Their air support consisted of some sixteen obsolete Royal Air Force fighters known as the RAF.
The British troops in Burma urgently requested for support as the Japanese quickly invaded Burma without any warning leaving British troops unprepared and confused. The request was for support was granted on 12 December, one aircraft of the AVG moved from the training base in Toungoo to Mingaladon near Rangoon to help protect the capital city. Two more were set out to protect China and the Burma Road.
With Rangoon threatened, chief of staff for the British campaign in Burma had to destroy all crossing Japanese material as possible crossing the Burmese border which included 900 trucks, 5000,000 tires, 1,000 blankets and sheets and more than a ton of mixed items. The British had to transfer as much material as they could into Rangoon as the Japanese approached rapidly. This transfer included 300 British made Bren guns with 3 million rounds of ammunition, 1,000 machine guns with 180,000 rounds of ammunition, 260 jeeps, 683 trucks and 100 field telephones. Over 19,000 tins of left over material remained in Rangoon when it fell to the Japanese on the 8th of March.
"This Japanese seemed unstoppable", said General Vinegar Joe Stilwell with his troops as they walked through the jungles of Burma for a long 29 days of long exhausting trekking through the jungles in Chindwin. They crossed strong streams, climbed enormous mountains and finally made their way to and escaped to Imphal.
At Myitkyina, the largest town in upper Burma, the Japanese had assembled many strong airstrips. Their goal was to capture Imphal and move up to upper Assam to cut off the air supplies to China over the Himalayan Hump, doing this would give them a huge advantage and a complete supremacy over China and Asia. This was a disaster for the allied forces in Burma because the only way to cross into India was through Imphal which left them no chance or any other alternative but to Do or Die.