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Under the trees not
far from a road near Battery Way is the metal frame of a Japanese 25mm twin
mount AA gun. It is a little difficult to imagine this chunk of metal being
part of an Anti-aircraft gun.
I had been told that post war it was relatively intact but became the prey
of scrappers. Thanks to batteryboy, a mid 1970s photo is now available to us
so we can all see what this gun actually looked like all those years after
the war. Now the frame makes sense.
Note that the right hand barrel looks damaged.
To clarify it even
more, mgk1951 has provided a rear view photo of such a gun from a
non-Corregidor location.
Very interesting but end of story….well maybe not. Occasionally something
that you think was lost forever just seems to pop up right under your nose.
Three days ago I was returning from Tailside to the Corregidor Inn. My feet
were telling me to take the shortest route so I headed for Malinta’s
Tunnel’s east entrance then I would just walk through the hill to the Inn.
It was around 4:45pm. Being in no hurry, I stopped many times taking photos
along the way.
The Malinta Tunnel East entrance.
While wandering
around off to the left hand side, I noticed that the displayed gun seemed a
little “wide”. Here is a closer view.
Close-up rear view.
Close-up barrel view. It has the same slits and shape as mgk1951’s photo.
Side by side view for comparison.
A barrel is missing from one of the guns near Malinta but this could have
happened anytime after it was removed from the mount. Although the frames
have slight differences when compared to mgk1951’s photo, the two are very
close. Obviously I cannot be sure this is the same gun from the frame near
Battery Way, but the photographic evidence sure points that way.
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