There are countless secrets in World War II. I was fortunate to know a mysterious story, and it started when I discovered a buried World War II safe in Xinjiang. In October 2002, a photo exhibition called "Memory of History" was held in the United States. At that time, a large number of historical pictures and real objects were exhibited, recreating the "Excavation of the Burma Road", "Flying Tigers", "Hump Route", "Bombing of Tokyo" and other major historical events.That event was hosted by a central-level department, with the assistance of some official agencies in the United States.

My name is Huang Qianshan, and I acted as the backbone of an English translator during the event, as well as collecting and organizing important materials.Five months before the event, a friend from the United States and I collected materials in Kunming, Yunnan, and then completed the English translation of the materials.One day, a very special news came from Xinjiang, and that friend and I immediately flew to Xinjiang the next day.The reason why we are so anxious is because the wreckage of the World War II plane was found in the forests of Xinjiang, and the hump route is thousands of miles away from Xinjiang. This is a very unusual discovery.

The hump route was born in a special historical period. After the July 7th Incident in 1937, Japan cut off almost all of China's ties with the outside world, and the War of Resistance Against Japan saw no success. In 1942, Japan attacked Burma and cut off the Burma Road, which was the most important and only international strategic supply route in China's War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression.Since then, China can be said to have fallen into a desperate situation. The soldiers and horses have not moved, the food and grass go first, and international supplies are very important.The international community intends to assist China, but at that time they couldn't come in, and we couldn't get out. The export and import of strategic materials were a big problem.Now that sea and land are not feasible, the governments of China, the United States and other countries have joined forces to jointly open up the famous Hump route.

The route was so dangerous that Americans called it "God's Forsaken Land."The Hump route starts from India in the west, crosses the Himalayas in the east, and then enters places such as Yunnan and Sichuan in China.The mountains in that area are undulating like the back of a camel, hence the name "Hump Route". When I learned that a World War II US plane crashed in Xinjiang, I was very surprised, which was completely different from the historical data collected before.What is the force that was swept to Xinjiang by that plane? Is it the mysterious air current in the sky?This is absolutely impossible.You must know that Xinjiang is very far away from the hump route, and there is a vast Qinghai Province in the middle, so you can't get to Xinjiang no matter how you roll.

The American friend with me is Linda, who works for the China-US Aviation Heritage Foundation.Linda's grandfather was an old pilot who had participated in the transportation mission of the hump route.Back then, Linda's grandfather's plane crashed in Shanyang, Yunnan. He broke his leg while parachuting, but fortunately he was rescued by local farmers to survive.Linda's grandfather is still alive. She grew up listening to those stories, and she has a strong interest and yearning for China. The photo exhibition provided a lot of help. In order not to delay the commemorative activities between China and the United States, the governments of various places have provided us with great convenience.When we arrived in Xinjiang, we saw the wreckage of the plane in the spruce forest at the foot of Mount Nalati.The spruce forest is densely layered, and each tree is like a rocket preparing to soar into the sky, which is extremely magnificent.The wreckage of the plane was discovered by a forest ranger. It may have been covered with mud due to repeated snow and water impacts, and half of the wreckage had been buried in the ground.The forest ranger also said that the wreckage of the plane may have been buried on the ground before it was washed away by decades of rain, because there were several flash floods here before the founding of New China, and the wreckage may have been buried at that time .

Local crews were there waiting and helped dig the plane out of the ground as soon as we arrived.The model of the wreckage was C-54, the military transport aircraft with the best performance at that time.That kind of aircraft was produced in the United States during World War II, and there were only more than 1,000 of them at most, and very few of them could be assigned to China.Therefore, Linda and I were overwhelmed by seeing this scene, which is undoubtedly a mysterious discovery in history. Why did the plane on the hump route crash in the remote Xinjiang forest, and what happened at that time?

For the discovery of the wreckage, Linda from the China-US Aviation Heritage Foundation has the right to handle it.China has always been a country of etiquette, so Linda didn't make things difficult for her, and she even ordered me to help her.In fact, I also want to know the origin of this plane.There is no historical data to prove why it appeared in the forests of Xinjiang. Only by digging it out and studying it can the answer be revealed. That afternoon, Linda and I worked overtime to clear the wreckage despite our fatigue.Because the wreckage is too large to move right away, our counts are all done deep in the forest.The local staff enthusiastically set up tents for us and let us rest, but how could we rest at that time, our bodies and minds were all on the wreckage.

I raised my camera to take pictures of each place first, and found a cabinet-shaped object wrapped in mud in the perforated cabin, so I asked, "Linda, go and see what that is?" Linda is a master of China, and it is hard to find her in Chinese, and some Chinese people are not as authentic as she is.When Linda heard me talk, she went into the cabin and tried to drag the thing out, but it wouldn't work.I put down the camera, and Linda and I peeled the dirt off the thing, excitedly waiting for the truth to come.After a few minutes, the sludge was almost peeled off, and what was in front of our eyes was a safe from World War II.

"What's in the safe?" This is the answer that each of us desperately wants to know. Linda is also very excited, and even immediately called her grandfather who is far away in the ocean.Linda's grandfather was more surprised than us when he heard this discovery, because he had never heard of any mission to fly to Xinjiang.At that time, the hump route had India on one side and Yunnan on the other side. The materials were concentrated in India, and then flew through the hump route and shipped into China. There was no need to fly to Xinjiang.Even if you get lost, you should find something wrong halfway through the flight, and you must turn around, it is impossible to fly so far by mistake.

Each of us wants to know what is in the safe, but we are worried that it is confidential. What if we see something we should not see?I am a translator, and although I have met some big shots, I can't just cause trouble.Linda is not as hesitant as I am. She thinks that since she found it, she has the right to check it, not to mention that it is something from their country.Fortunately, the event held in the United States is approaching, and the organizer of the event is very powerful, who dares to stop it?The plane crashed decades ago, and no one has come to dig up the wreckage. I am afraid that the person who knew about it is no longer alive.

So, we made a decision - open the safe! The safe is protected by a thick layer of metal, and it was not damaged in the crash.It is not difficult to open the safe with today's technology, but it must be handled with care if it does not destroy the contents.It is a pity that it is very difficult to find someone who knows how to open a safe in Xinjiang. Even after finding several people who claimed to be the king of locks, they did not open the safe.In addition to a set of codes, the safe also needs a key, none of which we have.After a day, not only was the safe not opened, but the news got out instead.What made us even more unexpected was that an old man came to the spruce forest of Nalati Mountain at noon the next day and told us that he was one of the members of the plane at that time. Linda has been in China for a long time and has been deceived several times, so she asked me vigilantly: "Huang Qianshan, this old man is not lying, is he?" I naturally didn't believe it, so I said immediately: "Master, don't make trouble, this is not where you came from, go home and eat." A staff member knew the old man, so he stood up and said, "Uncle Liu, you can't afford to offend these two people, let's go!" Seeing that we didn't believe it, the old man reported casually: "The number of the plane is 107286, which is the number of a transport plane of the US Army Airlift Corps, and there is a safe inside, right?" It is not unusual for the forest rangers to tell about the discovery of the safe.However, when Linda and I sorted out the numbers on the wreckage of the plane, we only recorded them in the workbook. The people watching by the side didn't know what it was, and no one would memorize those numbers.I don't quite believe this old man. If he was a crew member, why didn't he return to Kunming after the crash, but lived outside the forest all the time. Linda saw that the old man was quite honest, so she put down her vigilance and said, "Uncle Liu, can you tell us the password of the safe? Have you brought the key?" The old man waved his hands away: "The cabinet cannot be opened!" "Why?" I asked suspiciously, "Could it be that you don't know the password and don't have the key!" The old man said angrily, "Young man, when your grandpa and I beat the devil, you didn't know where to eat shit. Let me tell you, there is a woman in the plane with a gun and a bullet in it! Go and see See, am I lying or not!" The old man wanted to say that there was a female corpse in the wreckage, and it had a gun on it, and there was still a bullet in the gun.Even Linda and I didn't know about it because the plane hadn't been cleaned yet.In order to determine whether the old man was playing tricks, Linda and I immediately walked into the cabin, worked hard for more than ten minutes, and actually picked up a stinking white bone from a large black soil in the cabin.We don't know if it's a woman's bones, but Linda touched the clothes on the corpse and found a gun with one bullet in it. This proves that the old man did not lie. If it was a coincidence, it would be a coincidence.This was something that Linda and I did not expect. No one expected that a pilot who survived lived outside the forest.The origin of that plane is mysterious, maybe God favored those heroes who were buried on the Hump route, so it left a living answer for the world. After the local staff understood it, they immediately asked the old man to sit down as if they were a guest of honor.According to the introduction of the local staff, the old man is Liu Anjing, who is nearly a hundred years old now, and lived with herdsmen before the founding of the People's Republic of China.As for when I started living in the herdsmen's area outside Nalati Mountain, the local staff couldn't answer, and the household registration information is also very unclear. Linda and I immediately handed the old man water and asked him to tell us the password of the safe, but he refused to say anything.I thought he was going to scam money, but the old man gave me a contemptuous look.Linda saw that the old man refused to tell, so she followed the temptation and slowly asked some about the origin of the plane, why they flew to Xinjiang, and why they didn't mention it for so many years. The old man looked at the wreckage with vicissitudes of life, and he was crying. If he was a liar, his acting skills were too superb.When the old man knew that Linda's grandfather was also a former pilot, he finally let go, and slowly told his legendary experience, and this is the story we want to tell—"It happened like this." My name is Liu Anjing. I started to study in the Nanchang Aviation Teaching Team in 1923. Sun Yat-sen, the father of the nation, appeared and gave a speech. I will never forget his words.After many years, I don't remember the full text, but I only remember that Mr. Sun Yat-sen mentioned the words "saving the country by aviation" many times.Most of the comrades who participated in the Air Force together were because of Mr. Sun Yat-sen's speech, and I undoubtedly did the same. When the Anti-Japanese War broke out, the Chinese Air Force had only 305 old-fashioned planes, all of which were foreign goods, and some of them might fall off while flying.After the war between China and Japan, the Japanese already used the "Zero" fighter with a single wing and a speed of more than 300 kilometers per hour, while the Chinese Air Force still used the "Hawker III" with two wings on each side. The disparity in strength is obvious. The Hump route is mainly composed of China and the United States. The Soviet Union had to deal with the German attack at that time, and their relationship with Japan had eased, and they had already withdrawn the air power to support China. In 1942, when recruiting pilots, China and the United States kept secrets, fearing that Japan would steal the secrets and gain the upper hand.I had already retired at that time, and I was aware of the plan of Sino-US cooperation, so I signed up with enthusiasm. The route was determined after many times of exploration and countless casualties.The route passes through alpine snow peaks, canyon glaciers and tropical jungles, cold zone virgin forests, and Japanese-occupied areas.Coupled with the harsh climate in this area, strong airflow, low pressure, hail, and frost, the plane is in danger of crashing and hitting the mountain at any time during flight. We also wanted to choose an easy-to-fly route, but the Japanese were blocking us everywhere, and there was no other choice.Even so, that route still crashes every day, and some people fly for the first time and never come back. In the early days of the War of Resistance Against Japan, the Chinese side lost steadily, and the Japanese army often won more with less. Why is this?They are all human, and the Japanese are not stronger than the Chinese. What is the difference, isn't it that the supplies and equipment can't keep up.At this time, the hump route became even more important. The Japanese army also established an air force base nearby and intercepted it with "Zero aircraft".Due to the strong resistance of the Japanese army, the planes of China and the United States suffered heavy losses, so all cargo flights had to be changed to night flights. What is the concept of night flight? Everyone understands that this is clearly courting death.Flying during the day can also refer to the terrain, and flying at night is equivalent to flying headless chickens.What's more, the weather at night was bad, and the plane China got from the United States fell behind, and it was easy to crash the plane and kill people.This is a helpless approach. Under such conditions, the Japanese "Zero" cannot get out. The biggest enemy of the pilots is the night and bad weather.Magnetic compasses, radio directional machines, and radio stations also have day and night effects. The more they fail at night, the more they fail, and sometimes they all fail. During the "Hump Route" period, so many of my comrades-in-arms died, I almost can't remember who was there.Lady Luck seemed to take care of me, and I was able to complete the flight and transportation tasks smoothly every time, but everything changed one night.