At one time during WWII it was the busiest airport in the world with 40k personnel stationed there. Now it's a jungle, with some runways still visible from space.

We are going to first build up the Tinian airport and use that for logistics while we rebuild all of our own runways and infrastructure.

An interesting bomb was loaded onto a B-29 bomber there many years ago that forever changed the course of history...

Location: url=https://www.google.com/maps/place/Tinian/@15.0118918,145.6280315,22068m/data=!3m1!1e3!4m6!3m5!1s0x66df525597fe6bcf:0x79e4d5d171efc87f!8m2!3d15.0043455!4d145.6356577!16zL20vMDFoMzhk?entry=ttu]Click here[/url]

Story:
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Notice that the CNN article did not mention why and when and who let that lovely piece of property go.

Changed the trajectory of WWII for sure

I was under the impression we still have it. It is a US Territory.

I think the trajectory was the Japan was getting their asses kicked, It's always been my understanding that we dropped the bomb to save lives, including Japanese lives. Had we had to invade the Japanese mainland, it would have been a blood bath.

We have a lot of military property all over the place, but somebody in particular shuttered a bunch of good bases in the 90's right around the same time China got favored trading status. Who could have done that? I wonder. hmmmmm

The fire bombing of Tokyo killed more people than both atom bombs combined. But the atomic bombs scared the sh1t out of everybody, including us, and ended the war.

My understanding is that this place was shuttered in 1946. So that would have been Harry S. Truman.

I would tend to think we are reopening this base so we can have our offensive forces in the eastern pacific more spread out, so as to avoid another Pearl Harbor in the event that China ever tried to do something stupid.

I think we are just moving chess pieces here to stay ahead of the Chinese.

Since I'm a genius in foreign policy I'm thinking Tinians north is being resurrected to give China pause in its strategy. They know that we know mainland China is touchable like Hiroshima and Nagasaki and they don't want none of that.

My grandfather was stationed there. Before that he was part of a B29 crew that started out flying hump missions out of India before being moved there.

Oh yeah... It is most definitely part of a China containment strategy. We already have quite a few bases with strike capability on mainland China, but I think the strategy here is a disbursement of our forces. Having them more spread out makes more targets for China and a greater likelihood of more survivability.

That's cool. Those guys were a great generation of humanity.

Pretty sure it's in response to China making their own islands to occupy. Gives us another base besides Guam.

When I went to Washington as a part of an Honor Flight one of the guys I took told me about seeing the Ebola Gay on Tinian. Said he got up one morning and noticed it was gone. He was in medical school when drafted and was in a chemical weapons outfit. He told me if those bombs hadn’t worked they would have killed everything on those islands.

My MIL was living with her first cousin in Georgia during the war. Both of their husbands were serving in the military. The cousin thought her husband was doing something in the USA. Didn’t know he was overseas. Her husband was flying the Enola Gay!
The secrecy was so great they had no idea where he was was or what he was doing.

I actually met Dutch Van Kirk, the navigator of the Enola Gay a few years ago before he passed away. Super nice gentleman !

Met and talked with him for maybe an hour
Great guy and definitely a gentleman

My uncle was on the first wave to invade Japan before the bomb was dropped
It was predicted the first 5 waves wouldn’t make it to the beach

The best way to contain the Chinese would be to let Japan amend their constitution. Let them remove the parts that keep them from having a offensive military, we currently protect them and I am not opposed to continuing that. But there is zero love between Japan and China. Chinas navy would be careful to avoid areas with a free Japan. They would not be as constrained as we are against China.

There are estimates as high as 10,000,000 dead Chinese at the hands of the Rising Sun during WW2.