The Burma Road was one of the strategic routes that played an important role in the Second World War. Originally an ancient road linking Kunming in China with Mandalay in Burma, it was rebuilt under the Kuomintang during the 1930s as an alternate supply route to China, bypassing the Japanese naval blockade.
When war broke out in the Pacific, the Japanese wasted little time in invading Burma and cutting the flow of supplies at Rangoon. This left China with no open ports and no land connection to the Western Powers. There remained some routes to Russia, but supplying the Chinese was almost the last thing on the Russian’s minds. The U.S. built large airfields in Assam and used transport aircraft to fly supplies into China, but the amounts were never close to sufficient.
Considerable military effort was expended to reopen the Road. Eventually, a new connection was built between Ledo in India and Myitkyina in Burma that connected with the old Burma Road. A pipeline was also built alongside the road. The first convoy left Ledo for Kunming on 12 January 1945 .Unfortunately, by this point in the war, the road had become largely irrelevant, as American successes in the Pacific reduced the importance of the China theater.
References
The Pacific War Online Encyclopedia (c) 2007 by Kent G. Budge. Index
