Fort Drum (El Fraile Island)
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Fort Drum (El Fraile Island), also known as the “concrete battleship,” is a heavily fortified island fortress situated at the mouth of Manila Bay in the Philippines, due south of Corregidor Island.
Contents |
[edit] Construction
Originally a barren rock island, it was leveled by U.S. Army engineers between 1910 and 1914 and then built up with thick layers of steel-reinforced concrete into a massive structure roughly resembling a concrete ship. The fort was topped with a pair of armored steel gun turrets, each mounting two 14 inch guns. Searchlights, anti-aircraft batteries, and a fire direction tower were also mounted on its upper surface. The 25- to 36-foot thick fortress walls protected extensive ammunition magazines, machine spaces, and living quarters for the 200-man garrison.
[edit] World War II
After the outbreak of war in the Pacific on December 7, 1941 Fort Drum withstood heavy Japanese air and land bombardment as it supported U.S. and Filipino defenders on Bataan and Corregidor. Fort Drum surrendered to Japanese forces following the fall of Corregidor Island on May 6, 1942 and was subsequently occupied by Japanese forces. The ruins of Fort Drum, including its disabled turrets and 14 inch guns, remain at the mouth of Manila Bay.
[edit] El Fraile in literature
Neal Stephenson's 1999 novel, Cryptonomicon, includes a completely fictional account of the fortress' 1945 recapture by the U.S. Navy. The novel incorrectly identifies the Spanish as the island's original fort-builders.
A couple of miles from Corregidor, motionless on the water, is something that looks like an absurdly squat, asymmetrical battleship, except much bigger. ... As Shaftoe descends, and the wind blows him directly towards it, he can see the grain of the reinforced concrete of which this prodigy is made. It used to be a dry rock in Manila Bay. The Spanish built a fort there, the Americans built a chain of gun emplacements on top of that, and when the Nips showed up they turned the entire thing into a solid reinforced concrete fortress with walls thirty feet thick, and a couple of double barreled fourteen inch gun turrets on the top. Those guns have long since been silenced; Shaftoe can see long cracks in their barrels, and craters, like frozen splashes in the steel.
In Cryptonomicon, the Japanese military is using the fort as a regional intelligence headquarters. A main character parachutes to the roof, retrieves a thrown heaving line to pull a long fueling hose from a waiting LCM, and pumps fuel-oil into a roof vent, which he ignites with an incendiary grenade. Later a cryptanalyst inspecting the fortress discovers that the Japanese had brought enslaved ethnic Chinese shopkeepers from all over Greater East Asia to use abaci to produce one-time pads for encrypting/decrypting messages.
[edit] See also
[edit] External links
[edit] References
- McGovern, Terrance C. and Mark A Berhow American Defenses of Corregidor and Manila Bay 1898-1945 Osprey Publishing ISBN 1-84176-427-2
