffic shortly after
Pearl Harbor. Prior to the opening of the base on Ascension Island
in July 1942, nearly all two-engine aircraft taking off from Natal for
flight over the South Atlantic landed at either Hastings Field in Sierra
Leone or Roberts Field in Liberia, each a t a distance of approximately
1,900 statute miles from Natal. Four-engine aircraft were able to fly
direct to Accra, but many stopped first at Hastings or Roberts fields
for refueling. From Accra aircraft moved in easy stages across the
central African route to Khartoum, and here the route divided. India-
bound planes were sent either across southern Arabia by way of
Aden to Karachi or up through Cairo, Habbaniya, and Basra to the
Karachi gateway. Lend-lease planes for Russia were flown through
Cairo to Basra or to Tehran, where they were turned over to Soviet
flyers. Aircraft bound for China crossed central India to Dinjan in
Assam and were flown over the Himalayas to K ~ n m i n g . ~ ~
A month or more before the United States entered the war and in
anticipation of an increasing flow of lend-lease aircraft to the Middle
East, the Ferrying Command had taken steps to place its own control
officers a t key bases on the southeastern route as far as Cairo. None
of these had reached his post prior to 7 December, but with the com-
ing of the war and the selection of the route for the ferrying of heavy
bombers to the Far East, the procurement and assignment of these
officers, as well as weather and communications officers and enlisted
specialists, was speeded up. The control officers became responsible
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