pacific · Indonesia
Mokmer Drome, Biak Island — 400th BS home base, Nov 1944 to Jan 1945
Airfield on Biak Island, in the Schouten Islands off the northwest coast of Dutch New Guinea (now Papua, Indonesia). Captured by US forces in June 1944 after the bloody Battle of Biak; became the 5th Air Force's main bomber base in the Netherlands East Indies. The 400th Bombardment Squadron, 90th Bomb Group ('Jolly Rogers') moved here on 12 August 1944. Robert Earl Wildermuth joined the squadron at Mokmer in late November 1944 after his Travis-Honolulu-Canton ferry route. The squadron stayed at Biak until late January 1945, when it moved forward to McGuire Field at Mindoro in the Philippines.
Why this place matters
The base from which Robert Earl Wildermuth flew his first combat missions of the Pacific tour — the home tent area he returned to from the 22nd Bomb Group's Peleliu and Tacloban attachments in January 1945, only to find it being struck for the move to Mindoro.
Mokmer Drome was the U.S. Army Air Forces airfield on the south coast of Biak Island in the Schouten Islands off the northwest coast of Dutch New Guinea (now part of Papua, Indonesia). It was captured by U.S. forces during the Battle of Biak in May–August 1944 — a bloody fight against Japanese defenders dug into the island’s coral caves. After the island was secured, Mokmer became the 5th Air Force’s main heavy-bomber base in the Netherlands East Indies.
The 400th Bombardment Squadron at Biak
The 400th Bombardment Squadron — the “Black Pirates” of the 90th Bombardment Group’s “Jolly Rogers” — moved to Mokmer Drome on 12 August 1944 and ran combat operations from Biak across the second half of 1944. The squadron’s B-24 Liberators struck targets across the Netherlands East Indies, the Philippines, and the Carolines from this base.
What happened here for Robert Earl
Robert Earl Wildermuth and the Van Valen crew joined the 400th BS at Mokmer Drome in late November 1944, the destination of his ferry route from Travis AFB via Canton Island. The crew built a tent with a wooden floor (lumber was hard to come by in the Southwest Pacific and precious) and began flying combat from there.
Biak was the home base Robert Earl was nominally assigned to even when his crew was attached out to the 22nd Bomb Group for night missions over Taiwan from Peleliu Air Field and then Leyte Air Field at Tacloban. When the crew returned to the 90th BG after the 20 January 1945 last 22nd BG mission, the squadron had moved from Biak to Mindoro by ship while they were attached out:
“Some kind souls had taken down our tent on Biak, secured all of our personal property and had even saved our precious and hard to get lumber so we could build another wooden floored tent abode.”
The wooden floor that had to be transported from Biak to McGuire Field, Mindoro is the small documentary trace of how scarce wood was in the Pacific theater — precious enough that the squadron’s quartermaster moved it across 1,500 miles of ocean rather than rebuild.
After the war
The Mokmer Drome airstrip outlived the war. It is today Frans Kaisiepo International Airport (formerly Mokmer Airport), the civilian airport serving Biak. The wartime control tower and Japanese cave defenses sit on the island as historical sites of the 1944 campaign.
Sources: The Big One, Phase 1 (ferry to Mokmer) and Phase 2 (return from 22nd BG attachment); 400th Bombardment Squadron Wikipedia; 90th Operations Group Wikipedia.