I've found some more sources, and I think I'll be able to put together series of representative scenarios to illustrate the progression of airlift missions Over the Hump from the First Day on 6 April 1942 to Big Day on 1 August 1945. The scenarios are coming into focus, as is a Command Point allocation method, along with the aircraft characteristics.
I'm beginning to think I'll not be able to obtain squadron daily logs that would allow a scenario for any given day, or the complete monster game, day by day, for all 1134 days of the Lift, but I think there is enough data at hand, not all in hand just yet, to create a series of scenarios that show how the Lift evolved over time and through a succession of increasingly successful commanders. It won't be perfect, and it won't be pretty, but it should be illustrative, representative, and perhaps even mildly interesting to aviation aficionados for a few missions Over the Hump!
I also did another Play Test introducing the C-87 at 10% of the hypothetical 140 aircraft force described earlier. After studying some of the sources I gave the C-87 an average speed over the ground of 180 mph, or three 10-mile hexes moved per 10 minute turn, and by hexes I mean cells on the spread sheet I'm still playing on rather than an actual map, yet to be designed. Also, the C-87 was the only transport over the Hump with a high enough ceiling to fly over the top rather than circuitously through passes and valleys. For purposes of the play test I didn't shorten the distance, but I did give the C-87 a four ton cargo load as compared to 2.5 tons for the C-47s.
Also, many thanks to Mako's suggestion, I learned how to do random numbers on the spread sheet and used the 1,10 factor for the Morale & Efficiency roll for aircraft availability and passing the load risk roll to move along to the take off point. Then for the plane loss rolls, I used the 1,1000 factor with 1000 indicating the plane lost. Then I did the algebra to keep the 8 losses per 1000 trips east while giving the C-87s a 500% worse chance than the C-47s! In the end I couldn't make myself go to the full 500% and selected a factor of 6 flight risk rolls for each C-47, and 26 flight risk rolls for each C-87. As it turned out, no planes were lost at all in the third test day of flying over the Hump, all flight risk rolls were less than 1000.
Unlike the availability rolls with dice, the spread sheet gave a higher percentage of planes available on the 1-5 = plane is available, 6-10 = plane is out for the day. In the first test day with dice, I only received 63 planes out of 140, on the second also with dice it was 69 (of 139 remaining), and on the third day with the spread sheet random numbers it was 73 of 124 C-47s remaining, and 9 of 14 C-87s, somewhat more than 50%. This may be a luck of the draw rather than a bias in the random number generator, but I'll keep my eye on that as I set up for day four when I introduce the C-46 with its 150 mph speed and 4.5 ton cargo load. I'll also do a day 5 to introduce the C-54 with 180 mph speed, 6 ton cargo load, but with low ceiling and only able to fly over the Low Hump. The Low Hump route was opened up only after Stilwell, Merrill's Marauders, and the Chinese forces under Stilwell were able to capture the Myitkyina airfield in May 1944, along with the combined British-Indian and American-Chinese offensive that began to push the Japanese forces out of northern and central Burma.
For the third play test, I fiddled around a little with the starting load risk sequence and I'm still fine tuning that. It seemed like too many planes were getting in the air too quickly on the third day, and I'll massage that a little more. This load risk and turnaround time is not particularly important for the test scenarios, or the early daylight only scenarios, because when flying over and back in daylight for only one round trip, the turnaround is not critical to success. When night flying and around the clock operations come into play later, the daily lift total will become more dependent on turning planes around faster, so it's good to sort through it now in the play tests and make sure it works even though it isn't critical to a successful day.
With the larger number of planes operational and the larger cargo loads of the C-87s, I lifted a total of 218.5 tons across the Hump on Day 3. All 73 C-47s made it over and back at 2.5 tons each and six risk rolls in the air, one take off roll and one landing roll at each end, plus a weather roll and an interception roll going over. All 9 of the C-87s made it over and back at 4 tons each and 26 risk rolls in the air! There were 9 take off rolls with cargo loads departing Assam, one interception roll, five weather rolls going over, five landing rolls in China, two takeoff rolls coming back empty, two weather rolls coming back, and two landing rolls back at base in India. As before the first planes took off at 0620, all were up by 0740, the first landings in China were at 1000, the first return takeoff was at 1030, the last landing in China was at 1110, the last return takeoff was at 1210, the first return landing in India was at 1400, and all planes were down safely in India by 1550. The longest delay in taking off with a cargo load was 8 turns or 80 minutes and the longest turnaround for the return trip was also 80 minutes. The "dice" seemed biased to low numbers in selecting available planes for the day, and then sort of evened out or perhaps were biased high in the load risk and turnaround rolls -- I haven't gone through the rolls one by one though to see how these went, but it seems more like 50-50 than the initial availability "rolls."
The three day tally so far is Day 1: 155 tons, Day 2: 172.5 tons, and Day 3: 218.5 tons, for 546 tons in three days which would work out to 5460 in a month, pretty close to Stilwell's estimate for 140 C-47s in good weather.
I also found a quote on the cargo carried west to go along with what I had been supposing. I haven't seen the actual data yet, but in Volume 7 of Craven and Cate on page 146 it says: "The westbound lift across the Hump was always smaller than the eastbound haul and became smaller relatively month by month. By 1945 most aircraft westbound over the Hump flew empty or with small amounts of ballast." It goes on to say: "Nevertheless, the traffic out of China had a minor contribution to the prosecution of the war. Aircraft bound from China to Assam, East Bengal, or Calcutta carried a variety of people, including injured and ailing troops on their way to hospitals in the United States. Thousands of Chinese troops were transported from China to India for combat or for training. The planes carried too, such strategic materials as tungsten ore, tine, hog bristles, mercury, silk, and even green tea (valued as an agent of good will in northern Africa). Though of considerable importance, no one of these commodities possessed sufficiently high priority to win air transportation beyond India." And as I still occasionally shave with a soap mug and hog bristle brush, which were much more common during WWII than today, rather than the spray foam from a can, I would think that at least the hog bristles would have been important enough for air transportation back to the U.S.!!
Airlift might not be the most exciting topic in WWII aviation history, but I have found the Hump operations to be a very interesting subject, and I'm having a lot of fun with this project. Now if I could just find a way to create a hex or square grid map that I could include in a PDF file of the prospective rules, I'll be all set!
Enjoy your games!
experiments to find a better way to mount aircraft for wargaming.
