Ferry was conceived, the ABC Ferry Command was not prepared to plan, control, or execute such an operation. Its formal organization was minimal, it had no units of its own, and its few aircraft were committed to establishing air transport routes. By June, however, the ABC Ferry Command had begun a greatly expanded wartime restructuring and would become the Air Transport Command on 1 July. The first mission "over the hump" took place on 8 April 1942. Flying from the Royal Air Force airfield at Dinjan, Lt. Col. William D. Old used a pair of the former Pan Am DC-3s to ferry of aviation fuel intended to resupply the Doolittle Raiders. The collapse of Allied resistance in northern Burma in May 1942 meant further diversion of the already minuscule air effort. The ABC Ferry Command resupplied Stilwell's retreating army and evacuated its wounded, while establishing a regular air service to China using ten borrowed DC-3s, three USAAF C-47s, and 13 CNAC C-53s and C-39s. Only two-thirds of the aircraft were serviceable at any time. Dinjan was within range of Japanese fighters now based at Myitkyina, forcing all-night maintenance operations and pre-dawn takeoffs of the defenseless supply planes. The threat of interception also forced the ABC Ferry Command to fly a difficult 500-mile (800 km) route to China over the Eastern Himalayan Uplift, which came to be known as the "high hump", or more simply, "The Hump". The official history of the Army Air Forces states: Unfavorable weather conditions along the route were a major contributing factor to its difficulty: The point of view of a veteran crewman who flew the Hump was described in a feature story for a local newspaper years after: Innumerable problems with the Indian railway system meant that aircraft assigned to the airlift often carried their cargo all the way from Karachi to China, while much cargo took as long to reach Assam from Karachi as the two-month journey by ship from the United States. India's highway and river systems were so undeveloped as to be unable to support the mission, leaving air as the only practicable way to supply China in anything resembling a timely fashion. The first crews and aircraft from the United States went to the 1st Ferrying Group, arriving 17 May at their base at the New Malir Cantonment near Karachi. The group was activated in India in March without personnel or