Today in History: Massive Blowup on Corregidor
A gun weighing 50 tons lifted 100 feet and thrown 200 feet by a direct Japanese hit
George E. Steiger (1905-1960) was a Captain, U.S. Army, stationed in Corregidor with 59th Coast Artillery. He became a P.O.W. in the Philippines and Japan. In his diary entry for May 2, 1942, he records the spectacular destruction of The Rock’s Battery Geary:
Battery Geary sustained a direct hit and was blown up. One of the gun barrels weighing fifty tons was lifted 100 feet and drifted laterally about 200 feet to the middle of the golf course Topside. Of one hundred men only seven survived. The shock could be felt at my battery which is half way around the Rock. Corregidor is now the “most bombed area on earth” according to KGEI!