Finding the Code and Dropping Freight

The Japanese had fairly recently been kicked out of where we went into and they were forcing them back over the Chin Hills and into Burma proper. So they weren't that far away. Originally we didn't have that long of flights and your log book trips would be an hour and a half or an hour and later on they were three hours that type thing and you didn't know where the front was, really, and you'd have these two letters they'd put out, A and Z, or it could be anything at all, they'd put out, they'd be white panels and for that day that would be the code. And you'd try to find this and somebody would find it and then you'd see him circling and vice versa and everybody would form a circle and you'd drop. Generally there would be six or eight on a drop at one time, on the smaller drops, and so then it would take you about, you had over 7000 pounds, generally around 7100 to 7200 pounds of freight that you used to drop. Basically it was food, they had to have all their food to operate on, ammunition, their fuel. With the fuel you tried to get a strip somewhere because obviously the fuel to drop was pretty precarious. Everything that people needed to fight a war were dropped and they were right confined a lot of the spots and so you had to sort of corkscrew in and out because you had to drop them pretty precise or reasonably so because, of course, the enemy wasn't that far away and the last thing you wanted was for them to get the goodies.

Mr. Dungey explains the process used to locate and drop freight to the soldiers in need.

George Dungey

George Dungey, the youngest of three children, was born in 1924 near Barrie, Ontario. His father, a First World War Veteran, was a laborer, machinist and semi-pro ballplayer. Before they enlisted, Mr. Dungey and his older brother operated a bakery. Following his brother, he enlisted in the Air Force when he was seventeen and a half, at Owen Sound. Mr. Dungey hoped to be bomber crew; following his Canadian training on Tiger Moths at Virden, Manitoba and Ansons at Souris, Manitoba, he received his pilot's wings. In England, he trained in Oxfords and Dakotas. It was as a Dakota pilot that Mr. Dungey was deployed to the Far East, where he joined the newly formed 435 Squadron at Impal, India. His squadron performed a number of valuable roles. It delivered supplies to British land forces in Burma, paradropped assault troops where needed, towed gliders to combat areas, and ferried the sick and wounded to safety. Mr. Dungey remained in the RCAF after the war, most notably serving in 412 Squadron, flying Canadian dignitaries to several different international destinations. After retiring from the RCAF, Mr. Dungey joined Transport Canada as a civil aviation inspector.