Posted on 06/10/2021 9:23:52 AM PDT by PROCON
A Marine Corps general has been permanently relieved of duty after the service determined he failed to properly train Marines and sailors, leading to the deaths of nine troops when an amphibious vehicle sank off the coast of Southern California last year.
On Wednesday, the Marine Corps confirmed Maj. Gen. Robert F. Castellvi, the former Commanding General of the 1st Marine Division had been relieved of his command. “He will not return to that position,” Marine Corps spokesman Capt. Andrew Wood said in a statement Wednesday, reported by Business Insider.
Wood added Marine Corps Commandant Gen. David Berger “took adverse administration action against him.”
According to officials, Castellvi was first suspended in April following the deadly but preventable training accident 70 miles of the San Diego’s coast.
“He was found responsible for a lack of training. No action was taken against him, and up until last week he was, in fact, the inspector general for the Marine Corps,” said Rep. Jackie Speier (D-CA) during a hearing on the incident in May.
(Excerpt) Read more at americanmilitarynews.com ...
There’s more. At least there’s some accountability in the armed services. Now about Benghazi.
It did. The lieutenant colonel battalion commander was relieved of command. He subsequently retired and, unfortunately, died a few years later in a tractor accident on his farm.
I was a Captain on active duty in the Marine Corps at the time and his brother, a Major, was one of our discussion group leaders at the Amphibious Warfare School (now the Expeditionary Warfare School). He shared some of the details of the tragedy with us.
If I recall correctly, in addition to the platoon commander lieutenant, the company commander captain was relieved and some battalion staff officers
were also punished.
The missing Marine was a road guide posted at a critical intersection in the desert to direct vehicles onto the correct road as they returned to their exercise base camp (Camp Wilson) at the conclusion of a major combined arms exercise (CAX). The plan called for the Marine (along with all the other road guides) to be picked up in a final sweep after all the convoys had passed through.
In the meantime, the Marine had apparently concluded he had been forgotten and decided to self-recover back to the base camp by his own route (which was not by following the main service road). Being an infantryman, he had his rifle with him. The recovery team didn’t find him and just assumed he had otherwise hooked up a ride back to camp.
And leadership, from his platoon commander on up, also simply assumed he was somewhere in the 1000+ Marines of the BLT busy in the base camp. Upon return, the BLT immediately cleaned up (themselves and their equipment), turned in borrowed equipment and excess ammunition, settled exercise-related accounts, began turning over camp facilities and property to the next training unit, and began the complicated air movement back to Camp Lejeune. The infantry companies had the least amount of clean up and turn in to do, so they were slated to begin movement almost immediately.
The Expeditionary Airfield (EAF) has subsequently been improved, but, at the time, the air movement required a short flight in C-130s from the EAF to Norton AFB where the troops were reassembled into larger passenger loads to fly on chartered jet airliners to MCAS Cherry Point. On arrival at Cherry Point, they were then reconfigured again into charter bus loads to move by road back to Camp Lejeune proper.
I’ll stand corrected on this if I am wrong, but I seem to recall that the Marine wasn’t actually missed and the active search began to find him until his rifle was not turned in to the battalion armory. This absence was discovered while the unit was still midway through its movement from 29 Palms to Camp Lejeune.
It’s typical Marine humor to think that you can be missing/UA/AWOL for days but your F’ing rifle either better be on you or in its F’ing assigned slot in the F’ing armory or there will be F’ing Hell to pay.
It took a while to locate him, but, yeah, the Marine still had his rifle with him when they found his body.
>>Training can be dangerous.
Exactly...training how to write computer code? not so dangerous - training to go to war - extremely dangerous.
There is no way you can train soldiers in realistic scenarios, without them being in danger - extreme danger at times - and enough people in extreme danger for enough time, and people get killed - very sad of course, but probably inevitable.
In my opinion unless you train to the point that some people get might get killed - i.e. in extremely dangerous situations - then you would probably end up with more people getting killed when they are in actual combat situations - because they haven’t done ‘it’ before - whatever that ‘it’ is.
Jail higher-ups because soldiers get killed in training? no thanks - unless you can prove deliberate malice and intent, which I don’t think we have here.
Could have been 20-30+ years ago. You know the details. Tragic. Didn’t have to happen. Shouldn’t have happened. The vets amongst us all know about the term ‘all present and accounted for’. But 4 days? I know I wanted someone to hang and If II remember right the lower levels felt they were being singled out as scapegoats. Higher ups need to feel that fear of neglecting the simplest stuff under worst case scenarios. these ones didn’t.
I remember that episode because it could have easily been me. At the time I had just gotten my discharge. It made me want to look into the subject of fragging but that’s another subject. It appeared in some movies at the time.
I have interacted with Castellvi. As far as Marine generals go, Castellvi was ok.
The deaths happened under his watch, so he takes the blame. Commanders are responsible for culture.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_F._Castellvi
No relevance whatsoever to the tragic event in question............
Want to carry it further? Who nominated Mattis to his position in the Marines? Lets hang him too.........Sheesh!
it’s said that the sailors had to use the lights of their cell phones to try to find an unmarked escape hatch.
Why the escape hatch was unmarked, why the sailors didn’t know where it was or how to open it, and why there was no ‘buddy’ tank with the anphibious to enable rescue are the three things that sunk the General. Seeing how he’s ‘in charge’ of training, he gets the booby prize. But the fault lies at the feet of the training NCO and maintenance NCO. No excuse for unmarked and unknown.
I read most of the accident report.
I did not realize that amphibious assault vehicles were designed for open ocean work 65 miles offshore.
Guess so. Sort of.
From MCTP 3-10c “Employment of amphibious Assault Vehicles” PCN 147 000038 00 2018
“The AAV is the most seaworthy personnel landing
craft in military service. It is capable of operating
in calm to moderate seas. Depending on the
cargo load, the AAV can negotiate up to 10-feet
plunging surf and can self-right from a 180-degree
roll. Powered by two 21-inch water-jets, the AAV
has a maximum water speed of 8.2 miles per hour
and is capable of a waterborne range in excess of
45 miles in calm seas. Although relatively slow in
the water, the vehicle is capable of safe, long distance
water marches that are limited only by extremely rough seas and associated effects of motion sickness on embarked personnel.”
65 miles out in the Pacific still seems pretty sporty. These machines were first introduced in 1972! I only thought my stuff was old.
Amen
if a meteor from another galaxy like oumuamua comes staight down from the heavens on high, 10,000 times faster than Ma duece bullet and impacts your AO, the superman demigod commander will asked: “what did you do to prevent this?”
Not when you’re using your phone to post.
Sorry for this late reply. Today was busy.
The incident happened in the late 1980s. 33 years ago.
Here are articles I found on it:
https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1988-12-27-mn-812-story.html
Every officer with direct involvement was relieved of command/duty and probably left the Marine Corps.
I thought I had been told that LtCol Robeson had retired but cannot confirm he actually was allowed to retire. Retiring is sometimes permitted for more senior officers instead of being tried by a courts martial in certain circumstances. Very individualized, convening authority’s discretion, subject to review, etc.
The other officers were too junior in rank to retire. But they might have been offered a plea deal to accept responsibility and receive a stiff fine and resign instead of going to trial. Again, I have no specific information on what happened.
The enlisted leaders were apparently courts martialed. Don’t know how those trials turned out but it seems reasonable to hold them accountable. After all, it was their primary job to keep track of the Marines in their squad and platoon.
I was BLT and Bn S-4 on CAX at 29 Palms in 1980, so I know how bad that terrain can be. The 3 day final combined arms exercise at that time took place in the “Delta Corridor” which was a ...what?...20+ kilometer long corridor between the mountains with a dog leg left turn about 2/3rds up the valley. The exercise ended with a final assault as the force exited the top of the corridor. Then it was haul a_ _ back to Camp Wilson to clean up, turn in equipment, etc. and start the air flow I described in my first post. After at least 3 weeks, everyone was really eager to get out of there. Except me. The S-4 is always among the first in and the last out. Just the way things were then and are now.
We were there in October as I recall, so we got both extremes of the temperature range: routinely high 80-90F temps during the day and 45-50 at night.
Away from Mainside/Camp Wilson/EAF, it was lonesome. There was no ordinary back and forth traffic on the main service road leading away from the built-up areas. And once you turned off the MSR into the exercise areas, forget it. No reason for anyone to just be out there. Strictly business only.
When the sun went down, if there was no moon and you were between the ridgelines, it was very, very dark. Even with a map and compass, navigation at night is difficult because the valley floor is broad enough that recognizeable terrain features cannot be readily seen, much less identified - especially under blackout conditions. Just a vertical wall of darkness maybe a thousand feet high with the stars twinkling faintly overhead. (All the widely available GPS nav aids used today came later.) Daytime was better but you were still roadbound (easier on you and the vehicles) and navigated from road junctions and used distant but recognizeable terrain features to gauge where you were on the road in otherwise difficult to read scrub brush terrain.
My general rule for being found is to first stop being lost. That is, if possible, return to some known point that the search party is going come to. To me, that would mean staying at the checkpoint, getting as comfortable as I could and waiting.
Given the terrain and its isolation, after about 24 hours, that strategy would need re-evaluating. By now, you’ve drunk a bit of your water, eaten some of your food, and endured a lot of heat. Hopefully, you’ve made some shade for yourself and done what you could to prevent overheating.
You have no map, no compass, and you don’t really know where you are except you are somewhere on Big Ole 29 Palms. And you’re 19 years old and used to being told what to do. So choosing to try to walk out was a reasonable choice - once you forced yourself to decide to self-rescue.
The only alternative to that is something an older person might choose to do because they have enough experience to counter balance the negative of getting into trouble with the positive of saving their life. You could start a fire. And not just a little one either. You have ammunition, a rifle, an entrenching took and acres and acres of brush, highly flammable brush.
Bases don’t like fires, even in training areas. A big fire producing a lot of smoke is going to draw attention immediately and cause units to be sent to investigate its source. And there you would be waiting. Alive, still in reasonable physical condition, etc.
You MIGHT be in trouble but not nearly in half as much as the superiors who had abandoned you out there and still wouldn’t figure out they had done so for another 20 hours.
Now, the question is: Considering your maturity level, personality, temperment, etc. WHEN YOU WERE 19, would you have waited and then set the fire while you still had the strenght to do so?
Or would you have spend all your resources and energy trying to walk out, like the Marine did?
Be honest.
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