I just finished watching a series on Freevee called Almost Paradise, a joint Filipino-American production about a medically retired DEA agent who retreats to an island in the Philippines where he had once spent time, thinking it is still the idyllic paradise it was then only to find that it’s been developed and the formerly pristine beaches are now occupied by high rise resorts and hotels. The series interested me because it is set and was filmed on Mactan, an island in the Visayans where I spent a pleasant three or four months way back in 1965, or I should say where I had a bed since I spent much of my time flying around the Western Pacific and Southeast Asia. I had never heard of Mactan when my C-130 squadron at Pope Air Force Base, North Carolina got word we were going there. I was familiar with and had been to Clark Field on Luzon, the main Philippines island I would learn was some 400 miles north of Mactan. During the classified pre-departure briefing (which I wasn’t allowed to attend because I was DNIF and wasn’t going to depart with the squadron but would go over later), attendees were told that Mactan is a tiny island just off of the island of Cebu and across the harbor from Cebu City, the Philippines’ largest city. The island was historically significant because the Portuguese explorer, Ferdinand Magellan, lost his life there during his ill-fated voyage around the world. (His men, some of them, completed the voyage but Magellan died there.) They were also told that Mactan was the site of one of a number of secret airfields the United States had built at isolated locations around the world to serve as recovery bases for Strategic Air Command’s fleet of bombers during a nuclear war. Like the other bases in the Congo, Pakistan and elsewhere, the airfield on Mactan consisted of a long, concrete runway and large parking ramp, also made of concrete. The Philippines Air Force had a facility there with a fighter squadron flying F-86s but we were going into a “bare base,” meaning hastily constructed base of tents over wooden frames and jungle hooches constructed by SAC’s Red Horse civil engineering units. There was a town on the island called Lapulapu after the Filipino chieftain who killed Magellan and a few barrios. The only Americans on the island other than us were a few Peace Corps workers and missionaries.
Mactan
Mactan
Mactan
I just finished watching a series on Freevee called Almost Paradise, a joint Filipino-American production about a medically retired DEA agent who retreats to an island in the Philippines where he had once spent time, thinking it is still the idyllic paradise it was then only to find that it’s been developed and the formerly pristine beaches are now occupied by high rise resorts and hotels. The series interested me because it is set and was filmed on Mactan, an island in the Visayans where I spent a pleasant three or four months way back in 1965, or I should say where I had a bed since I spent much of my time flying around the Western Pacific and Southeast Asia. I had never heard of Mactan when my C-130 squadron at Pope Air Force Base, North Carolina got word we were going there. I was familiar with and had been to Clark Field on Luzon, the main Philippines island I would learn was some 400 miles north of Mactan. During the classified pre-departure briefing (which I wasn’t allowed to attend because I was DNIF and wasn’t going to depart with the squadron but would go over later), attendees were told that Mactan is a tiny island just off of the island of Cebu and across the harbor from Cebu City, the Philippines’ largest city. The island was historically significant because the Portuguese explorer, Ferdinand Magellan, lost his life there during his ill-fated voyage around the world. (His men, some of them, completed the voyage but Magellan died there.) They were also told that Mactan was the site of one of a number of secret airfields the United States had built at isolated locations around the world to serve as recovery bases for Strategic Air Command’s fleet of bombers during a nuclear war. Like the other bases in the Congo, Pakistan and elsewhere, the airfield on Mactan consisted of a long, concrete runway and large parking ramp, also made of concrete. The Philippines Air Force had a facility there with a fighter squadron flying F-86s but we were going into a “bare base,” meaning hastily constructed base of tents over wooden frames and jungle hooches constructed by SAC’s Red Horse civil engineering units. There was a town on the island called Lapulapu after the Filipino chieftain who killed Magellan and a few barrios. The only Americans on the island other than us were a few Peace Corps workers and missionaries.