Myitkyina's airstrip was everything. In the China-Burma-India Theater, where dense jungle swallowed roads and rivers carved through mountains, air supply was the lifeline that kept Allied operations alive. Stilwell needed the airfield to funnel supplies and aerial support into the campaign against Japan. The Chinese Expeditionary Force, commanded by Wei Lihuang with Sun Li-Jen leading the New 1st Army, had been re-equipped with American M1 helmets and modern weapons to replace their aging bolt-action rifles. They had artillery and air support from both American and British forces for the first time. Against them stood a Japanese garrison that was malnourished, low on morale, and cut off from reinforcement -- but entrenched in the town and determined to hold it.

The rains had not stopped for weeks when the assault finally came. On the night of May 17, 1944, the Chinese Expeditionary Force launched a combined attack with Merrill's Marauders against the Japanese airstrip, supported by artillery. The surprise was total. Eight Japanese aircraft were destroyed on the ground as the battle escalated. Panicked and unable to locate the attackers in the darkness and rain, Japanese defenders poured gasoline onto the airfield in a desperate attempt to render it unusable, then retreated into the town proper to regroup. The Chinese and Americans overran the field before the damage could take hold. Within hours, C-47 Skytrain transports from the U.S. Army Air Forces and Royal Air Force were landing on the captured strip, ferrying in the Chinese 89th Regiment to reinforce the exhausted assault troops.

What should have been a quick follow-up became a catastrophe of confusion. Chinese units attacked the town itself, but in the chaos two battalions mistakenly engaged each other in a fierce firefight. When two replacement battalions moved in, they repeated the exact same mistake. The assault was called off. A stalemate settled over Myitkyina through June, the monsoon turning everything to mud. The breakthrough came not at Myitkyina but at nearby Mogaung, where British Chindits under Mike Calvert captured the town and severed Japanese supply lines. Infighting erupted between the two local Japanese commanders over how to defend Myitkyina. Stilwell received reinforcements from Francis Festing's 36th Division in mid-July, and on July 26 the American 3rd Battalion of the Marauders seized the northern airfield. Japanese resistance began to crumble.

On August 3, 1944, General Genzo Mizukami ordered the town abandoned -- then took his own life in literal compliance with his orders to defend Myitkyina to the death. Chinese and American forces moved through the city methodically, clearing the last pockets of Japanese resistance. The town that Stilwell had predicted would fall quickly had held out for nearly three months. The cost was staggering. The Chinese Expeditionary Force suffered its highest casualties of any engagement during the entire Burma Campaign. The unit was so devastated by the fighting, disease, lack of supplies, and the punishing terrain that it effectively ceased to exist as a fighting force and was disbanded.

The capture of Myitkyina and its airfield was the turning point Stilwell had staked his reputation on. It allowed the completion of the Ledo Road, reconnecting the old Burma Road with China and restoring the overland supply route that had been severed since 1942. Supplies could now flow by truck from India through Burma into China, sustaining the Chinese war effort against Japan. The airfield became a vital staging ground for the remaining campaigns in northern Burma. But the victory belonged above all to the Chinese soldiers who fought and died in the jungle -- men whose sacrifice in one of World War II's most brutal and least remembered theaters made possible a road that changed the war in Asia.