Manila Bay, Battle of
Manila Bay, Battle of (1898).As tensions between Spain and the United States over Cuba increased during 1896 and 1897, naval officers in the Office of Naval Intelligence and the Naval War College began to develop plans for a conflict with Spain. As finally adopted in the spring of 1897, these plans included an attack on the Spanish Philippines as a diversion from the Cuban theater, and as a way of improving the U.S. position in peace negotiations.
After the outbreak of war in April 1898, the commander of the Asiatic Squadron, Commodore George Dewey, who had already been alerted to the imminence of war by Navy assistant secretary Theodore Roosevelt, received orders from President William McKinley to “capture or destroy” the Spanish naval squadron in the Philippines.
Dewey's six modern warships, some armed with guns as large as...
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