Lost in Tibet: The Untold Story of Five American Airmen, a Doomed Plane, and the Will to Survive

In 1943, five American airmen were returning in a C-87 cargo plane over the""Hump,"" a treacherous supply route across the Himalayas that pilots flew round the clock to equip Chinese allies against the Japanese during WWII. Despite reports of fair weather, a ferocious storm blew the plane hundreds of miles off course, forcing the crew to parachute into the remote mountains of Tibet just before the plane ran out of fuel and crashed. The men were first held as prisoner-guests in the forbidden city of Lhasa; later, their trek back to India was hampered not only by the impenetrable terrain and mysterious culture they encountered, but by a larger international intrigue over Tibet's independence. The battle over dominance of the region between Britain and China, then, turns a story of military courage and grit into one of political intrigue. As Britain and China clashed, Tibet found itself controlled by a child leader (the Dalai Lama, the country's spiritual and political leader, was only eight years old) and in an increasingly vulnerable situation during the war. Determined to remain autonomous despite the mounting political maelstrom, the Tibetans saw the airmen's unexpected fall from the sky as an opportunity to win the American government to the cause of their independence, while the British originally looked at them as spies. Authors Starks and Murcutt absorbingly recount the political conquest of Tibet through the story of these five young men's unwitting embroilment in an international incident and their extraordinary journey home. B&w photo insert not seen by PW.