Canton Island Airfield
| Kanton Island Airport | |||||||||||
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| Summary | |||||||||||
| Location | Kiribati | ||||||||||
| Elevation AMSL | 9 ft / 3 m | ||||||||||
| Coordinates | 02°46′09″S 171°42′19″W / 2.76917°S 171.70528°WCoordinates: 02°46′09″S 171°42′19″W / 2.76917°S 171.70528°W | ||||||||||
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Canton Island Airport (IATA: CIS, ICAO: PCIS) is an emergency use airport located on the sparsely populated Kanton Island, in the Phoenix Islands, in the Republic of Kiribati. It has a single runway 6,230 feet (1,900 m) in length, paved with asphalt. Though it was once a major stop on commercial trans-Pacific airline routes, it is for the most part abandoned today.
During World War II, Kanton (then spelled "Canton") Island was considered part of the British-controlled Gilbert and Ellice Islands colony. The atoll is a low, narrow rim of land surrounding a large shallow lagoon. It is 4½ miles wide on the west, from which it narrows to the southeast point, which is nine miles distant from the northwest point. The airfield was built on the island's northwestern corner by Pan American Airways between 1938–39, and was used by that airline as a stopover on its route from Hawaii to New Zealand. Pan American also cleared and deepened a portion of the lagoon during this time.
The Pan American pioneered central air route, Hawaii to the Philippines and Asia by way of stations at Midway, Wake and Guam passed through the Japanese controlled islands with serious concerns about its safety growing in 1941 even as the Army had reinforced the Philippines with a flight of B-17 bombers by way of Midway, Wake and Port Moresby in September. The War Department approved a plan with orders effective 4 October 1941 to build an alternate air ferry route skirting the mandated islands and capable of handling planes such as the B-17s. While a commercial firm was engaged for most of the island stops of the new route, the Kanton field was under construction by a team of Army Engineers and civilian contractors with a target opening of bomber capability by January 1942. The effort began on 3 November with a transport carrying 130 troops and civilian contractors and towing four barges of equipment departed Honolulu arriving at the island 14 November after losing two of the barges. By 28 December, despite considerable difficulties, the field was declared suitable to accommodate heavy bombers. On 31 January 1942 garrison forces for the island, then codenamed "HOLLY," sailed from San Francisco.
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