Guanghan Airport

Guanghan Airport
Kwanghan Airfield
Guanghan Airport; Kwanghan Airfield; 广汉机场; Guanghan Jichang
	IATA: GHN; ICAO: ZUGH;
Summary
Airport type	Pilot training
Operator	Civil Aviation Flight University of China
Location	Guanghan, Sichuan, China
Built	1942
Coordinates	30°56′52″N104°19′47″E / 30.94778°N 104.32972°E Coordinates: 30°56′52″N104°19′47″E / 30.94778°N 104.32972°E
Map
	GHN Location of airport in Sichuan

Last updated April 05, 2019

Guanghan Airport (Chinese :广汉机场) ( IATA : GHN, ICAO : ZUGH) is an airport southeast of Guanghan, Sichuan, China. Formerly a military airfield known as Kwanghan Airfield (A-3) during World War II. It is now used by Civil Aviation Flight University of China for pilot training and has no commercial flights.

Simplified Chinese characters are standardized Chinese characters prescribed in the Table of General Standard Chinese Characters for use in mainland China. Along with traditional Chinese characters, they are one of the two standard character sets of the contemporary Chinese written language. The government of the People's Republic of China in mainland China has promoted them for use in printing since the 1950s and 1960s to encourage literacy. They are officially used in the People's Republic of China and Singapore.

An IATA airport code, also known as an IATA location identifier, IATA station code or simply a location identifier, is a three-letter code designating many airports around the world, defined by the International Air Transport Association (IATA). The characters prominently displayed on baggage tags attached at airport check-in desks are an example of a way these codes are used.

The ICAOairport code or location indicator is a four-letter code designating aerodromes around the world. These codes, as defined by the International Civil Aviation Organization and published in ICAO Document 7910: Location Indicators, are used by air traffic control and airline operations such as flight planning.

History

During World War II, the airfield was the forward staging base for the 444th Bombardment Group, which carried out B-29 Superfortress raids on the Japanese Home Islands.

World War II, also known as the Second World War, was a global war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. The vast majority of the world's countries—including all the great powers—eventually formed two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis. A state of total war emerged, directly involving more than 100 million people from over 30 countries. The major participants threw their entire economic, industrial, and scientific capabilities behind the war effort, blurring the distinction between civilian and military resources. World War II was the deadliest conflict in human history, marked by 50 to 85 million fatalities, most of whom were civilians in the Soviet Union and China. It included massacres, the genocide of the Holocaust, strategic bombing, premeditated death from starvation and disease, and the only use of nuclear weapons in war.

Japan is an island country in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies off the eastern coast of the Asian continent and stretches from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and the Philippine Sea in the south.

In 1943, The United States Army Air Force was given rights to use the airfield to stage bombing missions from India to attack Japan.^[1] It was one of four B-29 bases established by the Americans in China.

India, also known as the Republic of India, is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh largest country by area and with more than 1.3 billion people, it is the second most populous country as well as the most populous democracy in the world. Bounded by the Indian Ocean on the south, the Arabian Sea on the southwest, and the Bay of Bengal on the southeast, it shares land borders with Pakistan to the west; China, Nepal, and Bhutan to the northeast; and Bangladesh and Myanmar to the east. In the Indian Ocean, India is in the vicinity of Sri Lanka and the Maldives, while its Andaman and Nicobar Islands share a maritime border with Thailand and Indonesia.

The USAAF 444th Bombardment Group (Very Heavy) flew missions from the airfield beginning in mid-June 1944. The group had to transport its supplies of fuel, bombs, and spare parts from its base at Dudhkundi, India over "The Hump" (the name given by Allied pilots to the eastern end of the Himalayan Mountains), since Japanese control of the seas around the Chinese coast made seaborne supply of China impossible. The first mission was carried out on the night of June 14/15, 1944 against the Imperial Iron and Steel Works at Yawata on Kyushu. This plant was considered to be the most important single objective within Japan's steel industry, and had long held top priority for the first strike. It was the first time since the Doolittle raid of 1942 that American aircraft had bombed the Japanese home islands.^[1]

Dudhkundi Airfield is an abandoned airfield in India, located 12 miles (19.2 km) SE of Jhargram, in the Jhargram district district in the Indian state of West Bengal.

The Hump was the name given by Allied pilots in the Second World War to the eastern end of the Himalayan Mountains over which they flew military transport aircraft from India to China to resupply the Chinese war effort of Chiang Kai-shek and the units of the United States Army Air Forces (AAF) based in China. Creating an airlift presented the AAF a considerable challenge in 1942: it had no units trained or equipped for moving cargo, and no airfields existed in the China Burma India Theater (CBI) for basing the large number of transports that would be needed. Flying over the Himalayas was extremely dangerous and made more difficult by a lack of reliable charts, an absence of radio navigation aids, and a dearth of information about the weather.

Kyushu is the third largest island of Japan and most southwesterly of its four main islands. Its alternative ancient names include Kyūkoku(九国, "Nine Countries"), Chinzei(鎮西, "West of the Pacified Area"), and Tsukushi-no-shima(筑紫島, "Island of Tsukushi"). The historical regional name Saikaidō referred to Kyushu and its surrounding islands.

In addition to the bombers, the USAAF 81st Fighter Group used the airfield, flying P-40 Warhawk and P-47 Thunderbolt fighters as part of the Fourteenth Air Force "Flying Tigers".^[2] The 81st provided close air support for Chinese Army ground forces fighting the Japanese, as well as flying escort missions for the B-29s over the Japanese-occupied area of China. In January 1945 the B-29 bombers were moved back to India before transferring in April to the newly captured bases in the Mariana Islands. In February, the fighters were moved to a new airfield near Fungwansham.^[2] With the departure of the Americans, the much-improved airfield was then returned to Chinese authorities.^[1]

The Fourteenth Air Force is a numbered air force of the United States Air Force Space Command (AFSPC). It is headquartered at Vandenberg Air Force Base, California.

The National Revolutionary Army (NRA), sometimes shortened to Revolutionary Army (革命軍) before 1928, and as National Army (國軍) after 1928, was the military arm of the Kuomintang from 1925 until 1947 in the Republic of China. It also became the regular army of the ROC during the KMT's period of party rule beginning in 1928. It was renamed the Republic of China Armed Forces after the 1947 Constitution, which instituted civilian control of the military.

The Mariana Islands are a crescent-shaped archipelago comprising the summits of fifteen mostly dormant volcanic mountains in the western North Pacific Ocean, between the 12th and 21st parallels north and along the 145th meridian east. They lie south-southeast of Japan, west-southwest of Hawaii, north of New Guinea and east of the Philippines, demarcating the Philippine Sea's eastern limit. They are found in the northern part of the western Oceanic sub-region of Micronesia, and are politically divided into two jurisdictions of the United States: the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands and, at the southern end of the chain, the territory of Guam. The islands were named after the influential Spanish queen Mariana of Austria.

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Operation Matterhorn was a military operation of the United States Army Air Forces in World War II for the strategic bombing of Japanese forces by B-29 Superfortresses based in India and China. Targets included Japan itself, and Japanese bases in China and South East Asia. The name comes from the Matterhorn, a mountain traditionally considered particularly difficult to climb.

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References

This article incorporates public domain material from the Air Force Historical Research Agency website http://www.afhra.af.mil/ .

The Air Force Historical Research Agency is the repository for United States Air Force historical documents. The Agency's collection, begun during World War II in Washington, D.C. and moved in 1949 to Maxwell Air Force Base, the site of Air University, to provide research facilities for professional military education students, the faculty, visiting scholars, and the general public.

1 2 3 Craven, Wesley Frank; James Lea Cate. "Vol. V: The Pacific: MATTERHORN to Nagasaki, June 1944 to August 1945". The Army Air Forces in World War II. U.S. Office of Air Force History. http://www.ibiblio.org/hyperwar/AAF/V/index.html.
1 2 Maurer, Maurer (1983). Air Force Combat Units Of World War II. Maxwell AFB, Alabama: Office of Air Force History. ISBN 0-89201-092-4.

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Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
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[Craven-1] 1 2 3 Craven, Wesley Frank; James Lea Cate. "Vol. V: The Pacific: MATTERHORN to Nagasaki, June 1944 to August 1945". The Army Air Forces in World War II. U.S. Office of Air Force History. http://www.ibiblio.org/hyperwar/AAF/V/index.html.

[Mauer-2] 1 2 Maurer, Maurer (1983). Air Force Combat Units Of World War II. Maxwell AFB, Alabama: Office of Air Force History. ISBN 0-89201-092-4.

Guanghan Airport

Contents

History

See also

Related Research Articles

References

External links

Guanghan Airport Kwanghan Airfield 广汉机场 Guanghan Jichang
IATA: GHN ICAO: ZUGH
Summary
Airport type	Pilot training
Operator	Civil Aviation Flight University of China
Location	Guanghan, Sichuan, China
Built	1942
Coordinates	30°56′52″N104°19′47″E / 30.94778°N 104.32972°E / 30.94778; 104.32972 Coordinates: 30°56′52″N104°19′47″E / 30.94778°N 104.32972°E / 30.94778; 104.32972
Map
GHN Location of airport in Sichuan