Today in history 10-23

[remrogers]

1983
October 23
U.S. and French military barracks in Beirut hit by massive car bombs

On October 23, a suicide bomber drives a truck filled with 2,000 pounds of explosives into a U.S. Marine Corps barracks at the Beirut International Airport. The explosion killed 220 Marines, 18 sailors and three soldiers. A few minutes after that bomb went off, a second bomber drove into the basement of the nearby French paratroopers’ barracks, killing 58 more people. Four months after the bombing, American forces left Lebanon without retaliating.

The Marines in Beirut were part of a multinational peacekeeping force that was trying to broker a truce between warring Christian and Muslim Lebanese factions. In 1981, American troops had supervised the withdrawal of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) from Beirut and then had withdrawn themselves. They returned the next year, after Israel’s Lebanese allies slaughtered nearly 1,000 unarmed Palestinian civilian refugees. Eighteen hundred Marine peacekeepers moved into an old Israeli Army barracks near the airportâ€"a fortress with two-footâ€"thick walls that could, it seemed, withstand anything. Even after a van bomb killed 46 people at the U.S. Embassy in April, the American troops maintained their non-martial stance: their perimeter fence remained relatively unfortified, for instance and their sentries’ weapons were unloaded.

At about 6:20 in the morning on October 23, 1983, a yellow Mercedes truck charged through the barbed-wire fence around the American compound and plowed past two guard stations. It drove straight into the barracks and exploded. Eyewitnesses said that the force of the blast caused the entire building to float up above the ground for a moment before it pancaked down in a cloud of pulverized concrete and human remains. FBI investigators said that it was the largest non-nuclear explosion since World War II and certainly the most powerful car bomb ever detonated.

After the bombing, President Ronald Reagan expressed outrage at the “despicable act” and vowed that American forces would stay in Beirut until they could forge a lasting peace. In the meantime, he devised a plan to bomb the Hezbollah training camp in Baalbek, Lebanon, where intelligence agents thought the attack had been planned. However, Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger aborted the mission, reportedly because he did not want to strain relations with oil-producing Arab nations. The next February, American troops withdrew from Lebanon altogether.

[JohnP]

I could tell you a story about this, that you would not believe, but I would probably be in custody a day or two later.  If we should ever meet face to face remind me to tell ya.

[remrogers]

My dad participated in "Operation Tiger" in England. It was a rehearsal for the "D Day" landing. All those involved were sworn to secrecy and were not to talk about it. He never once mentioned he had been there even though it was a military disaster. Nearly 800 men lost their lives that day. Dad was involved in the invasions of Sicily, North Africa, Italy, and Normandy as commander of a personnel landing craft. At Utah Beach, he had three landing craft shot out from under him.