Combat· Philippine-American War
Port Kalakan / Olongapo naval gun destruction
A sharp little operation to secure the future American naval base at Subic Bay.
In September 1899 the Filipino insurgents had mounted a heavy six-inch naval gun at Olongapo, on Subic Bay, from which it threatened the harbor approaches. A landing force of about seventy Marines, drawn from the cruisers Baltimore, Concord, and Charleston, with sailors, went ashore under a naval officer and destroyed the gun, removing the threat to the bay. No casualties resulted. The operation was small but strategically useful, for Subic Bay was valued as a future naval base, and the destruction of the insurgent gun secured its approaches and asserted American control over the anchorage. It was an early action in the Olongapo and Subic Bay region that would become one of the three main areas of Marine operations in the Philippine war, and the start of a long American naval connection with Subic Bay that would last most of a century.
Podcast episodes on Philippine-American War
Record no. 485