(Image: Forest & Kim Starr, cc-3.0)

From June 4-7, 1942, the Battle of Midway saw the U.S. Navy defeat the Imperial Japanese Navy after the latter launched a formidable attack against Midway Atoll. Widely regarded as the most important naval battle of the Pacific Campaign during World War Two, Midway turned the tide of battle, crippling the Japanese fleet six months after Pearl Harbor. Of the two airbases built on the atoll, Henderson Field on Sand Island remains in use as a public airport subsidized by Boeing. Meanwhile, the original airfield on Eastern Island, with its three runways, was abandoned after World War Two and is now a wildlife haven. Even so, the relics of war remain visible, as this Second World War gun emplacement demonstrates. (Explore more abandoned American airbases of the North Pacific.)

20 Spectacular Military Abandonments of the World	Downed F-117 Stealth Fighter, Kosovo War	Maid of Harlech: The Periodically Reappearing P-38	Johnston Atoll: The World’s Most Isolated Military Airbase?
Pointe du Hoc: Abandoned German Coastal Defences near Omaha Beach, Normandy	Deserted Guam Northwest Field in the Marianas	Abandoned Military Runway, Bulgaria	Mothballed Sea Shadow Stealth Ship, Suisun Bay
Abandoned Control Tower: RAF Coleby Grange, UK	Abandoned Radar Dishes, RAF Stenigot, UK	Abandoned Midget Submarines, Aberlady Bay, Scotland	Wreck of Russian Battlecruiser Murmansk, Norway
Russian Surveillance Ship Wreck, Red Sea	Abandoned Chieftain Tank, Lulworth Firing Range, UK	Crash Landed (Intact) B-17 Flying Fortress, Papua New Guinea	Derelict Hawker Hunter at Former Airfix Factory in Hull, England
Dismantling Vulcan XM652 at RAF Waddington	Crashed Harrier GR3, Goose Green, Falklands	Russian Aircraft Graveyard, Moscow	Wrecked F-4 Phantom Jet, Hanoi