Location
Located on Bonriki Island.

Construction
After Betio (Tarawa) was occupied by the Marines, and Tarawa Airfield (Hawkins) operational, Bonriki airfield was put in at Bonriki running E-W, and a second runway NE-SW. Longer than Tarawa Airfield (Hawkins) it was better for bombers. The

Bonriki Airfield was also named "Mullinix" after Admiral Mullinix, KIA on the escort carrier CVE-56 USS Liscome Bay sunk off (Makin) Butaritari during the US Army invasion taking place at the same time as the Tarawa battle. Also, 7th AF B-25s operated from this strip before moving up to Makin Airfield (Butaritari).

Today
The airfield is still in use, with two runways with two passenger and one cargo terminals and serves flights for Air Kiribati, Air Marshall Isles, Air Nauru, Air Pacific

Stan Gajda reports:
"At Bonriki, many large revetments for B-24's were built. Even to this day there is still a lot of debris of operations there, like bomb transport rings, bomb tail fin cases etc. In the revetments it is easy to find fired .50 and .30 cal mg cases thrown out of planes when they were cleaned during operations."

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Last Updated
October 1, 2009