Hometown: Oostburg, WI
Branch: U.S. Army (Air Forces)
Unit: 27th Troop Carrier Squadron, 14th Air Force
Military Honors: Purple Heart, Oak Leaf Cluster
Date of Sacrifice: May 3, 1944 - KIA in Sylhet, India
Age: 24
Conflict: World War II, 1939-1945

Dwight Lohuis was born to Dirk W. and Anna (DeMaster) Lohuis on July 15, 1919. One of nine children, Lohuis helped on the family dairy farm outside of Oostburg, Wisconsin. The family attended the First Presbyterian Church in nearby Cedar Grove, Wisconsin.

Lohuis graduated from Oostburg High School, then attended the University of Wisconsin to complete an Agriculture course. In addition to working on the family farm, Lohuis took a position as an official tester of the Sheboygan County Herd Improvement Association. He was also active in the local 4-H organization.

With World War II (1939-1945) raging in Europe and the Pacific, Lohuis left the farm to enlist in the U.S. Army on March 19, 1941.

He was sent to Jefferson Barracks in St. Louis, Missouri, and assigned to the Army Air Forces. From there, Lohuis took Basic Training at Keesler Field in Biloxi, Mississippi. Army training took him to multiple bases—Bowman Field in Louisville, Kentucky; Fort Bragg, outside of Fayetteville, North Carolina; Fort Benning, near Columbus, Georgia; and Dunnellon (Florida) Army Airfield.

Now fully trained as an engineer and given the rank of Technical Sergeant, Lohuis left for his overseas assignment during the 1943 Christmas holidays. Arriving first in Africa, after a few weeks he was assigned to the 27th Troop Carrier Squadron, operating in the China-Burma-India theater of operations.

Flights of C-47 and C-46 cargo planes, or “Flying Taxis,” in the region brought much-needed supplies to the ill-equipped Chinese army and other allies—by flying treacherous routes over the Himalayan Mountains. The Chinese behind their leader Chiang Kai-shek were fighting off an invasion from Imperial Japan and receiving help from British and American allies.

According to World War II Magazine, “By December 1942, Japan controlled all land routes and ports into China, blockading the country except by air.”

The Himalayas were the highest and most dangerous mountain range in the world for pilots of the WWII era. The mountain peaks were treacherous, the winds unpredictable, and the aircraft of that time didn’t have modern navigational/avionics technology.

Allied forces coined the term “Hump Pilots” for those who braved the high hump of mountains along the eastern Himalayas. The route over The Hump and across Burmese jungles had to be crossed at enormous risk to resupply the Nationalist Chinese army. Pilots referred to the route as “the aluminum trail,” because they could plot their course by the long line of aircraft wrecks on the ground.

On May 3, 1944, a dangerous night supply mission was planned from the air base in Sylhet, India. TSgt. Lester J. “Rip” Van Winkle served with Lohuis, and described the mission in a 1944 letter to Lohuis’s family:

T/SGT. Dwight Lohuis was the Engineer – Crew Chief on this plane. They had flown with a load of nitro and other explosives into Burma to the British engineers. I was assigned to this mission as I was Dwight’s assistant. We were flying two seven-hour missions per night supporting the British Armies. They were fighting the Japs at Imphal, which was a very strategic road and railroad crossing. They had about stopped the Japs, for they knew that if they got out of the mountains and into the Assam Plains, they would have more of a chore stopping them. The British engineers and part of their army [were] behind the Jap lines.

The crew had completed the mission and was on the way into the runway [at Sylhet] when the left wing of the plane hit a tree which was on top of an ant hill. The ant hills were from 20 to 30 feet high and it was a common thing to see the trees growing on the ant hill. As the plane hit the ant hill and tree it cartwheeled for a long ways, killing all the crew.

Van Winkle had been scratched from the flight because it was a special mission, and he was replaced by a navigator.

TSgt. Dwight W. Lohuis was 24 years old at the time of the fatal crash. Lohuis’s family was told that Dwight, who was unmarried, had volunteered for the dangerous mission in place of a fellow soldier who had a family.

His sister, Annette, recalled that Dwight had planned on returning home and running the 60-acre farm that had been in his family for three generations.

TSgt. Lohuis is buried in his home church cemetery and is honored at the “Monument to the Aviation Martyrs in the War of Resistance Against Japan,” located in Nanjing, China.

Sources
Details and card photo submitted by Mr. Kevin Bruggink, TSgt. Lohuis’s great-nephew.
Local memorial program documents provided by TSgt. Lohuis’s family.
The Sheboygan Press, February 16, 1944: Heroes in the Service
American War Memorials Overseas, Inc.: Lohuis, Dwight W.
The Sheboygan Press, July 6, 1948: Obituaries and Funeral Notices
Joint Base Charleston: Hump pilots last reunion
World War II Magazine, Nov/Dec 2016: The Hump: Death and Salvation on the Aluminum Trail
Business Insider: 6 brutal facts about 'flying the hump' — the deadly World War II air route over the unforgiving Himalayas
Burial Site: Find a Grave