As a matter of interest I think there were at least three or four airstrips at Nadzab and many miles of taxi ways. I remember driving along miles and miles of overgrown taxiways around 1970 when the Nadzab strip was disused. It was not unusual to find piles of .5 cal amunitionand other scraps and relics of the war.
Tom Leahy, who lived in the upper Markham from 1949 to 1979 (at Maralumi about ten miles west of Nadzab) recons there were 3,000 aircraft at Nadzab when he arrived in 1949.
I don't know if there was a pre war strip at Nadzab but will ask a couple of lapuns who should know. I suspect there was a strip there for two reasons:
1. It was a Luthern Mission Station from 1910 and the Lutherans and Catholics both operated aircraft (Junkers W33 and F13???) in New Guinea from the 1920s. The German administration had outposts in the upper Markham below the Kassam, but no explorers entered the Highlands until Mick, Jim and Dan Leahy with Jim Taylor travelled into the Highlands in 1932.
2. I'm sure there would have been at least an emergency airstrip in the Nadzab region for between war aircraft serving the route between Lae and the gold mining areas at Edie Creek and Bulolo. Junkers G31, Ford Trimotor and early de Havilland aircraft including the Fox Moth regularly operated out of Lae.