Ulithi

Beechcraft Super King Air 200 (N875SP)
Flying over Falalop, Ulithi

Looking over the weekly photos from FlightAware, this one caught my eye and then the caption piqued my curiosity. Ulithi? Where the heck is Ulithi?

Ulithi is in the Pacific Ocean. I don't remember hearing about it before, but it's  on my map of Pacific island airports. It's not much of a place, a few tiny islands lost in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, but during the last year of WW2 it was a very big deal.

1940s World War II: Ulithi, Anchorage
MyFootage.com

Did we win WW2 because we were strong and brave and true and free? Or did we win because we were able to marshall our forces to exploit a continent of resources that had barely been tapped? I suspect it was a lucky combination of both. I suspect Asia, namely China and Russia, suffer from some kind of ingrained, mental stumbling block caused by thousands of years of strife and terror at the hands of an endless succession of fire-breathing warlords bent on slaughter. We know there are some very smart people in Asia, but we also know some capitalist ventures there failed because - well, we're not quite sure why they failed - but it seems that the people employed to work there did not quite believe in themselves.

P.S. Samaritan's Purse donated two of these airplanes to Pacific Mission Aviation, a Christian organization spreading the gospel, doing good works and providing air transport services around Micronesia.