Farallon de Medinilla Bombing Range, Northern Mariana Islands, US Territories

Farallon de Medinilla is an unoccupied island, 1.75 miles long, in the Northern Mariana Islands that is used as bombing range, primarily by aircraft from the Anderson Air Force Base in Guam. It is one of more than a dozen islands in the chain north of Guam that are governed as a US Territory known as the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands (CNMI). The Marianas were first colonized by Spain when Magellan planted a flag there in 1521. After the Spanish American War of 1898, most of the Marianas were sold to Germany, which then lost them to Japan after World War I. The United States took them from Japan in World War II, after which they became part of a large group of islands in the north Pacific known as the United Nation’s Trust Territory of the Pacific Islands. Over the years after the war, most of the islands in the trust became independent states, such as the Federated States of Micronesia; the Republic of Marshall Islands; and the Republic of Palau. After being rebuffed by Guam for decades, the Northern Marianas elected to become a separate commonwealth and join the USA in 1975. This became official in 1986, when the UN dissolved the Trust Territories, and the 50,000 residents of the islands, most of whom live on Saipan, became US citizens.