Posted on 03/27/2021 10:25:15 AM PDT by Retain Mike
The deadly events of July 30, 2020, marked the end of a “chain of failure” that began seven months before, when an AAV platoon belonging to 3rd Amphibian Assault Battalion at Camp Pendleton, Calif., received inoperable amphibious vehicles just a few months before they’d join the 15th Marine Expeditionary Unit to train for an overseas deployment, according to the senior investigator.
The battalion “did not properly train or equip this AAV Platoon for a very difficult MEU training cycle and deployment,” the investigator wrote. “They formed the platoon late, the platoon was not properly trained and evaluated to join the 15th MEU, and they were assigned AAVs in horrible condition.”
The mishap was the culmination of a “combination of maintenance failures, due to disregard of maintenance procedures, AAV crewmen not evacuating personnel when the situation clearly demanded they be evacuated, and improper training of embarked personnel on AAV safety procedures,” the investigator wrote.
Additionally, the training off San Clemente Island didn’t have the proper safety procedures in place that could have helped evacuate the crew from the floundering amtrac, according to the investigation
(Excerpt) Read more at news.usni.org ...
That this all took place over some thirty minutes is almost unimaginable.
These men should all have been topside with their gear left below in the troop compartment.
Yes. However, what I've read it was more attributed to poor leadership and training. One was due to the OOD having some pissy fit with the CIC commander - both women. I read the other one was due to faulty radar and a lack of topside lookouts.
In my Navy, neither would have happened.
Compare that to the US Navy, where the reports from fatal accidents a few years ago show that ships were sent out missing working navigation gear.
No officers seem willing to own up to the fact that their equipment is not ready for service and personnel are not sufficiently trained. There has to be a strong institutional perverse incentive for not doing so. Makes me wonder how many units of our armed forces are actually sufficiently ready for combat, and if anyone actually knows because of the constant deceit. And once a military culture becomes corrupted by deceit and careerism like this, it's very difficult to get rid of because every incoming cohort of new officers are habituated to it very quickly.
Does it make a difference nowadays?....If a trans male Marine “thinks” hes pregnant...he'll get the same benefits as the female or he'll make millions on the lawsuit...
“In my Navy, neither would have happened.”
They abolished Surface Warfare Officer School. That’s like the medical profession abolishing med school.
I felt sick at the time. The report is worse than I imagined. Prayers for family and loved ones.
I didn’t point out that the units doing this was America’s Guard of Honor/First Response 82nd Airborne Division.
It sucked knowing when you went on DRF1 that DRF2 and DRF3 in your brigade did not have functioning military vehicles, guns, radios to follow in 18-24 hours in relief.
Of course, most of our training was one-way ticket stuff like stopping soviet armor in the mountains of Iran or Middle East and we were told if we did not hold for 24-hours our position and the enemy would be nuked in the event of a break thru.... We ate it up thinking we wanted to slug it out with the Ruskies, or later the Iranians. Sometimes we got insurgency missions in S. America or SE Asia; these they said we had great odds of success.
Maybe our generals are drinking the Signal Corps Kool Aid where we shut down enemy communications and bomb them until they sue for peace.
I don't know if those officers who were relieved of their duties deserved this or not, but I can't help but think that there was a lot of outrage against the loss of life on the AAV that was behind the investigation and that may have led to the actions against the higher-ups.
But these men didn't die because of a decision somewhere to look the other way on a report or on a training matter; they died because of piss-poor decision-making on the AAV at the time.
The incident took place over thirty minutes. At what time does an NCO give the order to have everyone drop their gear in the troop compartment and get topside with their life vests? If it wasn't when the water was up to their ankles, or even up to their knees, when was it?
Forget about what some colonel did or didn't do. Who was in charge on that boat?
But it also seems clear that the NCO did not receive proper training (nor did the men in the AAV), and that most of the AAVs in the exercise should never have been used.
Both the training and the maintenance were the responsibility of the higher officers.
No one in the services seem to have any interest in addressing these root causes, probably because close examination would show that officers from lieutenants to four star generals have been lying consistently about readiness for years. They'll hang these two out to dry to distract from that.
He was a great CO.
Like you don't need a manual to tell you these folks could probably have a problem. On our LST we made sure the boats or LVT's and the destination all shared the same radio frequency. They were never alone.
Sounds like you were lucky enough to have a good CO. The fact that the bad amtraks were just passed on and the new CO did nothing tells me this is now SOP. I find it hard to believe they don’t care at all about the welfare of their men, so I think either the officers had no understanding of the dangers involved or the culture of ignoring lack of readiness is really deeply ingrained. Not sure which is worse.
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