On Jan 25, 1944, 24-year-old Robert Eugene Oxford and seven other crew members were on a routine supply mission, flying their B-24 Liberator heavy bomber from Kunming in Yunnan province to Chabua, India. They never arrived.

Oxford's plane, nicknamed Hot as Hell, was one of the five US bombers from the 308th Bombardment Group, 425th Squadron of the 14th Air Force, that took off that morning to fly over the Hump, a treacherous stretch of peaks in the Himalayan Mountains, according to US military documents. At 10:45 am, the formation broke up at 15,000 feet because of extreme weather. Clouds obscured the mountains - visibility was less than a mile.

Each aircraft was on its own to try to land safely. All five bombers went down.