Presidential Gun Salute Live Firing Trial

During our first Media Brief, BG Tan Chuan-Jin, Chairman of NDP 09 EXCO shared with everyone how this year's NDP was going to be a night ceremonial parade with a uniquely staged 21-gun Presidential Salute. Having remained tight-lipped about how "unique" the salute was going to be, the public finally got their chance to catch a glimpse of it at today's Presidential Gun Salute Live Firing Trial at the Marina Bay.

The 21-gun Presidential Salute has traditionally been an out-of-sight affair, taking place a considerable distance away from the parade venue. It was not until recently in 2007 that the relocation of the National Day Parade to the Floating Platform enabled the crowd to watch the 21-gun salute across the bay.

In what spells to be yet another unprecedented move by the parade committee, for the very first time, this year's Presidential Gun Salute will be leaving land and headed for the water! In addition to that, this will be the closest the salute has ever gotten to the audience, so expect the gun firing to be earth-shatteringly loud!

To perform this technically demanding feat, a specially constructed floating bridge platform, on which the artillery guns are mounted on to execute the salute.

This will also mark a first time collaboration between the Army's Artillery and Combat Engineers to execute the Presidential Salute.

2WO Tang Boon Wee, Regimental Sergeant-Major of the 35 Singapore Combat Engineers explains, "By bringing the salute into such close proximity with the audience, we hope they would be able to experience the full impact of the firing."

As the first shot went off at 1.17 pm, its loud boom and reverberations in the Marina Bay and CBD area attracted myriads of locals and tourists who wanted to find out what was going on.

Loy Teck Kwee, 68 and Ong Mai Liam, 60, were walking along the Esplanade Promenade with their grandson when the explosive blasts gave them a fright! Nonetheless, they were both very impressed with the sheer loudness of volume generated from the guns.

With that, we hope you look forward to this year's parade as well as many other surprises we have up in store for NDP 09!