GlobalNav, welcome aboard, Sir! A couple of the terms used in your post had me checking with Wiki (though perhaps I should have consulted Cortana, who has at last taken residence on my PC!).
First off was Cosmoline, which turns out to be the brown coloured paste that coated everything metallic as a rust preventative, particularly firearms. There was a song about it, to the tune of Tangerine, but wiki doesn't share the words with us!
The second was CBI. That has an unlikely British connotation (Confederation of British Industry), could have been (given the context) the Central Bank of India, but is more likely to mean the China Burma India theatre of WWII. That is a new one on me, but might well ring a bell with others. Wiki says it was used by the US military and tended to refer to General Stillwell's Command.
Did your father fly the Hump in his C-47s and C-46s? Ernest K Gann's "Fate is the Hunter" describes his experiences on the route, an airlift that preceded the Berlin one, supporting the Chinese Nationalist Army.
Your post reminds us of the massive US logistical effort that supplied many of the Allied Forces, and without which victory would not have been possible. Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto rightly said after the attack without warning on Pearl Harbour:-
I fear all we have done today is to awaken a great, sleeping giant and fill him with a terrible resolve
How right he was!