The airfield was named for Lieutenant Colonel K. H. Ward of the Australian Army, who helped plan its construction. He did not live to see it operate. On 27 August 1942, while the strip was still being graded, Ward was killed at Isurava on the Kokoda Track - a ridge where Australian reservists and Papuan carriers were fighting a rearguard action against Japanese forces pushing toward Port Moresby. The airfield that bore his name was 5 Mile Drome in American usage, because it sat five miles from town. Construction was Australian engineers doing the rough work, American engineers grading and surfacing the final runway. Two parallel strips of 6,000 feet by 100, an extensive taxiway system, and a link across the scrub to Jackson Airfield - 7 Mile - which meant aircraft could taxi between fields without ever leaving the ground.

The 54th Troop Carrier Wing made its headquarters at Wards from May 1943 to April 1944. Through the strip moved the 317th, 374th, and 375th Troop Carrier Groups - names that mean little now, but meant a chain of C-47 Skytrains ferrying men, ammunition, and evacuated wounded across the Owen Stanley Range day after day. The 320th and 321st Bombardment Squadrons of the 90th Bombardment Group - nicknamed the Jolly Rogers - based their B-24 Liberators here. No. 22 Squadron RAAF flew Boston attack bombers from the field. No. 30 Squadron flew Bristol Beaufighters. Behind the operations, the 27th Air Depot ran the assembly line: brand-new aircraft arrived crated in ships at Fairfax Harbor, were bolted together and test-flown from Wards, and dispersed to bases across the theater. The volume of traffic in 1943 is hard to imagine now. The field handled more departures than some continents saw in a month.

From December 1942 into January 1943, General George Kenney's V Fighter Command set up headquarters on a ridge behind the airfield. Soldiers poured concrete for a small compound - offices, steps, a garden path up the hill. In the concrete they drew a large Fifth Air Force insignia and a USAAF star. Paint went on top. Through the 1980s, visitors reported that traces of the original paint still showed. The slab is still there today. The paint is cracked, the logo partial, kunai grass growing through the seams. The hill overlooks the Chinese Embassy now. To find it, drive down Sir John Guise Drive, cross the Independence Way and Godwin Street intersection, continue toward the golf club, and look right when the road begins its left turn. It takes intent to find, which is part of the point.

When the war ended in September 1945, the airfield closed within months. The revetments - earthen bunkers that had sheltered B-24s from air attack - were bulldozed flat. A scrap dealer took over the site and began melting aluminum from wrecked aircraft for resale. For years, local residents drained gasoline from the fuel tanks of abandoned planes, which ran tractors and lamps into the 1950s. The marston matting - prefabricated steel planks originally laid as runway surface - found its second life as fencing, retaining walls, and building material across Port Moresby. The matting is still visible around town if you know what to look for. By the 1970s Waigani was being planned as the new government district for a country about to become independent. The runway became Kumuni Avenue. The taxiway systems became side streets. The ministries of a sovereign nation rose where Liberators once parked.