No. 3 
			AMERICAN AIRLINES, INC 

expected to camp out in a war area for 90 days. Most of this was ac- 

complished in time to allow proceeding to Natal with an arrival there 

of 4:00 A.M. on July 24th. Before noon on this day, Captain Hughen and 

I had opened our "secret" orders - held a meeting of all Natal personnel@ 

and had settled on who should go and who should stay. By night the 

first plane was enroute to India from Natal. while at many other points, 

planes and crews were being rapidly equipped to follow. 

	After departure from Natal, the command of the project was placed 

in Captain Hughen's hands, and the experience and difficulties encountered 

after reaching Tezpur brought out the fact that in Hughen we had the 

must capable leader that could have been found. 

	Upon arrival at the India base.(Tezpur), August 1, Hughen found 

that he was ahead of the Army's expectation and that no attempt had been 

made to clean out their quarter or provide messing facilities. 

	A tired rain-soaked and half sick crew examined their future quarters 

and found them occupied by goats and cattle with the accompanying filth 

of such an occupation. 

	In spite of all this,our first plane operated over the "hump" 

on August 2nd. and as arriving equipment "checked in", it too went to 

work just as promptly. With equal speed the quarters were made liveable 

and a mess was put in operation. 

	The camp was a mud hole on account of the drenching monsoons and 

the airport was little better. Operations were conducted under the 

most trying conditions - but they were conducted. 

	Captain Hughen formed an organization for self help among his own 

personnel - Navigator Witte became Mess Officer, Captain Wynne was 

PX Officer, 1st Officer Rombough was Laundry Officer, Captain Ryan was 

Officer in charge of quarters, Captains Brown and Hunt were recreation 

Officers and 1st Officer * was offical Stenographer. With all 

others joining in any work necessary, such as truck driving, building 

furniture, digging drainage in an attempt to drain barracks area. 

cleaning up, and even doing latreen duty - All done while the majority were 

suffering from dysentry and at the same time trying to learn the 

routine of flying the "hump" under conditions that did not allow flyers 

to even see the terrain and necessitated instrument operation on a dead 

reckoning basis. 

	The first few weeks of work done by maintanance, flight crews and 

station personnel, may well be set down as the outstanding effort on the 

part of any group of American Airlines employees. 

	Added to the trials of this period was sorrow over the loss of 

Captain Charlton and his crew, which could very easily have had a 

lasting detrimental effect on the whole result of Project 7-A. 

@ At this meeting all personnel were informed of the nature of the project, 

risk of posible 10% casualties. All were informed that they need not accept 

assignment on Project 7-A. I was not aware of any who declined. 

* M. Smith                               This footnote by Tom Barnard

 No. 4 ( next )