[The KG9 Kid]

One other thing I'd heard is that the mortar pits out were too close together at the range they were on -- that's intended to mitigate casualties in precisely this type of event. Instead, the detonation killed several of the crew members at the next gun positions over.

That's part of why they thrashed the whole chain of command.

[ken5050]

Look, I still have the scars on my hand and face from an "incident" on the grenade range at Quantico in 1968. Somebody a few pits over just froze, and several of us were very lucky..but it was an accident.

To take the points you both make, let's say that range had been in sue for many years, configured exactly the same way, and what, tens of thousands of Marines had gone through the course, with exactly the same training standards and specifications, with nary ONE fatality..and now..all of a sudden, it's a command failure due to improper training and leadership? It may be, but we don't know..if we create a culture of zero-tolerance for training incidents..in which the price for such an event is your career, then it's gonna end up costing many more lives in combat..you train like you fight, you fight like you trained..