SHILLONG, September 5, 2008 (AFP) - A two-member team from the US defence department has begun scouting for remains of American airforce personnel who went missing over the Himalayan 'Hump' during World War II, officials said Friday.

An Indian defence official said two members of the US defence department's Prisoner of War/Missing in Action Accounting Command (JPAC) were in the northeast of India and making their way for an isolated mountain area.

Numerous US transport planes went down in the notorious area that pilots called 'The Hump' -- or the 'Aluminium Trail' -- because of the number of crashes.

'It is a reconnaissance mission and the actual search will begin next month after the rains stop in Arunachal Pradesh,' a defence ministry official told AFP.

Arunachal Pradesh state, on the border with China, was along the flight path used by US aircraft ferrying supplies to besieged allied troops in China.

They were forced to fly the perilous route in April 1942 when the Japanese army cut off the main road between Burma and China, and the operations continued until near the end of the war in 1945.

In all, Allied pilots ferried 650,000 tonnes of fuel, munitions and equipment over the mountains to supply the Chinese government and other anti-Japanese forces.

Several wreckages have been found by local inhabitants in Arunachal Pradesh in the past several years. The Americans believe more than 400 US servicemen and women were lost on the Indian side of the border.

China had recovered some remains of US servicemen but JPAC has yet to make it to the Indian side of the border -- a sensitive part of India because it is claimed by Beijing.