This article was originally published in the July 2022 issue of Ordnance magazine. This reprint has been re-improved and edited, supplemented and sorted out by the secondary content, so as to share with the same friends. Personally, I think that "Weapons" magazine is a professional and objective military magazine, and it is recommended to continue to subscribe to enrich their military knowledge. Reprinting some of the older articles on them is mainly to let readers examine the things and opinions of the past from another and more unique perspective.
Please click on the link: Beirut Barracks Explosion - U.S. Marine Corps Lebanon "Hard Brigade" (part 1 of 2)
"Firefights are fought on all sides"
In August 1983, Beirut became a complete battlefield. Israeli forces have been withdrawing from the area since 28 August, and lebanese armed forces have been fighting over the former Israeli-occupied areas. Naturally, the US military in this area cannot "not stick to a trace of smoke and dust" in this battle.
On the morning of 29 August, several 82 mm mortar shells landed on the positions of the A Company of the 1st Battalion Commando, killing Second Lieutenant George Rossi on the spot and wounding 4 others. Sergeant Alexander Ortega, one of the wounded, later died in hospital. This was the first time that the U.S. Marines stationed in Beirut had suffered casualties due to "direct fire." Sergeant Donald Williams of Company A recalled the scene: "The lieutenant and the sergeant went to the command post tent to get the radio backup battery, and they only stayed there for 30 seconds before they died. ”
In September, too, there was a lot of fighting, and the Americans had no way of judging who was firing at whom. As the command of the 24th Amphibious Force recorded: "There were isolated mortar and artillery fire points everywhere, and fire was exchanged on all sides. A veteran of the U.S. military who had received a medal in the Vietnam War said he had never experienced "such a dense barrage of mortar, artillery and rocket attacks."
In the early hours of 19 September, a Palestinian force in the mountains of Beirut attacked Lebanese government forces, who requested firepower assistance from the U.S. military. With the approval of the Pentagon, the U.S. nuclear-powered guided-missile cruiser Virginia, the guided-missile destroyers John Rogers and Larford, and the guided-missile frigate Bourne fired 360 shells of different calibers in five hours, which were cruising off the coast of Beirut. The Lebanese government later issued a report saying that "the Palestinians collapsed under this devastating artillery fire and the Lebanese army turned the tide of the war." ”
Snipers and observers of U.S. Marines use surveillance equipment to observe the area around Beirut airfield
The artillery strike from the sea made all the participants in the Lebanese civil war see clearly what the US military was. As Lt. Col. Harold Sracum, executive officer of the 24th Amphibious Force, put it: "While (before) we were not necessarily considered friends, it is clear that we were not seen as enemies either. However, the provision of U.S. naval artillery support to Lebanese government forces changed the nature of the mission. The U.S. Marine Corps is now seen as a target by everyone outside the government forces. ”
The Gwankoku Marine Corps' AH-1 Cobra helicopter gunship landed at a take-off and landing site near Beirut airport
Like her predecessor, Mead, Gerald found it difficult to accurately understand the task of being entrusted to her. The commander of the 24th Amphibious Force said, "The concept of 'presence' is too complicated, and the Marine Corps is a shock force." We have not heard of such a task. And allegedly, "at all levels of the chain of command, there are even different perceptions of the exact meaning of the 'presence' role of the U.S. military and multinational forces." ”
Despite the dire situation, the ensuing Month of October showed a rare calm. The gunfire around the American barracks seemed to disappear in an instant. This allowed the 24th Amphibious Force Marines to relax their tense nerves and begin to eagerly await the mid-November change of defense.
"Hilton Beirut"
At the time, the U.S. military presence in Beirut was characterized by a number of buildings of varying sizes occupied by marines. Among them, the headquarters building of the amphibious force is located in the administrative district of Beirut International Airport, which is a two-storey reinforced concrete building. Once the airport's fire school, the building features parking spaces, several offices and a utility room known as the "Big James Tavern" on the first floor, and the offices and dormitories of the amphibious commander on the second floor.
Across the road from the headquarters of the amphibious forces is a single-storey steel-concrete building occupied by the Support Brigade. The bungalow is not conspicuous, but sandbags stacked at several entrances and exits remind passers-by to wait for a military installation.
To the southwest of the amphibious forces headquarters stands a four-story steel-concrete structure that has been repeatedly damaged by shootings and fires, which is the camp of the landing team of the main force of the amphibious forces. The building, dubbed the Beirut Hilton by the U.S. military, has previously been occupied by the Lebanese Aviation Authority, the PLO and the Syrian army. It was used as an office building, barracks, warehouse and hospital. When the 32nd Amphibious Force arrived in Beirut in early August 1982, it was established as a battalion for the Battalion Landing Force. By October 1983, the "occupants" were three Marine company of the Commando Corps of the 1st Battalion of the 24th Amphibious Force.
The main battalion of amphibious forces known to the U.S. military as the "Beirut Hilton"
The main battalion of amphibious forces known to the U.S. military as the "Beirut Hilton"
The reinforced concrete BLT building was considered by the Americans to be the perfect place to defend against multiple weapons attacks. Compared to other buildings in the same area, the 4-storey building also has other advantages for military use. First, the U.S. military's materiel warehouse was located in the center of the building to facilitate the distribution of food, drinking water and ammunition to companies and sentries. Secondly, the entire building itself is an excellent observation post, and the roof provides a 360-degree view of the whole, which is almost unique among buildings within the airport area. Similarly, the roof of the building's top floor became a good choice for communication platforms, on which the Marine Corps set up radio stations that could maintain unimpeded radio communications with the support ships of the 6th Fleet on the Mediterranean Sea, which were usually 3 to 6 kilometers away from the Lebanese coast.
Before israel invaded Lebanon, the four-story building had intact walls and windows from the 2nd to 4th floors. By the time the U.S. Marines moved in, all the glass was broken, and the American soldiers filled the windows with plywood, plastic sheets, gauze, and sandbags. They also directly called the building "BLT". Although the name comes from the unit's name, its spelling does match the abbreviation for a sandwich.
To the south of the main body of the building is a large open space surrounded by a large number of barbed wire, sandbags, and sentry posts as a safe buffer against the building and external space. Two sandbag bunkers were set up in it, and duty posts were set up. To the south of this buffer zone is a gravel-paved parking lot where vehicles arriving at the BLT building from the outside stop. Usually, two LVTP-7 tracked amphibious combat vehicles patrol the area.
October 23, 1983 was a Sunday. At 5:24 a.m. local time, the temperature in Beirut rose to 25 degrees Celsius at dawn. For the sentries of the 24th Marine Corps Amphibious Forces who were on duty at the post in front of the BLT building, this was a pleasant temperature. Since it was Sunday, the entire Marine Corps complex seemed quiet. The revised camp schedule had just come into effect, and the wake-up call would not sound until 6:30 a.m., when the more than 400 Marines and Navy personnel in the building would wake up from their slumber. They then have a brunch between 8 and 10 a.m., then write letters, read books and maybe play a rugby game in the afternoon, followed by a weekend barbecue, burgers and hot dogs.
At this time, on the airport road that connects the beirut city area and the airport terminal, the traffic flow is relatively small. The road stretches to the west of the BLT building. Previously, Geralty had warned his men to be wary of suspicious vehicles, as armed factions were allegedly seeking the possibility of carrying out car bomb attacks on U.S. military compounds. Corporal Eddie Difranco, who was in post 6, one of the two posts on the open ground south of the BLT building, noticed a yellow Mercedes-Benz truck driving in the parking lot south of the post and stared at it. However, the truck circled around the parking lot and then left in the direction of the terminal.
"BLT is finished!"
An hour later, at 6:22 a.m., according to U.S. military reports, Difranco saw what appeared to be the same yellow Mercedes truck coming back and into the parking lot outside the BLT building. This time, the truck circled around the parking lot and headed for the barbed wire barricade that stood between the parking lot and the BLT building. The truck suddenly accelerated, slammed into a section of barbed wire, and drove at high speed between posts 6 and 7 in the open space on the south side of the building, heading straight for the building.
Witnessing all this, Di Franko was stunned, and he tried to insert the magazine into the M16 rifle in his hand. However, under the combined influence of nervousness and the upper body armor, Difranco moved very slowly, only to shoot a few shots at the truck's ass.
At Post 7, opposite Post 6, Henry Ringera, who was on duty, was wandering. After hearing the sound of the truck hitting the barbed wire, he hurriedly inserted the magazine into his M16 rifle, but it was too late to fire.
In addition to posts 6 and 7, there is also a checkpoint 5 next to the fence not far from the southwest corner of the BLT building. John Berthiom, who was on duty there, watched as the truck approached. He guessed the truck driver's intentions, but from the position of post 5, it was too late to do anything.
At this moment, next to the guardhouse at the entrance of the building, Sergeant Stephen Russell was facing the clearing with his back. After hearing the roar of the truck's engine speeding up, he turned around and saw the yellow Mercedes truck crushing a piece of barbed wire and rushing straight towards the building. Russell subconsciously thought the truck was out of control. He ran from the guardhouse into the building, ran through the foyer toward the back door, shouting, "Lie down!" Lie down! ”
As he fled, Russell hurriedly glanced back just in time to see the truck rush into his guardhouse. Just a second or two later, the yellow truck exploded in the foyer of the BLT building. Later U.S. military investigations found that the truck was loaded with at least 5,000 pounds (about 2,260 kilograms) of high explosives.
Russell was suddenly shaken away from the building by the air current and fainted. When the badly wounded sergeant regained consciousness, he found himself lying on the road outside the BLT building, surrounded by various debris. The 4-story building BLT, which used to stand, is now a pile of stuffed concrete slag and extremely twisted metal. A thick mushroom-shaped black cloud tumbled up, and the building was razed to the ground in a matter of seconds.
Earlier, at amphibious force headquarters northeast of the BLT building, 24th amphibious force commander Gerati had gotten up at 5:30 a.m. After going to the operations command center on the first floor to check it out, he returned to the office rest area on the second floor. When the sudden explosion of the barracks occurred, the buildings of the amphibious forces headquarters were also shaken, all the window glass was shattered, and structural cracks occurred in many external walls.
Geraldy hurried out of the office and found dust and debris in the air. He rushed to the first floor, only to see that "thick fog and debris were still falling." Then, Geraldy ran outside, "Just then, the dust and fog began to clear, and I turned around to find the BLT building gone. I can't explain exactly how I felt at the time, it's unbelievable. ”
At the time of the big explosion, Lieutenant Colonel Sracum, the executive officer of the 24th Amphibious Force, was still lying in his bunk. When Colonel Geralty returned to find him, Sracum was in a hurry to get dressed, and Geraldy shouted at him, "Oh my God, the BLT is over!" Can you believe it, the building is gone! ”
The two officers ran one after the other towards the destroyed barracks building. Until they stepped on a ruin, Sracum was completely unaware that the place he was stepping on was where the BLT building was before. "It's just this surreal scene. So weird, so horrifying, your brain can't understand it at all. 4 minutes after the explosion, gray dust was everywhere within your eyesight. ”
The largest non-nuclear explosion
Michael Thomas, a 20-year-old Marine Corporal, slept on the first floor of the BLT building at the time of the incident. He was one lucky man, and the dorm room where Toma was located was only about 30 meters away from the exploded Mercedes truck, but he survived. "When I woke up, I found that they were carrying me out on a stretcher, and I saw the sun and the blue sky at once, shouldn't I have seen the sky so quickly?" It turned out that our building was missing. ”
Many of Thomas's comrades were not so lucky. When the last body was cleared from the rubble by the rescue team, statistics showed that as many as 241 American troops died in the attack. Of these, 220 were Marines, 18 were Naval Medics and 3 were U.S. Army Officers. This death figure meant that the 1st Battalion Commando of the 24th Amphibious Force of the U.S. Marine Corps was wiped out.
A lucky Marine, who was dug out of the rubble by search and rescue crews, was the most widely publicized in the international media during the bombing.
Among those involved in the rescue that day was William Pickles, the captain of the CH-46E Sea Knight helicopter. Initially, Seacles heard that the French in the multinational force had been attacked, so he flew to the scene in a helicopter. "But when someone started taking the wounded to the helicopter, I quickly noticed that they had the American Star-Spangled Banner embroidered on their sleeves."
The news that Seacles heard was not fake news, because just two minutes after the attack on the U.S. Marine Barracks, another bomb truck burst into the French barracks in the beirut city, killing 58 French paratroopers. Seacles had always felt that this scene in Beirut was the darkest moment of his life, but years later it was New York's turn. On September 11, 2001, when he witnessed the events of 911 on live television, he said: "The scene of the collapse of the Petronas Twin Towers and the dust of New York City stung me deeply, and it made my adrenaline surge, like it reappeared on October 23, 1983." ”
After the attack on the American barracks, the French barracks were also attacked by car bombs, killing 58 French paratroopers.
The explosion of the Beirut barracks was not small. FBI technical experts who rushed to the scene from within the United States determined that this was the "largest non-nuclear explosion" they had ever studied. For the U.S. Marine Corps, October 23, 1983, became the day with the highest number of Marine deaths in a single day since the Battle of Iwo Jima in 1945.
Across the country, the general public found their favorite Sunday television program constantly interrupted by special news reports about the beirut bombing. Throughout the day, horrific images of explosions appeared on the television screens of thousands of homes. Parents, wives and friends of the 24th Amphibious Marines began vigil, anxiously awaiting the casualty list. In as far away as Beirut, however, rescuers had major problems in identifying the dead and wounded: Many Marines removed metal plaques marking their identities before going to sleep. And without these "dog tags", how to distinguish who is who?
U.S. Marines searched through the rubble, trying to find more survivors.
The ensuing policy discussions have also left the American people frustrated and saddened by such a huge and senseless loss. Many have begun to question the value of the "presence" of the U.S. Marine Corps in Lebanon.
Gen. John Kelly of the U.S. Marine Corps has since admitted in a congressional hearing: "Our security measures are not enough to stop a large truck." The truck, loaded with 5,000 pounds of explosives, drove at high speed and was driven by a suicide driver. ”
The FBI's findings also show that explosives are loaded at about 5,000 pounds, and that the explosive power of truck bombs is further increased to the equivalent of 12,000 pounds (about 5,400 kilograms) of TNT explosives under the influence of propane or other highly volatile gases. The explosion collapsed the four-storey building, creating a crater 11.8 metres long, 8.9 metres wide and 2.4 metres deep on the foundation of the building. Technologists also concluded that even if the truck failed to reach the lobby of the BLT building, but instead exploded in the open space outside the building's door, it would still have almost the same lethal effect.
Soon after, an independent commission of inquiry led by U.S. Admiral Robert Lang began its work to find out the omissions within the U.S. military. The committee's ultimate conclusion was that U.S. command levels differed in their understanding of the Marine Corps' so-called "presence" mission in Lebanon, and that these differences resulted in disagreements between the Marine Corps' mandate scope and troop density in Beirut. Ultimately, the committee recommended that Washington reconsider diplomatic intervention in Lebanon's civil war.
In 1983, U.S. Vice President George W. Bush inspected the scene of the Beirut bombing.
Failed again
After research, U.S. intelligence agencies concluded that the truck bomb attack was planned by Lebanon's Allah Party in a camp in the Bekaa Valley. In response, President Reagan approved a joint U.S.-French air strike against the camp. However, the operation was halted before the bomb-laden plane was about to take off. The Lang team's views already reflect the opinion of the U.S. legislature: It's time to put an end to it.
Until then, the last change of guard will have to go according to plan. On 19 November 1983, the 22nd Amphibious Force arrived in Beirut and replaced the battered 24th Amphibious Force. Operation Beirut 6, code-named "Beirut 6," became the last U.S. military intervention during the Lebanese civil war.
Sergeant Manny Cox was a squad leader in Company G of the 2nd Battalion Landing Force of the 22nd Amphibious Force. On 4 December 1983, he led several of his men on duty at Observation Post 76 in the Beirut Airport area. Cox's post was attacked for hours that night. When a shell hit Observation Post No. 76 directly, Cox and seven Marines were killed. Corporal Harold Klein led the team to support, but by then there were no living people in the entire post.
The bodies of the victims of the Beirut bombing were sent home from the U.S. Navy aircraft carrier
On the other side of the ocean, the American people have had enough. While Reagan said that "staying in Beirut is critical to maintaining our reputation around the world," Defense Secretary Weinberg also said "Lebanon cannot be easily left because the region is extremely important to the United States and the West as a whole." By early February 1984, however, Reagan had quietly informed Britain, France, and Italy that the United States would withdraw its troops from Lebanon.
The withdrawal came quickly. On 26 February, all officers and men of the 22nd Amphibious Force boarded a ship and fled. A year and a half since August 1982, the U.S. military's so-called "peacekeeping" trip in Lebanon came to an end. In this way, a sudden suicide attack transformed the United States with the sound of the explosion. And when the explosion occurred, the English word for "suicide attack" had not yet become the language of the news.
During the 18-month intervention, a total of 238 U.S. Marines died and 151 were wounded for "combat reasons," and 47 Marines were wounded for "non-combat reasons." To show the Marine Corps' "exploits" in Beirut, an additional Beirut barracks explosion monument was added after Arlington Cemetery in Virginia.
Looking back, the American people have to ask themselves: "Is it all worth it?" In response, Robert McFarlane, who served as U.S. National Security Adviser from 1983 to 1985 and as President Reagan's Special Envoy to the Middle East, publicly acknowledged the dispatch of Marines to Lebanon, "This incident is one of the most costly and tragic policy failures in the history of U.S. counterterrorism operations." ”