World War II The
3rd Marine Division landed on Bougainville on 1 November 1943 at the start of the
Bougainville Campaign, establishing a beachhead around Cape Torokina. Small detachments of the
25th, 53rd, 71st and 75th Naval Construction Battalions landed with the Marines and the 71st Battalion was tasked with establishing a small fighter airfield that would become
Torokina Airfield. On 26 November 1943 the 36th Naval Construction Battalion arrived on Bougainville and on 29 November they started work on a by bomber strip. •
9 Squadron operating PV-1s from May–August 1944 •
31 Squadron operating TBFs from May - July 1944 On 30 January 1944 an F4U of
VF-17 collided with an
FG1 of
VMF-211 over Piva Bomber Strip, both planes were destroyed and both pilots killed.{{cite web|url=http://aviation-safety.net/wikibase/wiki.php?id=77779|title=ASN Wikibase Occurrence # 77779 On 8 March 1944 Japanese artillery opened up on Piva Airfield and destroyed one
B-24 Liberator and three fighters and damaged nineteen other aircraft. By early 1945 base roll-up and salvage operations had commenced and were completed by the end of June 1945.
Postwar The bomber airfield remains usable as
Torokina Airport (IATA: TOK) (not to be confused with
Torokina Airfield), while the fighter airfield is completely overgrown with vegetation. ==See also==