Clipperton Island Landing Strip

Military abandonment following the end of World War II. The strategic need for the outpost ceased with the Allied victory in the Pacific. The island's extreme remoteness, lack of a permanent population, and harsh environment made continued maintenance economically and logistically unviable for any civil or military purpose.

The site is completely abandoned and in a state of extreme disrepair. The original packed-coral runway is heavily overgrown with scrub vegetation, littered with coral rubble from storms, and largely reclaimed by the island's massive seabird colonies. It is completely unusable for any type of fixed-wing aircraft. The island itself is an uninhabited French Marine Protected Area (MPA), visited only occasionally by scientific expeditions, French naval patrols, sport fishermen, or amateur radio DX-peditions. Access is typically by sea, with personnel landing via small boats.

The landing strip was constructed by the United States Navy in early 1944 during its occupation of Clipperton Island in World War II. Its primary purpose was to serve as a strategic weather station and an auxiliary airfield. The base provided crucial meteorological data for Allied operations in the Pacific and served as a potential emergency landing site for patrol bombers and transport aircraft. It played a minor but important role in securing the Eastern Pacific against potential Japanese naval movements. Operations were limited to military aircraft, and the base was promptly abandoned after the war concluded in 1945.

There are no known plans or realistic prospects for reopening the Clipperton Island Landing Strip. Reopening is considered highly improbable due to several prohibitive factors: the island's protected environmental status, the immense cost of rebuilding and maintaining an airstrip in such a remote and corrosive marine environment, the complete lack of infrastructure or a resident population, and the absence of any modern economic or strategic justification for an airfield on the atoll.