[qwerty1234]

>>Can he face criminal charges?

Do you really want to go down the path of putting people in prison after every accident? Any accident it could be argued could have been avoided with more or better training - but that is not always the case.

If I kill someone in a car accident, should we lock up my driver’s ed instructor from 40 years ago?

I’ll admit, I don’t know the details of the particular (sad) case, but don’t want to start locking up folks for ‘accidents’; accidents will always happen, especially when training for war.

If I remember correctly, something like 15000 USAF young men were killed just in training during the WW2 buildup.

[PROCON]

Do you really want to go down the path of putting people in prison after every accident?

Accident? You make it sound like it was a fender-bender.

9 Marines died; whether the general was personally responsible is debatable and whether he will have further punishment is yet to be determined.

[fidelis]

If I remember correctly, something like 15000 USAF young men were killed just in training during the WW2 buildup

Pre-WWII would have been USAAF not USAF (created in 1947), but, yeah:

Sobering Stats: 15,000 U.S. Airmen Killed in Training in WW II

[RC one]

I would have been run over by a Bradley Fighting Vehicle one night if I didn't have the radio handset jammed up against my ear and clipped onto my helmet strap. I heard the vehicle commander screaming BACK UP! BACK UP! when enemy infantry was advancing on his vehicle from the front and I was right behind him. I head another vehicle commander scream "DON'T BACK UP! But he did anyways but I was able to get out of the way. That same year we had a tank driver drowned in his driver's seat in a failed river crossing. The tank sank into the mud and wouldn't budge and it just filled up with water. At one point field artillery miscalculated and lobbed 155mm rounds into people's yards. Nobody was hurt thankfully. Then during a nightfire training exercise, one of our Bradley gunners managed to shoot an actual helicopter that he mistook for his training target. Another guy forgot to lock his barrel into the breach and sent it flying downrange about 50 yards when he engaged the weapon. In my sister unit, a private bounced 5.56mm rounds off another soldiers helmet during a trench clearing exercise. I heard the CO about beat him to death for it. Then there was the guy that shot another soldier with a 7.62 machinegun because he didn't understand the concept of open breach firing. It looked like it took his leg off. Someone left me a coax machine gun with 3 live rounds in the feed tray once and I accidentally charged the weapon as I removed it from the turret. I was about to let the bolt go forward when I thought "I better look first". Sure enough. I would have fired that weapon inside an armored vehicle had I not looked. Another soldier handed a M16A2 to his buddy after accidentally charging it instead of clearing it in the clearing barrel and he had no idea until he went to clear it a few hours later. And then there was the 5 ton we rolled down a mountain in Bosnia. And then there was the bridge we destroyed accidentally with a Bradley fighting vehicle. And the civilian car we ran over accidentally. And then there were the card games which occasionally escalated into attempted murder.

Training can be dangerous.

[Cen-Tejas]

I agree with everything you said. Removing the General from this position permanently was the right thing to do and it probably means we will hear in the not too distant future that he retired.

Send him to prison and that will send a chilling message to the rest of the officer corp that could cause an officer to hold back in future situations which is not good for the Corp as a whole.

[wardaddy]

In Jackson Mississippi where I grew up we had a huge plot of Dutch airmen killed in flight school at Jackson Army Airbase in WWII

my grade school class used to visit Veterans Day and lay tulips so they weren’t forgotten

Now that cemetery is surrounded by ghetto sadly

https://nlintheusa.com/royal-netherlands-flying-school/

[blueplum]

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.

[Theophilus]

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?”