After years of taking World War II history buffs, families, filmmakers, authors, officers-in-training, students and tourists to experience and even drive directly on the 81-year-old original pavement of the historic runways on the island of Tinian, those days are coming to an end…
From the air, I couldn’t quite make out what I was looking at. With the recent military contracts in effect and the proposed repaving of Tinian’s historic runways underway, I knew that each successive visit to the island (for my tour clients) might result in a few surprises and possibly even denial of access. From what I could see, however, these dark objects appeared evenly spaced and ran along both edges of Runway Able–the runway from which the Enola Gay took off in 1945 to drop an atomic bomb on Hiroshima. Once I landed, I found out what they in fact were…
From my most recent visit to Tinian on Friday, January 24, 2025. See for yourself!
Recent tour clients Alex & Ryan experienced Saipan as well as Tinian ealier this month. One of the highlights of my “Tinian to Hiroshima” tour involves driving on this historic runway activities from which changed the course of World War II and human history.
As a result of planned renovation and repaving of the runways for an increased military presence on the island, public access may likely be restricted in the near future.
This is a unique drone’s eye perspective of the runways filmed by Alex and graciously shared with followers of the DiscoverSaipan blog and Youtube channel!
