Blecchh (cue whimsical music). Right, it's a wartime military operation...
but what the heck; it's food. 
And the worrying is overwith... life is good again.
The gaggle of Gooneyes does a little victory dance... DC-3 lovers: you must see this film! These pictures are nothing compared to the sight of these beauties flying, captured in glorious black and white!!
Sadly, we never find out how they got out of there exactly in this movie.. In Gann's original story ("Cold" from Fate is the Hunter, not Island in the Sky, which I haven't read), he doesn't say either (although he mentions that a C47 tried to fly in to pick up the C87 crew and got stuck in the deep snow).
But does mention that the captain of this flight later went to fly the Hump, and after a snowplow was airlifted to the frozen lake to clear the snow for an ice runway (in pieces and reassembled on-site!! Brrr!!),, the C87 was flown out and eventually sent to the Hump, "as if in dogged pursuit of its former master".
In the original story, nobody died, but the C87 crew (later joined by the C47 crew) were stuck there (resupplied, of course) for three weeks.
