The WWII Pacific's forgotten capital — where 100,000 American troops once staged the island-hopping campaign, and today's divers explore the wrecks and dumped equipment they left behind
Luganville is Vanuatu's second city with a population of 17,000 on the southern coast of Espiritu Santo — the nation's largest island, 350km north of Port Vila. It is one of the great WWII history sites of the Pacific: from 1942 to 1945, Luganville (then called Santo) was the largest Allied base in the South Pacific, housing 100,000 American troops and serving as the staging point for the Guadalcanal campaign. The legacy survives underwater — Million Dollar Point (where the US military dumped millions of dollars of equipment rather than sell it at the war's end) and the wreck of the SS Presid…
Espiritu Santo was sighted by Portuguese navigator Pedro Fernandes de Queirós in 1606, who believed he had found the southern continent and named it 'Austrialia del Espiritu Santo' (Land of the Holy Spirit). France and Britain jointly administered the New Hebrides (as Vanuatu was called) from 1906 to 1980 under an unusual 'condominium' arrangement that gave the islands two parallel administrations, two legal systems, and two police forces — nicknamed the 'pandemonium' by residents. During WWII, Luganville became the largest Allied military installation in the South Pacific, its five airstrips…