The geographical location of Ascension Island
Ascension Island is a British overseas territory in the South Atlantic Ocean, consisting of a main island and several affiliated reefs, administratively subordinate to Saint Helena, Ascension and Tristan da Cunha, with its capital at Georgetown.
The Portuguese navigator João da Nova first discovered the island in 1501. The portuguese navigator Alphonse d'Albuquerque rediscovered the island in 1503, the Catholic Day of the Ascension, after which it was named. Because Ascension Island is desolate and barren, no one has claimed sovereignty over it for more than 300 years after its discovery. But ships crossing the Atlantic often dock on the island, catching seabirds and collecting turtle eggs to supplement food. In 1701, the British navigator William Dampier's ship Lobach struck a reef near Ascension Island, and the 60 people on board were rescued after living on the island for nearly two months. Since then, Ascension Island has sometimes been used to exile criminal sailors.
In December 1990, We looked at Ascension Island from space
Georgetown, a Royal Navy barracks built in 1830
It was not until 1815 that Ascension Island began to have a permanent population. This was because Napoleon was exiled to the southwest of St. Helena, and the British Royal Navy established a military camp on Ascension Island to prevent Napoleon from escaping. After the establishment of the barracks, the island was incorporated into the Royal Navy battleship sequence under the name "HMS Ascension", classified as Sloop-of-war. After Napoleon's death, the British Navy developed Ascension Island into a food supply station to feed the Royal Navy's West African Squadron, which stopped the slave trade. It was not until 1881 that the island was removed from the Royal Navy's roster of warships and listed as a colony. Ascension Island was originally under the jurisdiction of the Governor-General of South Africa and became a dependency of St. Helena in 1922, but the day-to-day affairs of the island were managed by the British Great Eastern Telegraph Company, and it was not until 1964 that the first commissioner was sent to Ascension Island.
Wildwick Airport in February 2011
Wildwick Air Force Base during World War II
In 1942, U.S. Army Engineers built Wideawake Base on Ascension Island as a transportation relay station and stockpile between the Americas and South Africa. At the height of the operations, the airport took off and landed 1,000 aircraft per month, 98 per day in 1944, and two 420,000-gallon oil storage tanks were built on the island. Patrol aircraft at Wildwick Air Force Base contributed significantly to anti-submarine warfare in the Battle of the Atlantic. The base still has a scrap yard that piles up various metal equipment and aircraft wreckage left over from World War II. The RAF also used Wildwick In World War II.
In April 2005, the U.S. Air Force and NASA missile and space tracking station on Ascension Island
Since 1963, Ascension Island has been launching weather detection rockets. In 1967, NASA established a missile and space tracking station at Wildwick, which is also one of the ground satellite monitoring stations for GPS systems. In addition, the runway at Wildwick is one of the backup runways for the shuttle's emergency landing.
In the 1982 Falklands War, Britain used Ascension Island as a task force base
During the 1982 Falklands War between Britain and Argentina, the British task force used Ascension Island as a base for rest and landing drills, and also sent Vulcan bombers and Harrier aircraft from the island to carry out air raids and patrol missions.
In November 1983, the Royal Air Force was stationed on Ascension Island