Naval Base Ulithi
US naval base in Caroline Islands
Naval Base Ulithi was a major United States Navy base at the Ulithi Atoll in the Caroline Islands in the western Pacific Ocean, to the north of New Guinea during World War II. The base was built to support the island-hopping Pacific War efforts of the Allied nations fighting the Empire of Japan. In terms of the number of ships at one base, Naval Base Ulithi was the largest naval base in the world in 1944 and 1945, with over 600 ships at times.
Background
The Caroline Islands are now the Federated States of Micronesia nation. Micronesia comprises the Kosrae State, Pohnpei State, Chuuk State (formerly Truk) and Yap State. After the Spanish–American War in 1898, the islands became a German colony and German naval base.
At the start of World War I in 1914, British warships destroyed the German colonial plantation owner's radio station. On 7 October 1914, Japan invaded and took over Yap Island without a battle. Japan and Britain made a treaty giving Japan the Pacific islands north of the Equator, signed at the Treaty of Versailles in 1919.
In the 1930s, Japan built naval and airbases on many of the islands; Truk Lagoon was the largest and strongest of these bases. By the start of World War II, Japan's Truk base had five airfields, fleet anchorage, a few seaplane bases, torpedo boat bases, repair facilities, and later a radar station.
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Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jun 27, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q115827593. Authority coordinates are 9.970, 139.670. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1944, 1945, 1898 and 1914.
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This entry incorporates text from “Naval Base Ulithi” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.