Million dollar point
Coordinates: 15 ° 31 ′ 33 ″ S , 167 ° 14 ′ 45 ″ O
Million Dollar Point refers to a marine area off the coast of Espiritu Santo , the main island of the Pacific state of Vanuatu , where the US military sank its own war material that was no longer needed after the Second World War in order to save the costs of return transport. Today there is a diving area popular because of these legacies ; Remnants of the material can also be found on the nearby beach.
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location
Million Dollar Point is located in the southeast of Espiritu Santo, about seven kilometers east of Luganville , the capital of the province of Sanma . Nearby is the Santo-Pekoa International Airport , which was used during the war - still under the name Luganville Airfield, Bomber Field No. 2 or Pekoa Field - was built by the Americans.
history
The New Hebrides archipelago had been a British-French condominium since 1906 . When France had to sign an armistice with the German Reich in 1940, the French islanders sided with de Gaulle . In the spring of 1942, Japanese troops reached the nearby Solomon Islands . As a result, American troops landed in the New Hebrides in May 1942 to prevent a conquest by the Japanese.
Since the British and French had not prepared anything to defend the islands, the Americans set up two military bases on the islands. The larger of the two, Buttons on Espiritu Santo, was built by 100,000 soldiers in a short time, which doubled the island's population. Then large amounts of material were brought to the island to supply the South Pacific forces.
In fact, the quantities required for the war in this region were calculated too generously, since the New Hebrides were already far from the front six months later. The airfield, the southernmost of the American troops in the Pacific, still served mainly as a target for flights with the wounded and as a transhipment point for combat material.
At the end of the war, there were about nine million tons of material valued at nearly four billion dollars on the island. Because shipping back to America would have been expensive, there were only a few soldiers on the island and the material had been damaged after years in the tropical climate, it should not be transported back. An offer by the Americans to the condominium administration to buy the vehicles, construction machinery and other work materials for a fraction of their real value (ten US cents per kilogram) was turned down because it was speculated that after the Americans had left, they would be sold Possess items left behind without paying. Instead, the Americans destroyed the devices and sank them into the sea between August 1945 and December 1947. The local population could only watch as the Seabees , the construction troops of the US Navy , poured material over a ramp into the sea, an estimated 90% of which consisted of non-military objects and could have been used by the residents.
Nowadays, the place, now called Million Dollar Point because of the sunk values , is a popular diving area where you can find military equipment, vehicles, clothing boxes and Coke boxes. Also nearby is the wreck of the SS President Coolidge , which was sunk on October 26, 1942 by two sea mines.
Individual evidence
- ↑ Airport data for Santo-Pekoa International Airport in the Aviation Safety Network , accessed on December 1, 2011.
- ↑ a b c History of the New Hebrides (English), accessed February 7, 2016
- ↑ a b c Sasha Archibald: Million Dollar Point . In: Cabinet Magazine , Issue 10, 2003. Retrieved December 1, 2011