The Aluminium Trail: WW2 Pilots in the Himalayas
Warfare
History Hit
4.5 • 943 Ratings
🗓️ 16 May 2022
⏱️ 30 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Robert ‘Bob’ Binzer wanted to be a pilot from a young age, and during the Second World War he got his wish. Bob was an aviator with the United States Air Force in the China, Burma and India (CBI) theatre of the war; carrying critical supplies, weapons and even soldiers over the Himalayan mountains on a daily basis.
His daughter, Rainy Horvath, joins James for this episode of the Warfare podcast to explore this CBI theatre of war, and to give us a glimpse into Bob’s experiences there.
Rainy’s book, ‘The Able Queen: Memoirs of an Indiana Hump Pilot Lost in the Himalayas’ can be found here: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-able-queen-rainy-horvath/1138469702
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Picture this, static cars, idling engines, angry horns. |
| 0:08.0 | Now, picture you, zooming past it all, light and breezy. |
| 0:15.0 | Ah, the sweet feeling of whizzing past traffic. |
| 0:20.0 | Book your train journey via Avanti westcoast.co. UK. |
| 0:25.0 | avante west coast feel good travel. 2nd World War pilot Robert Binser left a memoir of his flying experience as an |
| 0:46.3 | aviator in the CBI theatre of war. But what was the CBI theatre? Well, Robert was deployed with the 14th Air Force between 1943 and 45. |
| 0:58.0 | And during that time he flew critically needed weapons, supplies and soldiers behind enemy lines into the CBI theatre. |
| 1:06.5 | That was China, Burma, India. |
| 1:09.0 | He crossed the Himalayan mountains daily, sometimes twice a day. |
| 1:14.0 | This is the warfare podcast. |
| 1:16.0 | I'm your host James Rogers, and I'm joined by Robert's daughter Rainey |
| 1:20.0 | to reveal his rare first-person account of his experience during the Second World War |
| 1:26.4 | and his narrow escapes from death. |
| 1:30.0 | Hi Rainy, welcome to the History hit Warfare podcast. How you doing today? |
| 1:35.0 | Very good. Thank you for inviting me. |
| 1:38.0 | Not a problem at all. I'm really excited to touch upon this history and the history of the Second World War in the |
| 1:45.2 | CBI theatre because it's not something that we've touched upon before and it's great to |
| 1:49.6 | hear this from your own family history's perspective, but also from, I guess, the words of your own father, |
| 1:57.2 | Robert Binser, who you've been working through his diaries and creating this new study into the area but before we go into all of that I suppose |
| 2:05.6 | could you tell us what the cBI theatre of World War II was? |
| 2:09.8 | Sure I'd be happy to well of, of course, CBI stands for China, Burma, India. |
| 2:15.0 | As we can see what's happening even today in the Ukraine and what happened in Afghanistan, |
... |
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