The United States will restore the airfield from which the atomic bombing of Japan was conducted
The United States plans to restore the North Airfield airfield on Tinian Island, said Kenneth Wilsbach, head of the Air Force Command in the Pacific Ocean. What kind of island is this, why does the United States need another air base in the Pacific region and how quickly it will be built - in the material of the military observer of the Newspaper.En" by Mikhail Khodarenka.
What kind of island is this?
To begin with, we should recall the history of the airbase on Tinian. The island is located in the southern group of the Mariana Islands archipelago, 4.5 km northwest of it is Saipan Island (where one of the largest air bases of the US Air Force was also located during the Pacific War), 100 km southwest is Rota Island, and 163 km is Guam Island (to it we we'll come back later).
In the summer of 1944, Tinian was recaptured from the Japanese army, after which the United States in a matter of months turned it into an important stronghold for further combat operations and operations in the Pacific Theater. 15,000 military personnel of construction battalions built a large airbase on Tinian in the shortest possible time, constructing four runways with a length of 2,400 m, main taxiways and numerous parking lots to accommodate Boeing B-29 Superfortress strategic bombers transferred from the continental United States.
In addition, conditions were created on the island to accommodate more than 50 thousand military personnel (flight and technical personnel, as well as airfield operational units). The scale and speed of work during the construction of the airbase today cannot but surprise.
The range of combat use of B-29 bombers from Tinian made it possible to strike Japanese targets on the Philippine Islands, the Ryukyu Islands and Japan itself, during the Pacific War, the 58th and 313th bomber wings were stationed on the island.
On March 10, 1945, a massive bombing of Tokyo was carried out from the air bases on the islands of Tinian and Saipan (334 B-29 aircraft took part in it). For the atomic bombing of Japanese cities, a special unit of fifteen Boeing B-29 Superfortress aircraft (393rd Atomic Group) was created at the base. In August 1945, a bomber took off from this island, which dropped an atomic bomb on Nagasaki.
The head of the Air Force Command in the Pacific Ocean, General Kenneth Wilsbach, clarified that now the territory of Tinian Island is overgrown with jungle, so the first stage of the airfield restoration will be clearing the area and preparing for the construction of the runway and other airfield facilities.
US bases in the Pacific Ocean
On the one hand, it is quite possible that Kenneth Wilsbach's statement is in line with the thesis "more airfields - good and different", but on the other hand, one of the largest bases of the United States Air Force Andersen (Andersen Air Force Base, Andersen AFB) is located in nearby Guam. Its two runways, each with a length of more than 3,000 m, allow you to receive aircraft of any class.
The base has the infrastructure for the long-term deployment of strategic bombers B-52 Stratofortress, B-2 Spirit and B-1B Lancer, tanker aircraft, which are based here on a rotational basis.
In addition, the US Navy base Apra Harbor is located on Guam - one of the two major American naval bases in the Pacific Ocean (the second, Pearl Harbor, is located in Hawaii). Both sites occupy a third of the area of the island of Guam.
The question arises - what is the point of building another airbase just one and a half hundred kilometers from Andersen Air base, and from scratch? General Kenneth Wilsbach, of course, did not give an answer to this question.
One can only assume that the Mariana Islands (including Guam and Tinian) are closest to the island of Taiwan (a possible conflict zone), they are separated only by the Philippine Sea, in the waters of which only the Daito Islands (belong to Japan) and Okinotori Island (two tiny Japanese rocks). It is unrealistic to place any large military facilities there, even with the greatest desire.
And if in any of the hypothetical conflicts in the Pacific Ocean, the bases of the US Navy and the US Air Force on the island of Guam are disabled, it will be very, very difficult to restore the combat and operational capabilities of the Indo-Pacific Command (United States Indo-Pacific Command, USPACOM), taking into account the huge distance from the continental United States. And this circumstance is certainly taken into account by American strategists.
If we consider that Asia is one of the most dynamically developing regions of the world in the 21st century, the economic and military power of China, India, South Korea and Japan is constantly growing, and it is the Indo-Pacific Theater of Operations that will in the future be the main arena of possible armed confrontation between the leading world powers, then the construction by the United States of another large air base, even if it is 163 km from the current one, it seems quite justified. In the future, the construction of a naval base on Tinian cannot be ruled out. In general, in the near future, the construction of the Andersen base backup will most likely unfold at the same pace as during the Second World War.
The opinion of the author may not coincide with the position of the editorial board.
Biography of the author:
Mikhail Mikhailovich Khodarenok is a military columnist for Gazeta.Ru", retired colonel.
He graduated from the Minsk Higher Engineering Anti-Aircraft Missile School (1976), the Military Air Defense Command Academy (1986).
Commander of the S-75 anti-aircraft missile division (1980-1983).
Deputy commander of the anti-aircraft missile regiment (1986-1988).
Senior Officer of the General Staff of the Air Defense Forces (1988-1992).
Officer of the Main Operational Directorate of the General Staff (1992-2000).
Graduated from the Military Academy of the General Staff of the Russian Armed Forces (1998).
Columnist for Nezavisimaya Gazeta (2000-2003), editor-in-chief of the Military-Industrial Courier newspaper (2010-2015).
Mikhail Khodarenok
