N.J. Marine is air crash vic
A NEW JERSEY MARINE who dreamed of joining the military long before he graduated from Colts Neck High School was among the 16 service members killed in Monday’s horrific military plane crash.
Crew master Dan Baldassare, 20, died when the C-130 Hercules tanker he was riding in with 14 other Marines and one sailor spiraled into a soybean field in the Mississippi Delta, killing everyone aboard, a relative confirmed to the Daily News.
Baldassare (photo inset) regularly posted about his passion for the armed services on social media during high school. In one haunting post from May 2012, he shared a photo of a C-130 Hercules on a runway in Iraq.
“He was a patriot, and all he wanted to do was serve our country. Everyone had a lot of respect for Dan,” friend Ryan McGowan told PIX11 News. “Dan told us in about middle school that he wanted to become a Marine,” McGowan said. “He actually would bring military gloves to football practice and play with them.” A longtime Marine stationed at Stewart Air National Guard Base in Newburgh, Orange County, was also killed. Gunnery Sgt. Brendan Johnson, 45, had been in the corps more than 20 years and planned to retire next summer, his Bronxbred dad told The News. “Nobody should have to bury their children,” grieving dad Kevin Johnson said. “I keep thinking of him as a kid, but he told me, ‘I’ve got kids working for me now, I’m not a kid anymore.’ ” Johnson planned to leave the Marines in August 2018 and use the G.I. Bill to pursue graduate studies in environmental science or park and recreation management, his father said. Nine of the Marines killed in the Monday crash were part of the Marine Aerial Refueling and Transport Squadron (VMGR) 452 based in Newburgh, Brig. Gen. Bradley James, the commanding general of the 4th Marine Aircraft Wing, Marine Forces Reserve, said. “Indications are something went wrong at cruise altitude. There is a large debris path,” James said. ONE OF THE biggest icebergs ever recorded, a trillion-ton behemoth more than seven times the size of New York City, has broken off of Antarctica, triggering disagreement among scientists over whether global warming is to blame.
The event, captured by satellite, happened in the past few days when the giant chunk snapped off an ice shelf.
While such “calving” of icebergs is not unusual, this is an especially big one. It covers an area of roughly 2,300 square miles, more than twice the size of Luxembourg. Its volume is twice that of Lake Erie, according to Project MIDAS, a research group based in Britain.
As for any danger to navigation, scientists said the iceberg will probably break up and its pieces will circle Antarctica for years or decades rather than drifting northward into shipping lanes.