Cocos Island Air Base Was A Big Wartime Job

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 13, Issue 50, 7 February 1949, Page 7

Cocos Island Air Base Was A Big Wartime Job

Transformation of the Cocos Islands into a vast air base for use against the Japanese in the closing stages of the Pacific war was recalled in London recently when some 40 officers of the three services held a reunion in London. Captain C. M. Stack, R.N., wno was naval commander of the base in 1945, presided over the gathering.

The Cocos Island fortress, described once by Air Chief Marshal S. Keith Park, who was air com-mander-in-chief, South-east. Asia, at the time, as “the best organised base I have ever, seen in any overseas theatre in this war,” was developed as a top secret. R.A.F. Bomber Command squadron under the code name “Tiger Force” were to have been moved east and an airfield on the west island, capable of handling 500 aircraft a month, was built as a refuelling base on the India-Australia route. Work began in April, 1945, and tens of thousands of coconut trees were felled in the formation of the runways. Though the Japanese surrender made the use of the base for its original purpose unnecessary, it served as a forward airfield for antishipping sweeps over the Java Sea, and photographic reconnaissance flights over the East Indies and Malaya.