Life-Line To China Re-OpenedA U.S. Army soldier and a Chinese soldier place the flag of their ally on the front of their jeep just before the first truck convoy in almost three years crossed the China border en route from Ledo, India, to Kunming, China, over the Stilwell road in 1945"U.S.-built Army trucks wind along the side of the mountain over the Ledo supply road now open from India into Burma..."
To move supplies from the railheads to the Army fronts, three all-weather roads were constructed in record time during the autumn (fall) of 1943: Ledo Road in the north across three nations, which went on to connect to the Burma Road and supply China; the campaign-winning Central Front road within India from Dimapur to Imphal; and the southern road from Dohazari south of Chittagong in British India for the advance of troops to Arakan in Myanmar.[6]
In the 19th century, British railway builders had surveyed the Pangsau Pass, which is 1,136 metres (3,727 feet) high on the India-Burma border, on the Patkai crest, above Nampong, Arunachal Pradesh and Ledo, Tinsukia (part of Assam). They concluded that a track could be pushed through to Burma and down the Hukawng Valley. Although the proposal was dropped, the British prospected the Patkai Range for a road from Assam into northern Burma. British engineers had surveyed the route for a road for the first 130 kilometres (80 miles). After the British had been pushed back out of most of Burma by the Japanese, building this road became a priority for the United States. After Rangoon was captured by the Japanese and before the Ledo Road was finished, the majority of supplies to the Chinese had to be delivered via airlift over the eastern end of the Himalayan Mountains known as the Hump.
After the war, the road fell into disuse. In 2010, the BBC reported "much of the road has been swallowed up by jungle."[5]
