China tensions rising, US revives WWII-era Pacific airfield
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On Tinian, initial work started near the civilian airport in February 2022, before extending toward the World War II airfield on the north of the island.
PHOTO: AFP
Washington – In the middle of the Pacific Ocean, an abandoned US airfield once key to dropping the nuclear bomb on Japan – and nearly lost to history amid encroaching forest – is being revived.
But as the Americans hack away at the jungle overgrowth at Tinian island airfield and other old, World War II-era bases across the region, it will not be with Japan on their mind.
Rather, it is Beijing’s growing influence in the Pacific that is spurring the recovery of a slew of abandoned runways on the 100 sq km speck of land that makes up Tinian, part of the US territory of the Northern Mariana Islands.
“Rehabilitation of World War II-era airfields has provided Pacific Air Forces (Pacaf) a rapidly executable avenue to enhance infrastructure in the region,” a spokesman said.
Though the statement mentioned a “sense of urgency” enabling Pacaf to “enhance... war-fighting capability and improve deterrent posture alongside Allies and partners”, it did not mention China directly.
But Washington’s plans for what officials have described as “an extensive” facility on Tinian comes amid a serious military pivot to the Pacific in recent years – and as China builds its own new bases in the region, including in disputed waters.
“The most comprehensive and serious challenge to US national security is the (People’s Republic of China’s) coercive and increasingly aggressive endeavour to refashion the Indo-Pacific region and the international system to suit its interests and authoritarian preferences,” the US Department of Defence’s 2022 planning document, called the National Defence Strategy, reads.
Tinian’s old military airfield “has extensive pavement underneath the overgrown jungle. We’ll be clearing that jungle out between now and summertime”, Air Force General Kenneth Wilsbach recently told Japanese outlet Nikkei Asia.
Meanwhile, military projects for “fuel and airfield development” at the island’s nearby civilian airport are already under way, according to the Pacaf spokesman.
Back to the future
If little known now, the airfield at Tinian was perhaps the most important – and the busiest – in the world in 1945, as its six hastily built runways played host to US B-29 bombers carrying out missions against Japan, some 2,300km away.
These included, on Aug 6 and Aug 9 of that year, the missions that dropped nuclear bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Little Boy and Fat Man, as the weapons were known, killed some 200,000 people.
In the last three years, money annually allocated to Indo-Pacific military construction costs has doubled, from US$1.8 billion (S$2.4 billion) in 2020 to just shy of US$3.6 billion in 2023, according to a recent report from the Congressional Research Service.
The airfield at Tinian was perhaps the most important – and the busiest – in the world in 1945.
It is part of a Pentagon strategy to open a range of flexible military bases, able to operate outside of the larger, longstanding installations in Japan, South Korea and the American island territory of Guam.
On Tinian, initial work started near the civilian airport in February 2022, before extending towards the World War II airfield on the north of the island.
Within two years, tarmac rehabilitation and the construction of fuel tanks are set to be completed, at a budget of at least US$162 million, part of contingency plans in the event “access to Andersen Air Force Base or other western Pacific locations is limited or denied”, according to air force financial documents reviewed by AFP.
Across multiple projects at Tinian, the total cost is unclear, “due to differing timelines and requirements, and the fact that not all work is being executed by the US Air Force”, the Pacaf spokesman said.
No ‘super bases’
Tinian is not the only World War II-era base being revamped: New defence appropriations also include money for construction at Basa Air Base in the Philippines, “along with ongoing projects” at the Royal Australian Air Force’s Darwin and Tindal bases, according to the Pacaf spokesman.
In a September speech, Gen Wilsbach said: “A lot of our strategy there is taking many of the World War II airfields that frankly are overgrown by the jungle, and there’s still concrete or asphalt underneath.
“We are not making super bases anywhere. We are looking for a place to get some fuel and some weapons, maybe get a bite to eat and take a nap and then get airborne again.”
Satellite images already show the extent of the work under way, including a new apron built just north of the civilian airport.
Not far off, satellite images show other military developments – from China, which has created artificial islets among the diplomatically contested Spratly Islands, used to host its own air bases. AFP
