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Post by okla on Aug 26, 2011 8:00:50 GMT 8
Hey Battery...I will give this dead horse one more lick and I am outta here. I fully agree with your final summation. It is very near the true situation, methinks. That report of tanks being on the island was tanamount to saying that Rommel had landed with his whole Afrika Korps. That news must have been devastating to Genl Wainwright and his staff, especially with their state of mind due to fatigue,etc. I do believe most military scholars are of the opinion that we still had a few rounds left in our arsenal, but they also agree the ultimate outcome was just as it did play out. Always great kibitzing with you, even with my misfiring computer. I am having a tough time of late with my gadget. Cheers.
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Post by fireball on Aug 26, 2011 10:47:27 GMT 8
Let me add a couple of thoughts:
First, the fall of Corregidor seems to have occurred (following the landings) quickly, very quickly. As Okla points out it is generally agreed that the ultimate outcome was not in doubt, and once that thought is in your mind the fight is not about winning or holding out its about getting it over and moving on. I do not mean this in a derogatory way but rather it is similar to when you are running and you allow a slight gap to develop and at that point the psychology of the inevitable defeat takes over.
Second, (and showing my real lack of knowledge of events at the time) with all the discussion about an armed La Monja and the impact it might have had I wonder what scenarios were looked at in the pre-war days. War games, training exercises and plans sometimes appear to just reinforce preconceived notions of what the enemy will and will not do rather than increasing skills and understanding. Did this result in a lost opportunity to understand the way an enemy might progress, and ways of making it more difficult?
Finally, and getting back on track, could any attacker or defender have afforded to ignore an island in the position of La Monja and if it was not ignored is there any remaining evidence as to how and to what extent it was used?
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Post by batteryboy on Aug 26, 2011 16:36:36 GMT 8
Well first of all La Monja was not armed nor fortified. It had an emergency or tertiary fire control station (more of a baththub structure) so in a way it did not have any significant or military value. It was just a mound of mostly rock jutting out of the sea. Both the US and the Japanese ignored it during the war.
If La Monja was fortified and armed:
During Pre-War and Exercises:
1) There would be additional firing tables and zones that will include Monja’s radius;
2) Land and beach defense to be included (even if it’s encased in concrete)
3) Additional AA gun and an additional Searchlight Battery will be installed and have its own field of fire / illumination.
4) Communications cables would have been laid out, due to its closeness to the Fort Mills.
5) Potable water would be delivered by barge or be thru its own desalination plant
6) Additional secondary and tertiary fire control stations would have to laid out just of the 16-inch guns of Monja.
7) The 16-inch gun would have an ex-caliber gun (smaller caliber that can be inserted to the main gun tubes of t) for “firing exercises”. This saves the wear and tear of the barrel.
8) The island would have fort name and its battery would also have a name (usually a US serviceman who was killed or served in the Philippine- American War.
Wartime Scenarios:
1) Further extending the Japanese blockade of Manila Bay. Those 16-inch guns would have a range of 25 miles or more given good conditions. Remember, the existing Harbor Defense of Manila Bay deterred any Japanese ships from entering the bay without firing a single shot.
2) It would have given additional heavy firepower to the forces in Bataan and even Cavite. Like what I said earlier, those guns could reach as far as Hermosa in the northen part of the peninsula. However, still its not a deterrent because you cannot lay constant barrage with these guns (that is the role of field artillery) as these 16-inch tubes have a short barrel life. Plus one would assume that most of the shells would be either deck or armoured piercing ones and only a few HE rounds.
3) Additional field of fire and coverage for seaward defense (with extended range).
4) Shelling or bombing a fortified La Monja will just be the same as the siege of Fort Drum. It will hold out until the entire harbor defense command capitulates to the enemy.
Just my two cents.
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Post by fireball on Aug 27, 2011 7:27:52 GMT 8
Batteryboy I am in agreement with others on this site when they refer to your encyclopaedic knowledge since in your posts I have learnt more about La Monja than many hours of internet research!
With options for the island I was thinking not so much as the creation of another concrete battleship, with its pedigree owing more perhaps to the 19th Century, as to what it might offer to meet the challenges of mid 20th Century warfare.
The existing line of forts was sufficient, and events supported this, to control naval access to the Bay so additional naval guns were not needed. But was there a possible role in providing support to land forces (using guns more akin to medium / heavy artillery with a shorter range but much higher rate of fire) against both targets on land as well as the lightly / zero armoured landing craft and supply barges? Alternatively, was there any role it could play in defending Corrigidor against air attack, a form of attack that its earlier design and subsequent limitations on upgrading / improving had made it vulnerable? Or, as a dedicated observation post might it have helped identify and target entry by small craft or improve the locating of enemy batteries?
Of course all of these possibilities ignore the logistics of construction, support and manning but being under the wings of Corrigidor one might think of an outstation dependent on the larger Island rather than a fort in its own right.
Clearly, as you state, La Monja was not fortified and its role is considered one of an unimportant rock. Yet I am still left thinking it might have been a lost opportunity.
But one thing I can say is that if I was an attacker I would, if at all possible, place artillery spotters on the island to give both a different view as well as triangulate sites. If I was a defender I would want to both make sure this did not occur as well as, if my defence plans permitted it, ensure I had my own observers in place.
I hope you find this as a compliment to your ‘two cents’ which I found both interesting and thought provoking and if you have any more info (or dare I ask pics)…please
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Post by batteryboy on Aug 27, 2011 12:59:21 GMT 8
Well, I guess the lost opportunity there was its non fortification.
There was an observation post there but not manned. (emergency station) It posed logistic problems. Japanese did not even bother even sending an observation team as it was of no use to them. That's why they used aerial balloons from Bataan as observation tools and the height of the Bataan peaks were enough to spot most of the major batteries in the island. And the island can easily be subjected to artillery fire from US and Japanese guns if it was indeed manned.
On using La Monja with smaller caliber guns or medium guns or even AA guns on the island in its natural form would be cumbersome due to the terrain. In fact the island's height could not be used to spotting land targets in Bataan and even for watercraft coming from inland. That's is why El Fraile Island (Fort Drum) was shaved and leveled and encased in concrete so as to maximize its use. A cage mast was erected to provide better observation and line of sight. This was suppose to be the idea for La Monja.
One thing to note the guns on the harbor defenses were not naval but are of army design. Coast Defense is a branch of the US Army.
I will see if in my shelf of doom if I have more pics of La Monja, (I know I have but have to dig in.)
Rgds,
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Post by Deleted on Aug 29, 2011 13:01:04 GMT 8
I had to go back and read Phantom's posting of 'Bunker's War' to find it but the Japs did shell Monja Island early in the campain. On April 14th, 1942 while describing an artillery duel between Japanese and U.S. guns Bunker wrote "We won, though the Japs have been registering on Monja Island for hours. Japs seem to think we have something important on Monja Island." No big deal but evidently early on the Japanese thought Monja deserved a little attention, maybe just to see what was there.
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Post by batteryboy on Aug 29, 2011 16:03:22 GMT 8
This was because Battery Monja on Corregidor (not the island) was firing against Japanese targets in Bataan (Sisiman, if I can recall). The battery was well defiladed (one in casemate and the other gun in Panama mount). The Japanese extrapolated and thought the line of fire was coming from La Monja Island.
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Post by fireball on Sept 2, 2011 7:45:13 GMT 8
The sum of many hours of internet and a couple of hours of library research. From an old Sailing Directions:
La Monja Island (14°23'N., 120°31'E.), a rock, 37m high, lies 2.25 miles WSW of Cape Corregidor. A light is shown from a wooden platform on the summit of La Monja Is.
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Post by EXO on Sept 2, 2011 16:59:47 GMT 8
You are quite right in your comment - it may be a mere few lines of text, but 99.9% of people who have never sat down to write such things, would be dumbfounded at the time and effort it takes to write it.
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Post by fireball on Sept 4, 2011 10:39:04 GMT 8
View of the island from Mariveles Attachments:
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