Subic Bay – The First Decade of U.S. Naval Presence

Subic Bay – The First Decade of U.S. Naval Presence

John S. Naylor – 29 September, 2025

Subic Bay is back in the news. After more than thirty years, the U.S. is returning to the naval base there, as a part of strengthening its position in the region, and rebuilding its relationship with the Philippines. Aggressive moves by China in the region have forced the U.S. to resume a presence abandoned with the end of the Cold War and anticipated “Peace Dividend.” How the U.S. wound up in Subic Bay in the first place may inform some of the advantages of a forward located naval base, despite it being well within range of present-day hostile observation and fires. 

In 1898, at the opening of the war with Spain, the village of Olongopo, located on the northern shore of Subic Bay, sixty miles northeast of Manila, was a sometime anchorage under the development of the Armada in the Philippines. When Spanish Admiral Montojo was notified that Dewey’s squadron had departed Hong Kong, bound for Manila, he relocated his squadron from Subic to Cavite, on Manila Bay. Planned Spanish defenses of Subic had yet to be erected, and Montojo felt his ships and men would be better served in the shallow waters off Cavite, where under the anticipated American attack, fewer sailors might drown, and scuttled ships might be more easily recovered. Montojo’s fears were realized, and Admiral Dewey’s squadron easily destroyed the Spanish flotilla. After taking the arsenal at Cavite with Marines from shipboard security detachments, Dewey’s squadron sat upon the waters of Manila Bay until the Army caught up months later. Dewey claimed that had he had 5,000 troops in tow, an amphibious force in readiness, he could have taken Manila immediately.

And so, when President McKinley and Congress, through the Treaty of Paris, decided to purchase the Philippines for $20 million, the Navy needed to find a home from which to coal and repair its Asiatic Squadron. The former Spanish harbor and arsenal at Cavite lacked the protection Admiral Dewey sought, as it was where he had sunk the Spanish fleet, and the Navy soon found itself dispersed, working from ten coaling stations spread about the archipelago, while it searched for one good deep-water harbor where major overhauls could be performed. 

In December of 1899, after a state of war opened between the U.S. and Emilio Aguinaldo’s rebel force, the U.S. Army drove Filipino rebels out of the harbor village of Olongapo on Subic Bay. In early 1900 the Navy landed Marines to secure the harbor facilities; when Captain John Twiggs Myers, USMC, raised the flag at the port, the U.S. commenced maintenance and supply operations at Subic Bay. Despite few creature amenities being available to the sailors and Marines, and nearly no infrastructure, the navy station was established to support coaling evolutions, with an aim to eventually provide protected dry-dock facilities for the U.S. fleet. 

In the western Pacific, the Asiatic Squadron was occupied most of the time with protecting American interests in the region, propping open what Secretary of State John Hay would term the “Open Door” for Chinese markets. (Sailors and Marines of the Asiatic Fleet, as well as Marines from the Cavite Navy Station, and soldiers from the Army’s 14^th Infantry Regiment, all based in the Philippines, were part of the international relief of Peking during the Boxer Rebellion.) In 1900, when Dewey convened the General Board of the Navy, an advisory board to the civilian Secretary of the Navy on all technical matters, he drove the initiative to develop means to fuel and resupply a developing global naval force. In the western Pacific, Subic Bay continued to present itself as the best option for the U.S. as a forward base, given that the new U.S. territories of Guam and Hawai’i were nowhere near as close to Chinese waters. 

Because of the vacuum created by Spain’s departure from the western Pacific, competition amongst great powers in the region was great. Besides the U.S., Germany sought to increase its markets and influence in the Pacific region, along with Great Britain, France, Italy, Russia, and most importantly, Japan. While Dewey had thought the Germans the greatest threat to U.S. interests in the Philippines during the War of 1898, Japan burgeoned as a concern because of its destruction of the Chinese fleet at the Yalu River in 1894 and its defeats of Russia at Port Arthur and Tsushima in 1904 and 1905. Eventually the greater share of U.S. naval war planning would revolve about the Japanese threat, and how the U.S. would defend, or at least minimally defend, the Philippines.

And while Marines contributed to the pacification of the Philippines alongside the Army, the two brigades of Marines, stationed at Olongopo and Cavite, were primarily in theater to advance naval operations, defend Navy assets in the island, and provide a forward deployed force in readiness. At the time this was a novel employment of Marines; prior to 1898, the advent of the nascent Advanced Base Force, and the establishment of garrisoned battalions and regiments of Marines in the Philippines, the Corps had largely been employed as shipboard enforcers, and navy yard guards. Going forward, the Marine presence overseas, at stations like Olongopo and Guantanamo, and in the new republic of Panama, would establish it as a force capable of rapid deployment, and an influencing force in naval diplomacy. 

As part of the temporary defense of Subic Bay, under the aegis of the Advanced Base Force (ABF), Marines emplaced naval guns atop Grande Island, located at the mouth of the bay. This 1902 exercise presaged the Navy moving all available guns from the Cavite Arsenal to Subic Bay in 1906 and 1907, with the Marines establishing camps and defenses against a perceived Japanese threat to the U.S. fleet facilities. Without mechanized equipment, using manpower alone, Marines from Olongopo landed and skidded 6-inch naval rifles up steep hills hundreds of feet high, to mount them on stationary platforms also manhandled into place. 

The perceived threat from Imperial Japanese Navy forces was a result of rising tensions between Japan and the U.S. in the wake of racist and discriminatory actions by the San Francisco Board of Education in 1905 and 1906 that led to race riots, and diplomatic complaints from the Japanese government. 

As a result of the Navy making Subic Bay its western naval station, USS DEWEY, YTD-1, a floating drydock capable of lifting 18,000 tons, was towed to Subic Bay in 1906, and went right to work conducting repairs on ships of the Asiatic Squadron, and large Army craft. At the same time, the Navy requested $690,000 for improvements to the station for fiscal year 1908, including dredging, water systems, quay walls, closing adjacent rivers, building rail facilities and paved roads, latrines, metal and blacksmith shops, and a powerhouse.

Despite the consultations of the Joint Army-Navy Board, the focus of the Navy on Subic, and not other locations, led to conflict with the War Department, regarding where the center of military influence would be in the Philippines. The Army was vying for a naval base at Manila, the location of its headquarters in the islands, or collocated with fortifications on Corregidor at the mouth of Manila Bay, (where Dewey had defeated the Armada just a few years before). Dewey, as head of the General Board, and the leaders in the Department of the Navy appreciated the deep-water harbor at Subic Bay, believing naval guns protecting the approaches to the bay, as well as a defense in depth allowed by naval minefields, would allow an adequate defense of facilities until relief from Hawai’i or California arrived. The Army viewed Subic Bay askance, claiming it needed hundreds of miles of trenches, as well as thousands of soldiers, to protect the navy base from an overland flanking attack. Both the Navy and Army petitioned President Theodore Roosevelt and Congress to back their bespoke plans for the defense of the Philippines. Facing the squabbling between the two services, and as the recipient of bad information about both positions, Roosevelt decided Hawai’i would be the best location for the key U.S. Navy base in the Pacific. This decision meant that in 1909 the Marines turned the temporary defensive improvements built on Grande Island and upon the heights surrounding the basin, over to units from Army coastal fortification units. In ensuing years the Army built permanent fortification on Grande Island, christened Fort Wint. 

The Navy continued to expand and develop Subic Bay, until abandoning it on Christmas 1941 in the face of Japanese overland attacks. After Japanese occupation, Subic Bay returned to U.S. control and grew to be a major base from which the Navy operated through the Cold War. 

The history of U.S. forces at Subic Bay and Olongopo has faded with time, more so since the U.S. abandoned all its facilities in the Philippines in the early 1990s. The threat facing the archipelago nation today comes from China, not Japan, and U.S. influence the republic is a shadow of its former self. Yet Subic Bay’s location, and physical proximity to a conflict zone means that it may once again be a key location for U.S. naval power.