Qualla: Port Moresby Airfield Complex

Port Moresby Airfield Complex: Introduction

Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit MSchlauch, Public domain. In 1943, the busiest airfield in the entire Southern Hemisphere was a strip of pierced steel matting laid across the coastal plain near Port Moresby. It was called Wards, or 5 Mile Drome, and it shared taxiways with another airfield called Jackson that crews could reach without taking off. Together they were two of eight airstrips built in and around the town during the Second World War. The whole complex existed because Port Moresby, improbably, held. For months in 1942 it was the only major Allied base left between Japanese forces and the Australian mainland.

Image: MSchlauch | Public domain

Port Moresby Airfield Complex: Why Here, Why Then

Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit United States Army Air Forces, Public domain. Before the war, Port Moresby had one airstrip, built by the Australians in 1933 on a gravel bed. That was Kila Kila, 3 Mile Drome - the town's first airport. When Japanese forces overran Rabaul in January 1942 and began pushing south, the strip near Port Moresby suddenly became t...

Image: United States Army Air Forces | Public domain

Port Moresby Airfield Complex: Jackson and Wards

Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit United States Army Air Forces, Public domain. Jackson Airfield - 7 Mile Drome - took its name from Squadron Leader John Francis Jackson of 75 Squadron RAAF, killed at 34 while flying a P-40E on 28 April 1942. His squadron had flown the first defense of Port Moresby weeks earlier. By mid-war, Jackson had three parallel runway...

Image: United States Army Air Forces | Public domain

Port Moresby Airfield Complex: What Was Named for Whom

Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit United States Army Air Forces, Public domain. Lt. Col. K. H. Ward, for whom Wards Airfield was named, helped build the runway he never saw finished - he was killed on 27 August 1942 at Isurava, during the fighting on the Kokoda Track. The Kokoda was not an aviation battle. It was Papuan terrain, jungle and ridge, where young...

Image: United States Army Air Forces | Public domain

Port Moresby Airfield Complex: What Remains

Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Steve Jurvetson from Menlo Park, USA, CC BY 2.0. Seven of the eight airstrips are gone or unrecognizable. Kila Kila became a police barracks and a technical school. Berry, 12 Mile, lies under the Bomana Police Training College and Bomana War Cemetery - where many of those killed in the New Guinea campaign are buried, including,...

Image: Steve Jurvetson from Menlo Park, USA | CC BY 2.0