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Henderson Airfield Today, Henderson Airfield is the Honiara International and Domestic airport and obviously in much better reapair than the original. The orginal air traffic control tower is still standing in a paddock next to the International Terminal.
The field was also very close to the thinly held lines of the 1st Marine Division so security was always a concern. There were no fuel trucks, hangars or repair facilities. Damaged aircraft were cannibalized for parts, and with no bomb hoists all aircraft munitions had to be hand loaded onto aircraft. Fuel, always critically low, had to be hand pumped out of 55 gallon drums. Even after the arrival of fuel trucks, gas still had to be hand pumped into the trucks.
Henderson's facilities began to improve around 15 November 1942, when it was officially declared a Marine Corps Air Base. Proper runways began to be installed using imported coral since the local coral was deemed too rotten and slushy.
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When the first planes began arriving, Henderson could barely be described as an airfield. It was an irregularly shaped blob cut out of the island growth, half in and half out of a coconut grove, with a runway that was too short and few revetments to protect the aircraft from shrapnel. Upon landing on Henderson on 4 September 1942, the Commanding Officer of Marine Aircraft Group 25, Colonel W. Fiske Marshall described the field by stating it "looked like a Doré drawing of hell."
The runway was a northwest to southeast running, 2,400-foot (730 m) long gravel surface with an extra 1,000 feet (300 m) of matting that was frequently pockmarked with craters from Japanese artillery and naval gunfire. The strip was in such poor condition that it caused as many losses to aircraft as enemy action. In the heat, the field was a bowl of black dust which fouled the planes' radial engines and when it rained the field quickly turned muddy, miring planes in liquid muck. Major Marion Carl described it as "...the only place on earth where you could stand up to your knees in mud and still get dust in your eyes." The heavier SBD dive bombers had it the worst as their hard rubber tires, designed for carrier landings, ripped up the runways like a plow. Wooden wheels were experimented with but these did not fare any better The runway was extended and widened several times during the campaign and was 3,800 feet (1,200 m) long and 150 wide by 4 September 1942.
On 9 September 1942, the U.S. 6th Naval Construction Battalion (SeaBees) opened a second runway about a mile to the east of Henderson Field's original runway. The new runway was called "Fighter 1," consisted of tamped-down sod, and was about 4,600 feet (1,400 m) long and 300 feet (91 m) wide. The Marine fighter squadrons began operating out of Fighter 1 while the rest of the aircraft operating out of Henderson Field continued to use the original runway, which thereafter was referred to as "Bomber Field No. 1."