In September 1944, a unit of US engineers arrived there. In less than six months they had expanded the air strip, brought in enough supplies and anchorage for 700 ships, and the buildings to hold it all. They built a theatre that held an audience of 1200 and a 500 seat church.
Imagine the food, fuel, spare parts...to service that much hardware. They had a barge which produced 1900 litres of ice cream per shift. All of these supplies had to come from the US mainland. All this was to act as a Base for the invasion of Okinawa, a place the Japanese...
...thought was safe because it was too far from any significant US bases. It wasn't safe. All of this is remarkable, but the bit that's really boiling my brain is the planned Japanese attack on Ulithi in June 1945. The attack never arrived, it was called off after the bombing...
...of Nagasaki and Hiroshima led to Japanese surrender. But they were going to attack with submarine aircraft carriers. They had a submarine that could carry 3 bombers which could be launched from the top of the submarine. Submarine. Aircraft. Carriers. en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/I-400-c...