Sand Island...
Eastern Island...
The view looking west 77 years ago is seen in an excellent photo from Wikipedia...Keen observers may note that in the 1941 photo Henderson Field is located on Eastern Island, while today the facility is located on Sand Island to the west...Both airfields were named for USMC aviator, Major Lofton Henderson, for whom the other Henderson Field on Guadalcanal was also named...Major Henderson was KIA leading a squadron of Douglas SBD's on a glide-bombing attack against the JIN Hiryu, one of four JIN aircraft carriers sunk in the Battle of Midway...I have not researched it, but he may be the only person so honored by having three military airfields named for him...
The Sand Island location is now used by civilian aircraft, and the entire atoll is under the management of the US Fish & Wildlife Service as a national wildlife refuge...It is the home of the largest nesting site in the world for the albatross (or gooney bird)...The airfield has no tower, and during the albatross nesting season, November to June, flights are permitted to land and depart only at night when the birds are nested...About 50 people are permanent residents, and although living conditions may seem harsh to some who are more accustomed to modern living conveniences, they are certainly more amenable than those facing the military and civilian Midway population of late 1941...Today's observers might have called it downright primitive...
The elevation at Midway of about 18 feet would seem almost mountainous in comparison to another mid-ocean location which also had a strategic history in WWII...French Frigate Shoals is located approximately halfway between Pearl Harbor and Midway atoll, and is actually part of the Hawaiian chain of islands...A shoal (for those like me who didn't know until I looked it up) can be likened to a submerged sandbar, and to run across one in the middle of the Pacific with no other land in sight could be considered an anomaly...The mean elevation there is six feet above sea level, with La Pérouse Pinnacle projecting 120 feet out of the sea...
Running across it very nearly happened to the two frigates under the command of French naval officer Commodore Jean-François de La Pérouse, who was on a commissioned voyage to enrich the treasury of King Louis XVI, presumably so his mistress/wife/queen, Marie Antoinette, could eat more cake while the peasants starved...While underway the night of 11/6/1786 one of his crew sighted waves breaking in their path indicating a submerged danger, and shouted the warning...Being French, La Pérouse's first instinct was to surrender to this unknown hidden danger, and he ordered an immediate turn for both ships, missing what turned out to be a large crescent-shaped reef near the surface...No mention is made in current historical accounts of whether La Pérouse flew the French tricolor or the standard white French battle flag...
The next morning, they returned to map the hazard, and found that what the lookout saw was waves breaking against the only point above water, later named La Pérouse Pinnacle, the only remnant of the volcanic action that formed the shoal area millions of years ago...The common name for the reef became known as French Frigate Shoals, and was later used as a refueling stop for the two Japanese seaplanes which took part in the second bombing of Pearl Harbor 3/4/1942...They embarked their mission from Wotje Atoll in the Marshalls, and flew to French Frigate Shoals to be refueled from a Japanese submarine...Another JIN sub, I-23, was intended to stand off as a lookout for the mission, but it was never heard from after 2/24/42, presumably sunk from unknown causes...
The mission was largely a failure, as little damage resulted from the bombing, mostly shattered windows at Theodore Roosevelt High School from the impact of the bombs dropped near it...However, the alarm was raised among US Navy planners when it was realized that the Japanese "Emily" flying boats had to have been refueled somewhere, and the only logical place was the uninhabited French Frigate Shoals...A construction mission was immediately launched by the USN to dredge and build up the area into a usable island to be manned as a submarine refueling and reprovisioning point...Future plans by the Japanese to repeat its use to refuel seaplanes were shelved when a Japanese submarine reconned the area and found the American military presence...
Eventually enough island space was built to accommodate a 3,000 foot landing strip on Tern Island for emergency landings by Navy aircraft, known today as French Frigate Shoals Airport...It was large enough in 2009 to land and depart a USCG C-130 to evacuate the Coast Guard unit operating a LORAN station on East Island, the second largest artificial island constructed there...Like Midway Atoll, French Frigate Shoals is today managed by the US Fish & Wildlife Service as a nesting refuge for tropical birds...Last month, October 2018, Hurricane Walaka blew East Island into non-existence...
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