The airfield on Peleliu played only a tangential role in the war, as a backwater base. As a silver lining, one might argue that the only value of the air base came about the next summer when a Peleliu-based search plane located some stricken survivors of the USS Indianapolis. Otherwise, the Peleliu airfield played no meaningful role in the war (and Angaur field proved almost equally ancillary). “The expedition was unnecessary,” Colonel Venable bluntly wrote to a historian after the war.
