Ankang China 1945 This is some of the 396th at Ankang,China ROW Davis,Clasby,Rush,Anderson,Lt.Chavez,Manuel,Villareal ROW Orona,Hoffman,Speer,Clemens,Weidenbener,Hawkins ROW Gerdsen,Knecht,Jones,Bowen,Galpen,Szapella,Prock,Mehlenbacher

Tech Supply People These are some of the guys we went crying to to get some of the hard to get supplies; These were the" Radar Riley's" of the 396th. Front Embry Back Hoffman,Warant Officer Nelson,C.Y.Green These guys and all the others in Tech Supply made our jobs a whole lot easier.

A Great Officer And Human Being The officer in the center is Lt.Sohl engineering officer of the 396th. The officer on the right is Capt. Weisburg a medical officer with the 396th.Unfortuneatly Lt.Sohl did not make it back to the states. He had his orders to return stateside and was awaiting transportation home when he was bitten by a rat and became very ill. Three days later he passed away. He was a fine officer respected by all that came in contact with him.

A Replacement For The Steamroller Yang Tong Airbase In 1944 All the runways in China were made of crushed stone. They started the base with the larger stone and each layer that was added was of a smaller stone. The final layer of the runway surface was was made of finely crushed stone that was rolled and rerolled by Chinese coolies pulling a huge stone roller as shown in this picture. One of the big problems with our runways was the larger stone kept working their way to the surface and the runways had to be constantly policed to remove these sharp stones to eliminate tires from blowing out on landings and take-offs

G.I. Enginuity This rig was dreamed up and built by Sgt.Miller and Sgt.Blumer. The 396th needed something that could handle all the heavy objects that had to be moved in the process of salvaging and repairing the aircraft we worked on. They built this rig on a 6x6 chasis and there wasn't much that it couldn't handle. They received a lot of praise for the job they did

Heading For Our new Home After FlyingThe Hump Into Kunming We Moved By Truck Convoy To Our New Home In Kwelin. This Is A Photo Of The Convoy Stopped For A Break Along The Way. For The Final Leg Of This Trip We Loaded Everything On Flat Cars And Finished The Trip To Kwelin By Rail.

A PART OF THE ROAD KUNMING TO KWELIN This is a photo of part of the treacherous road that connected Kunming and Kwelin. The turns were so sharp that the 6x6 trucks had to pull up then back-up to make the turns

This is an 1944 airial veiw of our first home in China. At the top of the photo edged in black is the city of Kwelin. In the lower left in yellow is our base at YangTong Airfield. On the far right in yellow is an emergency landing strip Li Chia Chen and to the left of it is the air base at Ertong. These bases and the city of Kwelin were eventually lost to the Japanese as they started their offensive movement to Souh China. My thanks to Robert Stumpf for this photo.

Our First Home In China This is a picture of our engineering area at Kwelin,China. This was our first stop after leaving Kunming in January 1944. We had crews on detached service on bases at Hengyang,Chickiang,Chanyi,Ankang,Luichow,Nanning and Tanchuck.We were proud of the work performed at Kwelin. We built eight P-40's from the scrap-yard and turned them over to the line outfits to be returned to action.

Another View Of Our First Home This is another picture of our engineering area at Kwelin,China. This view is looking toward the hostel and runway areas.This is the area where we rebuilt eight P-40's from salvaged parts.

A Salvage Operation Here is a picture of Sgt,Miller and Sgt.Blumer's salvage vehicle at work picking up a P-51 that had to make a gear-up landing.

More Salvage Work Gasoline was a precious commodity in China. All the gas we received had to be flown over the Hump from India into China. This picture shows some members of the 396th pumping gasoline out of the wing tanks of a crashed B-25. With the supply situation of everything having to flown over the Hump nothing was wasted and all serviceable parts were salvaged.