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Tinian Island, Pacific Ocean 1945 | Runway ABLE Tinian Island,
Pacific Ocean. It's a small island, less than 40 square miles, a
flat green dot in the vastness of Pacific blue. Fly over it and
you notice a slash across its north end of uninhabited bush, a
long thin line that looks like an overgrown dirt runway. If you
didn't know what it was, you wouldn't give it a second glance
out your airplane window. On the ground, you see the runway
isn't dirt but tarmac and crushed limestone, abandoned with
weeds sticking out of it. Yet this is arguably the most
historical airstrip on earth. This is where World War II was
won. This is Runway Able: On July 24, 1944, 30,000 US Marines
landed on the beaches of Tinian ... Eight days later, over 8,000
of the 8,800 Japanese soldiers on the island were dead (vs. 328
Marines), and four months later t