The Pentagon has allocated about $500 million to restore a World War II-era military airfield on the northern tip of Tinian Island in the Pacific Ocean.
wikipedia.org
Airfield on Tinian Island, 1945.
Work to clear the airfield of overgrown jungle began in January 2024. Hundreds of hectares of trees have been cleared, and about 20 million meters of hard surface have been restored. The work is being carried out in accordance with the concept of the “Pacific Deterrence Initiative”, which envisages the possibility of a military conflict with China after 2027.
A huge airfield for several hundred B-29 bombers was built on Tinian in 1944. The air base played a key role in the air strikes on Japan. In particular, the planes that dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki took off from here in August 1945. In 1946, the US Air Force left the island.
Tinian is part of the Northern Mariana Islands and is under the control of the United States. It is 2,500 kilometers from Japan and 3,000 from China – an insignificant difference in terms of strategic aviation. But nearby is the island of Guam, with the largest US Navy and Air Force base in the Pacific Ocean.
The Pacific Initiative envisions a dispersal of US military forces in the region. Currently, most of the US contingents are in Guam and the Okinawa base in Japan. Rebuilding the airfield on Tinian and neighboring islands could remove US forces from the reach of Chinese ballistic missiles.
Source: rodina-history.ru
