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 ...
During Basic my brother and the platoon he was in were on winter maneuvers. Apparently they were not given the proper gear. Sum it up about 1/2 the guys had beginnings of frostbite, or phnomonia. Quite a few had to spend time in sickbay.
By Berger’s logic his own ass should be fired for poor judgment as to who he appointed to command the 1st Div. There was a whole chain of command in between the accident and the general but the military likes to scapegoat people. The brass tried to blame Admiral Kimmel and General Short for Pearl Harbor, and Captain McVay for the Indianapolis. All eventually exhonerated but put through hell. Lots of holier than thou, CYA, and politics. It’s a filthy, heartless business.
“The only lack of leadership was that an NCO on scene didn’t tell them all to leave their gear and get out of a sinking craft.”
That sounds about right. It was certainly a CF with plenty of stupidity to go around for these marines to drown this way.
This may have been a convenient opportunity for them to get rid of the Major General. I suspect there may have been more rationale (justified or not) than just this accident.
I am guessing he made sure the Marines and Sailors were all getting their Diversity Training.
It’s clear he’s a ‘Shit for Brains’ action-approved person by the Obama cretin.
(Raging, at my keyboard, under my breath)
An acquaintance told me that while in Vietnam, he was shot laying on his cot, in his barracks through the fleshy part of the butt by the guy outside the barracks spinning the barrel of a jammed minigun on a helicopter. He cleared the jam alright.
That is extremely unlikely considering the differences in punishment options.
“The brass tried to blame Admiral Kimmel and General Short for Pearl Harbor”
FDR was to blame for Pearl Harbor
I'm sure there is an SOP for dealing with flooding vehicles. The Marines weren't under a really threatening situation until the second track collided with them. That was human error on the part of the other track commander. The ranking man in the sinking track should have taken the initiative to have his men prepared, even prepositioned to exit.
Your argument This wasn't an "accident:" the incident was inevitable given the lax safety training and poor maintenance. assumes systemic problems in a case where it was, in fact, a unique situation, two tracks colliding.
I fail to see where that is "inevitable" considering the frequency of amphibious operations that occur without such incidents.
A case can be made for that. He desperately wanted in the war for Britain.
I hadn't thought of this.
Everybody knows 9 guys were killed.
And the question was
Do you want to put people in prison after every accident?
This appears to be an error of judgement.
Assuming that gross negligence and recklessness were not involves, do you want to put him in prison? If you do, then, most respectfully, youre daft.
If you believe they were involved, okay. Prison is proper. But why do you believe they were involved?
Ya, in the PPCLI, we didn’t wait to get told much of anything, we normally acted on our own.
I accidentally detonated a nuke once.
I apologized to my CO.
Holy smokes, training can be dangerous, but in my regiment, if you picked up any weapon at all, even if handed to you, you checked the chamber, if not you were going to get a smack in the head.
We did have one guy laying in frozen tire track from a LAV III and had his mattress in the rut to hold it there, and that’s what saved him when a LAV drove over him in a night move. The edges of the rut were pushed up and frozen so he didn’t take the full weight. As it was it drove over his midsection and it took a few months until he could walk normally again.
Fraser Shot Walsh with a c6 (your m240) when the sear was broken and walking in Afghan it just let go, stitched Walsh up the side and dropped him dead on the spot. That particular weapon had gone back to the weapon techs a dozen times, and they kept putting it back into service.
A few years later I was sitting in a classroom doing some air training and that incident came up, and the guy in front of me said oh ya, he worked on that weapon and it was fine, because the incident was making weapon techs look good. At that point I asked at what point do you take a weapon out of service when it keeps coming back for the same thing? He began yelling that it was the soldier’s fault for incorrect weapon handling at which point he learned first hand that Fraser was a friend of mine etc and the poor airforce wog (without guts) got to witness what a fully pissed off Patricia looked like and what he does to idiots.
As I was standing at attention later in front of some airforce junior officer (civilian in uniform), they were attempting to give me grief over the incident. All I said was, once a Patricia, always a Patricia, and I will always defend my brothers, especially when one watched his best friend die from a faulty weapon.
I never did apologize or say anything like that, but the guy who I schooled and I got along quite well later on.
I don't know, it is all speculation.
Let the punishment fit the crime. If he isn't directly responsible, he retires.
Paragraphs are your friend.
That Marine was not AWOL. First of all, AWOL is not a Marine Corps term. Secondly, that's an ignorant term to use for someone who was left behind due to incompetence at higher levels. AWOL, or UA in Marine Corpsese, has a negative connotation and implies he left his post without proper authorization. He was actually left behind because those above him did not ensure that all Marines were accounted for after they were done training. But to say he was AWOL is disrespectful and dishonors his honorable service.
I agree with you 100%. My point was that he was unaccounted for/absent. W/O official leave? You got me-he certainly didn’t GO awol but being unaccounted for is what’s serious.
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