Caribou Air Force Station
Caribou Air Force Station, also known as North River Depot and East Loring, is a defunct Air Force Station that operated from 1951 until some time when it was absorbed into Loring Air Force Base in 1962. It was located in Limestone, Maine, adjacent to Loring. Between 1951 and 1962 Caribou was an Operational Storage Site for Air Materiel Command (AMC-OSS), one of five in the United States, and the weapons storage and maintenance facility for Loring alert aircraft.
Landings at Cape Torokina
Throughout November, US forces established a perimeter around Cape Torokina, during which significant base development work was undertaken with eight naval construction battalions (Seabees) and a brigade of New Zealand engineers being deployed. This work included the construction of three airfields and an advanced PT boat base on Puruata Island. Advance parties of the 25th, 53rd, 71st and 75th Naval Construction Battalions arrived on the first day. The construction of Torokina Airfield, a fighter airstrip, was assigned to the 71st Naval Construction Battalion. Work began on the third day. Owing to the limited size of the beachhead, the choice of sites was limited, and the area was still under sniper fire. The swampy nature of the terrain required significant drainage work before construction could begin. The airstrip was completed on 10 December, allowing 18 Vought F4U Corsairs to land, although a Douglas SBD Dauntless had already made an emergency landing on 24 November. Intended to handle 35 fighters or light bombers, Torokina eventually accommodated several times that number. These aircraft would subsequently play an important role, along with forces based in New Guinea, in neutralizing Rabaul as an air and sea base.
Construction of the larger Piva Airfield for bombers was commenced on 29 November by the 36th Naval Construction Battalion, which had arrived three days before. The was carved out of dense jungle. The first aircraft landed on 19 December, and the airbase became operational on 30 December with the arrival of 10 Army transport aircraft. The runway was found to be too short, and had to be extended by another . Construction of 35 hardstands, 7 hangars, and 26 other buildings was undertaken by the 71st Naval Construction Battalion. The 77th Naval Construction Battalion built a 5,000-man camp for the Marine Aircraft Group 24, and the 36th added another 2,000-man camp. The 77th Battalion arrived on Bougainville on 10 December 1943 and began constructing a fighter airfield parallel to the bomber field. This was completed on 3 January and the first aircraft landed on 9 January. Several weeks later, the 77th Battalion was instructed to extend the strip by . The two airfields were connected by taxiways and shared fuel tank farms and other facilities. The fuel tank farm consisted of a tank and 18 tanks, fed from a tanker mooring by a submarine pipeline and of overland pipe. The 75th Naval Construction Battalion had the task of repairing breaks in the pipeline caused by Japanese shellfire.