A kid from Boston yearns to fly. In December, 1941, he graduates from Army Air Corps Flight school and is assigned to a fighter squadron. But fate and Pearl Harbor intervene, and he is assigned AMMISCA, the first Air Corps transports to fly the treacherous "Hump" from India to China (the CBI Theatre). So many planes and crews were lost that the route became known as "The Aluminum Trail." This is Jim Segel's fascinating story of adventures in the air and on the ground in the early days of the world's first Air Lift. It is filled with his insights about the place of the CBI in the larger context of the war in the pacific.